Damaged By Cathy Glass: Book Review
Damaged by Cathy Glass is a memoir of the authors’ experience and relationship with an out of control little girl named Jodie. Jodie was placed in foster care due to the concerns regarding her parents. She was placed with Cathy, an experienced carer who has fostered children for over 20 years, in hopes to avoid her being institutionalized. Cathy was the fifth carer that Jodie had been assigned to in four months. Cathy quickly realized that Jodie was a very disturbed and abused child. Jodie was a handful due to her learning disabilities and an untamed rage. Her difficult behavior and learning disabilities consisted of a short attention span, uncoordinated movements, kicking people, soiling herself, smashing everything in sight, not adhering to family rules, nightmares, and hallucinations. During the time with Cathy, Jodie gained trust from her and started to reveal to Cathy that she was sexually and physical abused by her parents and other family members. While Jodie lived with Cathy, she tried to give her love and affection in hopes to help her, but unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to help the damaged eight year old.
Victimization is the process of making someone into a victim by harming or taking advantage of him or her in some kind of way. Jodie is a prime example of child victimization. She has been through such heartbreaking and disturbing forms of abuse, that her mind suppressed them. This is termed as being blind to betrayal. Betrayal blindness (Freyd and Birrell, 2013) means that a person doesn’t know or cannot see what is right in front of them. Blindness to betrayal occurs when a person overlooks blatant signs or instances of betrayal or the state of mind where a person is unable to ...
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...hy abused children may act out in a bad way. It captures the terrible effects of abuse on an innocent child. The book also shows the perceptive of what a person could be going through. For example, when you see a child acting out in an out of control manner, it could be because they were abused. We shouldn’t judge a book by its cover because we have no clue what a person have gone through and why they may act the way they do. Most often people tend to place blame instead of having empathy for others. This story can help others to become educated on the way that abuse can affect people and can help the society as a whole to move forward in with empathy and embracement. Trainers and practitioners, working in childcare and child protection, could use this book. It provided an insight for people who are interested or going into the social worker career.
One of the cases found in the novel by Cynthia Crosson-Tower dealt with a little girl by the name of Jessica Barton. Although still a small child, her foster family had an issue trying to raise her in which she gave them behavioral issues and she would not react to them and was hard to ...
“Help, my daughter has stopped breathing!” she cried out entering the emergency room. In Sickened the autobiography written by Julie Gregory shares her abusive childhood to enlighten her readers about Munchausen Syndrome by proxy. With all the attention to protect children from abuse, how can child abuse not be recognized?
“We aren’t the weeds in the crack of life. We’re the strong, amazing flowers that found a way to grow in the challenging conditions.” (McElvaney, 1057) The book entitled “Spirit Unbroken: Abby’s Story,” offers a perspective on child abuse providing a positive outlook on a tragic situation. Even in the best of circumstances, however, victims of abuse can see the effects of the trauma for the rest of their life. For each individual person affected by this form of trauma, the reactions can vary. The same type of abuse in two different people can have very different outcomes – one could be that of coping, and the other a life of brokenness. Especially at impressionable ages, any form of abuse can be a hindrance in living a normal life. Children
...g and filled with detailed solutions for each act of child abuse. The book allows the reader to visual themselves in each situation and knows how to react towards such each incident. It helped me understand why adults abused as children act the way they do when it comes to social interaction. Personally, I have attained new information that I was unaware of. In the beginning, I have always believed that child abuse only involved physical or sexual abuse. I did not know that emotional abuse actually existed. I was unaware of the fact that emotional abuse gravely affects children as they grow up. This book may open up the minds of people who are unaware of or refuse to believe that child abuse is occurring daily in our society because it is so informative and persuasive at the same time. If one needs to educate themselves concerning child abuse, consider this book.
...o grow up in home where there is neglect, abuse and trauma often miss out on a normal development with attachment and trust. Without that attachment and trust, neglected children are at risk and vulnerable to suffer consequences and risk physically, emotionally, psychologically, educationally, interpersonally that can have a damaging effect on the child’s life and development and can develop into PTSD. However, under certain circumstances, given an opportunity to attach to healthy adults in a positive way, children can overcome even brutal childhoods and injuries. Lastly, it shows how an adult or parent who is willing to attach, trust, help and work with a child, can radically change the course of that child’s life by acting as an advisor, detecting and solving problems, and being there even in the middle of conflict and eventually helping the child succeed in life.
I was able to make many connections to familiarities in my personal life and in my career as an educator. The article facilitated a personal reflection of my experiences with loved ones, or students, whom portrayed similar behaviors that were identified as the mannerisms of emotionally abused individuals. Difficult students in my class and in our school, exhibit nearly all of the behaviors addressed in the article, which allowed me to construct many commonalities for the reasons of their behaviors. Furthermore, applying the saying, children learn what they live, was insinuated in one particular study; “a child expects others to treat him or her in the same way that they have been treated” (Wright, 2007). For instance, if a child is taught “to be worthy of love, care, and respect”, then he or she is more susceptible to anticipate equal treatment from others whom they have formed relationships with including friends, teachers, or other adults (Wright, 2007). Additionally, children who have been subject to emotional abuse devise a threatened sense of security and develop a skewed sense-of-self (Wright, 2007). Victimized children have internalized that they are; “flawed, defective, shameful, and unlovable”; and that the adults responsible for their protection are; “untrustworthy, capable of abandonment, abusive, and will not care or meet their basic needs” (Wright, 2007). In effect, a child’s abilities to form healthy and satisfying relationships later in life will be altered (Wright, 2007). The above descriptions clarify that many of my experiences from teaching, are direct implications of emotional abuse in childhood. Students who act out and cause disruptions are gaining attention the only ways that they know how. I have often felt like there has been a sufficient need to “retrain” these students and undue the conditioning that
All children are vulnerable and open to be abused by any adult that has contact with them. As an early years practitioner, it is exceptionally important to be able to recognise when a child’s behaviour is changing for the worst and link this to signs of abuse. As the early years setting is an establishment young children know well and are comfortable in, adults present can make children somewhat aware of what abuse is, how it is wrong and what they must do if they recognise abuse may be or is being inflicted upon them.
Julie Gregory was a sick child. She was in and out of the doctor’s office, and was in the hospital on several occasions. Her illnesses baffled the doctors. She was treated for a variety of sicknesses, but she always seemed to come down with yet another ailment. After enduring years of sickness and misdiagnosis, Julie finally figured out that it was her mother who was responsible for her suffering. Her mother suffered from Munchausen by Proxy. She was abusing Julie to gain attention and sympathy for herself. Julie was not suffering from chronic illness; she was suffering from chronic child abuse. Julie is not alone. Too often in the world today, children are abused, resulting in lasting emotional and physical scars. The question is, how does the pattern of abuse actually affect a person later in life? Julie sought help and seems to be on the road to recovery, but for some, the damage is ongoing.
Magnuson, Ed. “Child Abuse: The Ultimate Betrayal.” TIME for Kids. 05 Sep. 1983:7. 6 May 2011. Web.
Jasmine Beckford’s case is the oldest out of the three; in 1984 Jasmine died as a result of long-term abuse aged 4. In 1981 her and her younger sister suffered serious injuries and were paced with foster carers for six months. After this they were allowed back home with their mother on a trial basis as social services were meant to support them. During the last ten months of Jasmine’s life she was only seen once by social workers (Corby, 2006).
Every day the safety and well-being of many children are threatened by neglect. Each child deserves the comfort of having parents whom provide for their children. Throughout the memoir, The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls explains the childhood from being born into the hands of parent who neglect their children. Many may argue that children need to grow with their parents; however, the removal of children is necessary if the parents disregard the kid’s needs and cannot provide a stable life for their children.
Child Abuse is a worldwide issue, children are being abused on a daily basis. Child abuse occurs more often than people think. Child abuse comes in many forms such as: emotional, physi-cal, sexual, neglect, and verbal abuse. In the study by Carpenter, Shattuck, Tyrka, Geracioti, and Price (2011), the reader can see how child abuse can alter the whole way someone looks at the world. Child abuse is a serious problem that affects even the victim 's family or friends. Victims of child abuse show many signs of the trauma they have faced.
My thesis statement is that children’s innocence enables them to cope in difficult situations. Children generally have a tendency to lighten the mood in sad situations because of their innocent nature. They turn even the saddest situations to mild, innocent situations. This is evident when Marjane says “these stories had given me new ideas for games”, (Satrapi, 55). By saying this she refers to her uncle’s stories of how he and other prisoners were tortured in prison. Stories of torture have never been easy to hear even for adults but Marjane so innocentl...
When thinking about statistics on child abuse, it’s very helpful to know that the idea of “child abuse” is very controversial. Recently, in particular homes and cultures, child abuse has come to be seen as a major social problem and a main cause of many people’s suffering and personal problems. Some believe that we are beginning to face the true prevalence and significance of child abuse. There is more to child abuse than just the physical scars; children are affected socially, mentally, and emotionally. According to the American National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse, in 1997, neglect represented 54% of confirmed cases of child abuse, physical abuse 22%, sexual abuse 8%, emotional maltreatment 4%, and other forms of maltreatment 12%.
Every individual breathing in this world is generally assumed and anticipated to experience a childhood filled with joy, laughter, and smiles. However, pain, tears, and silence are the memoirs of some children due to child abuse. Child abuse is an issue that has become an epidemic, developing into children’s most unwelcomed nightmares that haunts them on a daily basis. Child victims of abuse can consider the cruel acts being done to them as their preeminent complication of their lives causing them to become unstable. These children tend to lose control over their own lives, bodies, and minds creating catastrophic obstacles to build up in their lives and causing themselves to become weakened and vulnerable due to being confronted by fear that they cannot endure. The many lives of abused children are misguided as they mature because the events that they encounter during their early childhood years influence the construction of their future and behaviors. Child abuse is the barbarous act of maltreatment directed towards children that includes physical abuse, emotional abuse, and sexual molestation which all serve as elements towards leading to the destruction of their lives.