Educational Child Abuse
Posted on 26. Apr, 2011 by admin in Other abuse
Educational Child Abuse is the harm done to a child by a parent or caretaker who deliberately keeps the child out of school, taking them out repeatedly early, or otherwise preventing a healthy child from being in school consistently.
Although this blog deals extensively with mental child abuse, I thought I’d expose a growing problem that’s also abusive to innocent children.
The motivation is usually a very selfish one of the parent: they’re either too emotionally dependent on the child so they keep them at home, or they are too lazy to ensure that the child is in school on time every day.
Parents that are capable of educational child abuse are usually abusive in other manners as well. So if a child is being educationally abused, there’s a high likelihood that the child is also being mentally, sexually, medically, or physically abused.
An interesting phenomenon is that of child abuse when the child is being home schooled. There is a serious argument to be made that children are more susceptible to being abused when they are yanked out of school and placed into home schooling. With home schooling, the signs of any form of abuse can very easily be hidden from the public. After all, many of the reports of abuse to authorities are made by schools across America.
Remember Andrea Yates, the mother who drowned her five children in Texas? Not that there’s a defined connection, but her children were home schooled…
Educational child abuse is not yet well documented as a form of “child abuse,” but it’s clearly takes place in too many households and needs to be exposed.
9 Responses to “Educational Child Abuse”
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Elizabeth M Marsh
01. May, 2011
Although not entirely related, you might be interested in these thoughts.
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First, it was child abuse, then it was bullying – as if both were new occurrences. Now, it is cyber-stalking. A subtle way of accusing someone that like as not cannot be easily refuted. Similarly, as with child abuse, this is another campaign largely driven by negative ideology that implies that someone is guilty.
It is not easy to challenge such rhetoric. Few doubt that abuses exist – yet the scale is insignificant compared to any other crime. Despite this, abuse is given a disproportionate level of coverage making it seem bigger, or greater, or worse than it actually is. Any worthwhile debate is rendered virtually impossible, or instantly silenced by critics, for who could reason that child abuse ain’t what it’s cracked up to be, and not be condemned for saying so?
What the ‘experts’ refuse to acknowledge is that it is the fear of child abuse that drives many people’s thinking, rather than the occurrence of it per se. Yet the experts’ response to abuse is to ‘protect’ those affected. Were this any other event in one’s life – the loss of a loved one, or a pet, or a traffic accident, or fire ravaging their home etc., that child would not be given the prominince that they are when the subject is abuse.
How can any child survive such scrutiny? If a child goes into hospital for a broken leg, the doctors are likely to recommend that the patient is up and about as soon as possible. Whilst the child may take time to recover from such an event, they do not subsequenly think, or worry about it for the rest of their lives. Why would they?
Yet abuse of all kinds is viewed very differently.
The question the experts refuse to consider is why do they give abuse such prominence? Why do they not give consideration to ‘intent’ when alleged abuses occur? Without allowing for intent, the perpetrator is automatically perceived as ‘guilty’.
My hope must be that one day, the world will right itself again and that when it does, all those guilty of fomenting such skewed ideology, and for declaring it to be sound when it is not – that their voices will be silenced, and that it will be their words that will ultimately condemn them for the damage they have inflicted.
A camera shot is simply a reflection of something that is real, it is not reality in itself.
Kepha
07. May, 2011
Although I’m a public school teacher, I’m wary about the article entitled “Educational Child Abuse”. It seems a sly dig at all parents who homeschool.
Granted , there are few parents who are capable of being truly objective about their kids and their kids’ abilities. But teachers aren’t always as objective and fair-minded towards their charges as we’d all like to believe, either. Further, as a social studies teacher, I find that many curricula and textbooks are riddled with a combination of bias and a fear of lawsuit, so we’re stuck teaching only a dull, watered-down pablum instead of the richness that history really is.
And schools themselves can be abusive places, especially with kids abusing kids. That happens simply because there are so many of the young and so relatively few adults in one place; and many of those adults are themselves barely out of or stuck in a delayed adolescence themselves.
admin
08. May, 2011
Kepha,
Thanks for your feedback.
The article mentioned homeschooling in passing. It wasn’t my intent to demean it.
Good point about schools not necessarily being the safe haven we often automatically assume they are.
John
Sandi
25. Jul, 2011
I am a step parent to a child who lives with her mother…..she is currently going into the 6th grade…..she never attended kindergarten which to me is horrible in todays world kindergarten is such an important foundation she then missed 6 weeks of first grade was late 25 time that year and has missed signifigant amounts of school every year since….she lives in pennsylvania where they have a crazy view on no child left behind …she has been recommended for summer school every year and up until last summer really did not know how to read until i took the time to teach her…..her mother has been on the brink of being charged and yet no one does anything…..because she lives 3 hours away our hands are tied when it comes to fixing this my husband has called and emailed the school and nothing has come out of it…..how is this child ever going to understand the importance of having a job and being successsful in life when she doesnt understand that school is like a job and you have to go in order to get anything out of it…..unfortunatly all she sees is that she can stay home sick or not and just watch tv all day and her mom is fine with it……we have gone to court showed then report cards and emails and they havent done anything…..her mother has not had a job in 10 years …lives on welfare has 4 children with 3 different people and this is the person that this child has to look up to…..and yet we are the horrible ones that have too many expectations ….i just dont understand
Deb
28. Aug, 2011
My husband and I have been experiencing educational abuse and brainwashing with the mother of his two teenage sons. Last year she sabotaged the academic career of her oldest son and convinced him that we were trying to ruin his life by having him apply to colleges and do well in his senior of high school. She turned off his alarm clock, convinced him to sleep in. The mother also set up a high tech gaming den in her living room and encouraged the boys to game and watch television when they should have been studying. Every other week when they were with her, they were frequently late to school and often did not turn in homework assignments. The end result is that the oldest son tanked his senior year in high school, scored below the national average on his SAT’s, refused to fill out his FAFSA. This summer when he saw his peers leaving for college, he panicked and showed up several times at our house sobbing about now wanting to go to college. We did everything we could to assist him through the paperwork and barely got him in to a local community college. The older son spent his summer living full time with his mother, refused to get a part time job and wiled away his days sleeping and gaming online.We are trying our best to help the younger son get a better GPA, turn in homework, and not bring his laptop to school (where he uses it for gaming at the back of the class). We are having the same pattern again with the mother, She has told the younger son to bring his laptop to school, disregard our insistence to do his homework and other nonsense that we are trying to ruin his life. We never bad mouth the mother in front of the boys. We model good behavior, try to be the best parent and step parent that we can be. My husband does alot of volunteer work in the school (coaching athletics) and it is not unusual to go to the grocery store and have other parents come to us and tell us what a great job we are doing with the boys. I am distraught at what almost seems a hopeless situation in watching these high IQ boys flounder academically. Yesterday the mother had the older boy send his father a text message that said “Screw you” when he asked his son to come over and help him build a rock climbing wall in the backyard.Has anyone else been in this situation where the mother will destroy her childrens’ academic careers to get revenge on the father? The really weird thing is that nine years they got divorced because she came out as a lesbian!
Jooolzi
15. Sep, 2011
I am going through almost the same things with my partners two young girls at this moment. The children live with their mother and are on the UK child protection register due to her consistent abuse. The girls have had 60% school attendance for nearly 3 years now and have gone from being in the gifted and talented set to average and below. Mother keeps them at home as an emotion crutch and has come out with numerous issues as to why they are not in school: father will kidnap them (although they visit us regularly); bullying, social services won’t provide a taxi;unable to control them; its raining. She constantly presents them with health problems and an investigation is underway as to whether she has Munchausen by proxy. We went on holiday last week and the youngest girl turned up with crutches and her ankled bangaded saying the hospital told her not to put any pressure on it. She hadn’t even been to the hospital yet she has had numerous visits for broken arms and sprained ankles since living with her mother. The house is borderline neglect with over 20 animals in it but she cannot afford a £3 bra for her daughter – its had fly investations the lot, animal faeces etc and even a sex offender in the house with them! Mother has borderline personality disorder. She has brainwashed the children to not eat our food, to wee their beds when they visit (ages 13 and 11). CHildren are brainwashed by her into staying with her and because the say they want to be there Social Services will not move them. We are having to prepare a case against the County Council now for failing to get them in school!
Rivaee
01. Nov, 2011
Wait,not trying to be rude or cause an argument,but Andrea yates ,drowning her 5 children,has almost nothing I can see in common besides,home schooling. She was not supose to keep having kids because she was so mentally ill,the parents we discuss here,know exactly what they are doing,anyone agree?
matthew
09. Jan, 2012
I have friends who are well educated and homeschool but my children are homeschooled because they aren’t able to cope with public school and my ex lets them make the choice to go or not! I don’t know if she is qualified to teach, she is a highschool drop out and I am left out of any decisions regarding the kids,even visitation! The kids are put in the position to make all important choices. Homescooling can be the best choice but Whatch Out! I may never have a relationship with my kids and homeschooling keeps them away from the world and different perspectives.Homeschooling is a used as a tool to control my kids and it could
matthew
09. Jan, 2012
I have friends who are well educated and homeschool but my children are homeschooled because they aren’t able to cope with public school and my ex lets them make the choice to go or not! I don’t know if she is qualified to teach, she is a highschool drop out and I am left out of any decisions regarding the kids,even visitation! The kids are put in the position to make all important choices. Homescooling can be the best choice but Whatch Out! I may never have a relationship with my kids and homeschooling keeps them away from the world and different perspectives.Homeschooling is a used as a tool to control my kids and it helped ruin my kids!