Throughout the heartbreaking story “A Child Called It”, by Dave Pelzer, the readers go through one of the most severe child abuse cases in California’s history. Unknown to the author, the story also follows along with Sean Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens.” The book ,“A Child Called It”, shows many resemblants to Sean Covey’s habits, such as Habit One: Be Proactive, Habit Two: Begin With The End in Mind, and Habit Three: Put First Things First. Habit One, from Sean Covey’s informative book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens”, tells how the reader can be proactive. Covey shows this by stating that even though life has many difficulties, the reader can still focus on their own self love and happiness to change reactive actions into proactive actions. Likewise, Dave Pelzer’s “A Child Called It” explores the first habit, “Be Proactive”, through many actions and quotes throughout his …show more content…
Pelzer uses the fifth section of Habit One, “ Turn Setbacks into Triumphs”, to setback his mother and to be rewarded with fewer beatings; one example of Pelzer turning setbacks into triumphs is “To keep mother off balance, I began to ask whining questions” (p.42), this distracted his mother causing him more time to escape the beatings. In the ninth section of Covey’s novel, “Can-Do”, it proclaims that the reader can do anything they put their mind to. Pelzer uses this attitude to fight his starvation, “ After getting caught stealing other kids food, my next idea was to rip off frozen lunches” (p.63). Pelzer keeps this Can-Do attitude throughout the whole book, he states “The more mom slugged me, the more I began to realize I had won” (p.42), through this he kept the right attitude and went against his mother’s injustice. In the eighth section, “ Growing your Proactive Muscles”, it tells the reader to take charge of their own life; through Pelzer’s life he had to take charge himself, but one of the most heartbreaking examples is “ I wet the rag again and
In her article, Greene reflects on Alfred Schultz’s idea of wide-awkeness as a “sense of achievement, a type of awareness” (Greene, 1978). She goes on to explain that as teachers and students we must be aware of our surroundings. The habits we submerge ourselves in as human beings become mundane. I think about our morning routine: alarm goes off, shower, get dressed, makeup, hair, wake up kids, a couple of “hurry up get your shoes on”, get into car, drive for half-hour, drop off at daycare, arrive at school, proceed through the day. This happens every single morning. We rarely deviate from our routine and it is exactly what Greene calls “habitual activities” (p. 42).
Whether they are positive or negative, our habits are an integral part of our lives. Because of this, when Professor James VanderMey addressed the 33rd annual Honors Convocation at Mid Michigan Community College, he decided to speak on the topic of habit. In his speech, entitled “Remarks on Habit,” VanderMey (argues against Sartre’s point of view by) discusses the advantages of having good habits, especially the habits represented by the Diploma Qualification Profile, a series of proficiencies that students learn as they are educated at Mid Michigan Community College. First, he shows that good habits lead to creative problem solving. Then, he argues that our habits make us who we are. Finally, he shows how good habits may grow and multiply. Habits, especially DQP habits, are positive and useful, because they allow one to think creatively, become a better person, and find innovative ways of doing.
“A Child Called it” is a phenomenal book. After reading Dave Pelzer’s story about the horrors he experienced as a child, I’m glad he had the courage to share his story. As a child, Dave’s alcoholic mother physically, emotionally, and mentally abused him. The author portrays to the reader just how bad his childhood really was by writing about the time his mother stabbed him, the times she would make it sit in a cold bath, the times she would put him in a “gas chamber”, and even about the time she purposefully burned him using the stove. Even though Dave experienced all this traumatic events early in life and had many risk factors that put him at risk for failure, his resiliency and his will to live is what saved him in the end.
Some parents put their children up on a pedestal, and treat them as if they are the most prized creatures on the Earth. Parents think that they raise their children right, but Gottlieb makes a valid point when she states, “As a parent, I wanted to do things right. But what does ‘right’ mean?” I like how Gottlieb uses the story of the child tripping over a rock. When the kid falls, some parents would come to the rescue, and cuddle the child before they even start to cry. Even though they mean well, I feel like these parents are not even thinking of how a scenario as simple as this can affect their children later in life. This example reflects that even the overprotective and “good” parents end up having children that are lost and unhappy because they did not show any discipline and organization. Dan Kindlon, a children’s psychologist that Gottlieb mentioned, explained, “There’s a difference between being loved and being constantly monitored.” This made me think of a friend whom goes to West Georgia who I will call Ella. She grew up with the constant surveillance of her
One Child’s Courage to Survive. “ A Child Called It ” Abstract This is one of the best, yet saddest books that I have ever read. There are so many bad things out there that are happening to good people. We just have no idea.
'You are a nobody! An It!?(Pelzer 140). These were the raw, disheartened remarks that came from the disgusting coldhearted mother's mouth. These painful hurting remarks at her son was how the book got its title and that's what interested me in reading this book. A Child Called 'It', by Dave Pelzer, is a life-changing story about, a young boy who is starved, beat, and tortured by his mother and her cruel games, yet he manages to turn his life around when he grows up. This young boy uses his faith, self-discipline, and will power to overrule his mother's destruction and life damaging obstacles.
According to Papalia and Feldman, an estimation of a tragic 905,000 cases were received by child protective services in response to about 3.3 million referrals regarding maltreatment within six million children in the year of 2006. One of the six million children include, David Pelzer. David, in his awe-inspiring novel, A Child Called It, takes the reader upon an unfortunate path as he reflects upon the deplorable life struggles he experienced from the cruel actions of his abusive alcoholic mother. Despite the never ending struggles throughout his daily life at such a young age, David learns to become resilient as time progresses. Keeping in mind that writing this autobiographical
I am writing to you to protest the School Board’s proposed banning of the book A Child Called “It” by Dave Pelzer. The book spent six years on the New York Times best-seller list, was an international best seller, and received a Pulitzer Prize nomination. As an award-winning author, Mr. Pelzer has shared his true-life story based on a childhood where he received physical and mental abuse by his alcoholic mother.
Learning to lead our children in an environment where they grow up every day is a better decision. One of the most difficult things for parents is to give independence to their own children because we do not understand their need for that. In contrast, teenagers have to lean their hand that overprotection is one dad decision for example puttie caballero, even though knight’s twin daughter, symphony and kymberlee age 19 and attending college, knight remain deeply involved in their day to day lives. She goes shopping with them. She gives them advice about their relationships.”
What can you learn about adolescence by watching five very different teens spend Saturday detention together? With each and everyone of them having their own issues weather it be at home, school, or within themselves. During this stage of life adolescents are seen as rude, disrespectful, and out of control. But why is this? Is it truly all the child’s fault? Teens have to face quite a few issues while growing up. Adolescence is the part of development where children begin push back against authority and try to figure out who they are or who they are going to become. Therefore, we will be looking at adolescent physical changes, their relationships, cognitive changes and the search for identity as depicted in the movie The Breakfast Club (Hughes,1985).
Pelzer, Dave. A Child Called "It": One Child's Courage to Survive. California: Health Communications, 1995. Print.
The nonfiction book I read was titled Beautiful Child and was written by Torey Hayden. Beautiful Child follows the life of a special education teacher who is new to a school is met with a challenging class consisting of five children, all with very different needs. The class consists of a child who has tourette’s syndrome (Jesse), a child who we later find out has dyslexia (Billy), two twins who have fetal alcohol syndrome (Shane and Zane), and a young girl who is selectively mute (Venus.) Although through the story we see each child grow and progress, Venus is the main character and we see her open up to Torey through books and most important She-Ra comics. As Venus’ story unfolds, so do the horrendous details of her family that include a past of drug abuse and prostitution. The quietness of Venus that left many confused, begins to make
This book is called, “A Child Called It” by David Pelzer’s is about the life of a child named David that lives in Daly City, California with his dad named Stephen Joseph who works as a fireman in San Francisco, CA .As well, with his mother named Catherine Roerva and his four brothers named Stan, Ronald, Russell, and Kevin (the smallest).At the beginning, David has a wonderful life because he has a wonderful time with his parents and his brothers. His mother cares and loves him. She prepares delicious food for her family and dresses up very nice like, does her make up. The family takes vacations together to different places for example, Portola, Memorial Park, the Russian River and camped out for a week. Stephen his dad doesn’t spend a lot of time at home because he has to work a 24hour shifts and he loves David who he calls “Tiger”. Catherine his mother makes sure her house is clean, loves her children, and plans the family vacations. She takes the boys to field trips while dad is working and prepares delicious and exotic food for her husband and kids. Also, they spend the holidays as a family with different activities .For example, in Christmas where the whole family decorate the tree and each year one of the boys is honor to place the angel at the top of the tree. However, everything changes when David mothers caught him at mischief and starts to punish him more than his brothers even if she caught them all committing the same crime. She started to punish David by putting him in a corner of his bedroom and he would stay there until one of his brothers will ask his mother if he could come out to play. Then, she grab David face and smashed it against the mirror and he repeated, “I’m a bad b...
In the end of the novel "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" Bruno was found by his father a year later when Mother and Gretel had gone back to Berlin because it had become a dangerous place for Bruno, being so young and not being able to understand what really goes on at the camp. Bruno wanted to play with Shmuel but wasn't able to because of the fence which kept them both separated from each other. Bruno had later gone back to the house and wanted to discuss with Gretel why there was a fence, he didn't want to go ask Mother and Father because they would have been furious about him going away from the house. Gretel told Bruno about the fence, they are Jews and we German Nazis, Jews were different therefor they had to be separated. While arguing Gretel discovered eggs in her which turned out to be lice, and had to get treated with a special shampoo which also meant Bruno had to get his head shave making him bald.
Being proactive is the first step in the seven habit journey. I thought I was proactive because I always had to plan everything in my life. Family vacations, work schedules, continuing education all were events that I was proud to say I planned right down to the last detail. Reading the Covey material I realized that being proactive went much deeper than just planning life events. Being proactive involves choosing my attitude, focusing on my circle of influence and not my circle of concern, and turning setbacks into triumphs. Being proactive means to act based on principles not emotions. We all need a pause button that would allow us to stop during that time between...