Child Neglect Essay

The study of the development of children is a fairly new study, and psychologist are still finding out a variety of new information every year. Along with that, child neglect is an arising issue in today’s economy due to the long-term effects it has on a child’s physical and mental health. Neglect has been associated with impaired brain development, fatalities, inferior academic performance, emotional and behavioral problems, fatalities, and depression. Although psychiatrists have uncertainty on how to address neglected children, studies have been done and are taking place to figure out a solution. There are a variety of different factors that can lead to a neglected child, but the majority of these factors lead back to the parents of the

In the book The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, author Bruce D. Perry, the senior fellow of The Child Trauma Academy, Perry, in 1995 meets the boy who was six at the time. Perry was called into a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit to try and stop the boy from throwing feces and food at the staff. Perry explains that when he got to the PICU, “A loud, odd shriek made me turn immediately to find a boney little child in a loose diaper sitting in a cage.” In reality, the “cage” was the boys crib that someone had put iron bars and a plywood panel wired to the top to make it look like a dog cage. Although, in this case, this boy was not raised strictly by dogs, his caretaker, who was ignorant about the needs of children, was a dog breeder. Because of this, he used what he knew about dogs to raise this young boy. He would keep the boy in a dog cage, made sure he was fed and changed, but rarely spoke to him, played with him, or anything else normal parents would do. The boy lived in the cage for five years and spent the majority of his time with the other dogs. When he was taken in to the PICU, doctors were still unaware of the damages neglect has to a child’s brain, and he never saw the same doctor twice. He also, never received any kind of therapy. Perry states that the boys care taker never even understood that the boy was acting like a dog because he was being treated and raised as a

She first studied mothers with their infants in a home setting for the child’s first six months of life. Six months later, Ainsworth observed these now one year old in a laboratory playroom, which would be a strange situation to the child. The entire experiment was put on to see how many children would display secure attachment. In this experiment, secure attachment was labeled when a child showed some distress when the mother left but yet able to compose themselves when their mother returned. This experiment lead to the understanding of different temperaments of attachment. It was also concluded that a mother’s own history has an effect on if the child will be securely attached or not (Myers). For an example, Bruce D. Perry, in his book, discusses his case with an eighteen-year-old male who had be placed in prison for the rape and murder of two teenage girls. According to this young male’s files, his family was stable, he had never been placed in a foster care system, and his older brother was a successful worker. This puzzled Perry, but in a later interview with the young man’s family, Perry came to realize that the eighteen year old’s mother was mentally impaired. The father explained to Perry that when their eldest son was born, they lived in a house that was close to family, so if the mother ever got overwhelmed, family would just come over and babysit. Before the mother got pregnant with their second son,