As ironic as it may seem, the last two weeks of March ushered in April, Child Abuse Prevention Month, with the deaths of five children in the Tidewater area. All five children died because of abuse or neglect by their parents. One of the five dead children was a 3 year old boy who was beaten and stuffed into a tool box and later found in a swampy bed. Another three year old boy set the fire that burned him to death as his mother sat near by under the influence of illegal drugs. Two other children, ages five and six, burned to death when the efficiency they were left into watch their younger sibling caught on fire. The last of the five tragic deaths during this two week holocaust was a five year old girl who allegedly tried to kill her mother with a butter knife and received a fatal blow to her head during the attack.
Many residents and professionals in the Tidewater area are sharing the grief of these untimely deaths by joining the grandmother of the little boy found in the tool box and placing a blue ribbon on their cars in memory of him. It is not uncommon to see many ribbons at any given time, because these deaths have touched many people in the community, including law enforcement officers, human service professionals and local residents.
Tragically, the community and country rally around the deaths of these five children or ones like Lisa Steinberg in New York, but their outcries do not bring back the lives of the children. Those of us in child abuse related fields will reluctantly add those five names to the list of 1,200 who die every year due to abuse or neglect, and we will be reminded that those five dead children are only representative of the one million who are abused every year. The professional community will also remember that these statistics do not include the children whose bodies cannot provide enough physical evidence to prove the abuse they describe, or the children whose stories remain hidden within the fortress of family secrets. The statistics do not include preteens or teens who run away or who or thrown away from their broken homes. The professionals also remember that the statistics do not include children who take their own lives or choose to die a slow death from alcohol/drug abuse or violent encounters with gangs, weapons, or automobiles.
Saddest of all, the statistics and the five children of the Tidewater area do not accurately represent the many parents who struggle daily with the limited resources available to help them to meet the challenges of parenting. Research indicates that most parents who abuse their children want very much to be good parents but struggle with one of the following categories:
* A lack of adequate parenting knowledge.
* Social isolation with no close family or friends to offer help and emotional support.
* Unmet emotional needs and expectations of their children to provide love, understanding and self esteem.
* A drug/alcohol problem of one or both parents which severely affects parenting skills.
* A parent or both parents, abused themselves as children, setting up the vicious cycle of abuse.
* A crisis or series of crises such as martial or financial problems, illness,etc., producing tension in the home.
Some parents can relate to the feeling of being isolated from the emotional support they need while under stress. Some can relate to the feeling of being out of control with their own anger and just not sure what to do with the children they are rearing. Others can also relate to the feeling of regret felt over the discipline they administered a bit too harshly at the end of a bad day, or the abusive language they used to redirect a child's attention, or even ignoring the child's needs to suit their own. Still others recognize that they received more instruction on how to operate their microwave oven than they did on parenting, and most parents could probably identify at least one time when they needed help or support with their parenting.
Abusive parents on the other hand, find themselves in a pattern or cycle of abuse that takes intervention and regular support to break. It can be a painful process but one with many benefits and far-reaching effects, because studies conclude that parents abused as children are six times more likely to abuse their own children. We also know that at least 80 percent of all prisoners experienced some child abuse, at least 60 percent of all prostitutes experienced some form of child sexual abuse; and 60 percent of our country's runaways come from highly dysfunctional families.
For professionals in the field and citizens throughout the country, April is a month designated to support and celebrate nurturing families, promote positive parenting and publicize parent support services. It is recognized in Virginia by people like Governor Baliles who dedicated the month to awareness, and singer/song writer Bruce Hornsby who actively participates as the Honorary Chairman for Child Abuse Prevention Month.
But obviously our society needs to do more than rally over children who die anuntimely death. We must promote events that remind us of our families. We must look at the perception we have of children and the priority we place on their safety and nurture. We need to look deep within ourselves and ask questions about our won parenting and our willingness to learn more about our children's personal feelings, as well as their developmental stages. We need to realize the shortcomings we have as parents and make improvements to strengthen ourselves as models for our children.
Most of all, our society must open a dialogue about these issues so parents like the one in the Tidewater area can easily obtain the support they need and find their parenting a creative opportunity rather than a painful battleground. Our society must dedicate itself to a social change in attitudes and perceptions
of its children and their needs. Hopefully then we will be a country that offers a sanctuary to children and treasures them above all our other resources and priorities. Hopefully then we will end the unnecessary deaths of children's minds and bodies.
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