Shouting at children can be as damaging as physical or sexual abuse, study says
theguardian.com
Parents who shout at their children or call them “stupid” are leaving their offspring at greater risk of self-harm, drug use and ending up in jail, new research claims.
Talking harshly to children should be recognised as a form of abuse because of the huge damage it does, experts say.
The authors of a new study into such behaviour say “adult-to-child perpetration of verbal abuse … is characterised by shouting, yelling, denigrating the child, and verbal threats”.
“These types of adult actions can be as damaging to a child’s development as other currently recognised and forensically established subtypes of mistreatment such as childhood physical and sexual abuse,” the academics say in their paper in the journal Child Abuse & Neglect.
You are viewing a single comment
Although I don't think verbal abuse is acceptable, I think that equivalency is a bit much
You miss-read (or didn't read) the article if that's your take-away. It's saying the long-term effects can be roughly the same. It's not equivocating the actions themselves.
the title is purposely misleading is what I think they meant.
Then I disagree with that assessment. "can be as damaging" speaks to the effects of the act, not its inherent heinousness.
I'm saying it's a sensationalized headline. it's meant to draw you in with a wild statement to make you angry and then the article is something completely different.
And I'm saying that's wrong. The title accurately describes the article.
ok
They're not equivocating the malice of verbal abuse vs. sexual abuse. They are equivocating the damage this kind of abuse can do to children, which their research supports. There's no reason to take offense as if they were taking a stand on the non-severity child sexual abuse, which they are not.
I guess I'm surprised sexual abuse doesn't do more damage
Verbal abuse when I was growing up was backed up with the threat of physical abuse. And having been bit and hit by my dad, and seeing my mom and older brother hit by my dad, those verbal threats carried a lot of weight.
I've walked on eggshells around my dad and every man that reminded me of him my whole life. It's affected my relationships and made it impossible to hold down a job as most bosses have the same authoritarian streak my dad did.
So yeah, verbal abuse is damaging. Rather it's equivalent to other forms of abuse I can't say. But it took me 44 years and a skilled emdr therapist to finally heal enough that I don't feel overwhelmed whenever I get emotional.
And for much of the last fifteen years I've been trying to find a therapist that took my trauma seriously and knew how to help me with it. So many misdiagnosis (anxiety, substance use, and depression were symptoms, but not the diagnosis that helped). Many suicide attempts. Many psych meds that didn't help. Many many years feeling unheard by the medical establishment.
So yeah, it's damaging.
Why?
I will say, verbal abuse is harder to pinpoint.
In some ways, it's easier to have a source of trauma to point to and say "that's the cause," so you can address and treat it.
I was verbally abused. My inner dialogue was one of critisism, guilt and shame, that I didn't realize until well into adulthood. I thought that was how everyone talked to themselves.
If I had been physically abused, I would have known about it. Much less insidious to the mind.
E: Was also just thinking about triggers. If you were a victim of physical trauma, your triggers might be very obvious. With verbal trauma, for me anyway, they were much less obvious. To think back, I went years and years having fight or flight reactions for no obvious reason, often manifested as anxiety or poor impulse control, wasted so many days just feeling anxious instead of working on myself. One trigger for me is loud voices. Had no idea until well into adulthood things started making sense. Damn near had a panic attack one day when a chef started yelling at the line cooks while I was waiting for my order.
absolutely. verbal abuse doesn't leave anything physical behind, which makes it much harder to pinpoint the cause and effect. so you might be feeling depressed and anxious but not understand why because dissociative amnesia become your normal response to verbal abuse.
While what you and I feel doesn't matter much, we truly need a scientific study of this. Oh, wait! That's what this was. Please defer to objective consensus...
Lol. Fuck off. Objective consensus? Are you part of team "trust the science" thinking every fucking study is well done or non biased?
How about you take the study at hand and point out, where it is not well done?
this. things like this are starting to annoy me. lets me clear. sexual abuse is worse than physical abuse which is worse than verbal abuse. The first should never happen in the least. Grabbing your childs arm roughly and yelling at them when about to touch something hot is fine and expected. Yelling at them and telling them to behave when they hit their sibling is fine.
"things like this" being... Scientific studies?
using equivalency phrases on things that are very much not equivalent. Also scientific studies are great in the hard sciences but in the social sciences become very iffy. Doing some correlation on questionaires is not equivalent to measuring small changes in a large structure to measure gravitational effects.
Where did anyone say this? You're trying to sound knowledgeable about science, but all you're doing is making up strawmen to argue against over and over
its a reply to iamthetots comment about scientific studies. one thing that is frustrating with federation is sometimes folks don't see all the people or parts of a convo
I read that comment, that doesn't change the fact that you're creating strawman arguments
explain strawman argument and how my conversation fits into it because I do not believe my conversation has been one. Or not if you don't really believe its a strawman argument. Make some other comment if thats the case.
I think there's a missed distinction here.
"Yelling" at your child to get them to stop something, or not step into traffic, or not eat pills is one thing. That's certainly not verbal abuse.
Shaming and berating your child for getting a C, telling them they are worthless, they are the reason Dad left, they are ugly is very different. This is clearly verbal abuse.
It's conceivable that the sustained verbal abuse as I defined it could absolutely harm a child in a long term way, and cumulatively have an impact similar to physical abuse.
You're completely misunderstanding everything written here. You created arguments that don't exist in this article, and do not understand the definition of verbal or physical abuse, because the examples you give are not that
except that there is no hard line of where something moves into abuse. In the end my comment was that yes these are not equivalent. There is no level of sexual contact that is ok but there is a level of physicality and yelling that is ok as long as it is not type of constant thing. and physicality is way less ok than yelling and only should be used in rare, usually dangerous situations.
Ok, but again, you're arguing against a strawman. Nothing you're saying here is relevant to what I said about you misunderstanding the definitions of physical and verbal/emotional abuse as evidenced by you standing up and knocking down examples that are clearly not abuse
yeah but you are taking a whole conversation and not looking at my initial comment. you just don't get the jist of the whole and where it goes. you concentrate on the last thing said and take no context at all.
This is your initial comment and is explicitly what I'm talking about
So where is the effin straw man in that. The news item that references the study equates sexual, physical, and verbal abuse as equivalent and my comment is woa. They are so not!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There is no one saying these things aren't fine. They give examples of verbal/emotional abuse in the article and study and they are not this. You are creating a strawman argument no one is saying (grabbing your childs arm when about to touch something hot is fine; yelling at them and telling them to behave when they hit their sibling is fine) and using that as a reason to dismiss the conclusions of this study
My argument is about equivalency. When they make the statement they are equivalent they are saying they are equivalent. My argument is not about abuse vs not abuse. Its about equivalency. There is no level of sexual situations with a child that is not abuse. there is with verbal and physical. Again you just are throwing out context and trying to make it something its not.
So your beef is with this:
So you're concluding that verbal/emotional abuse in no case can be as damaging to a child's development as physical or sexual abuse?
Not as much as they can't be and should not be even put into the same class as actions. There is a level of vocality that is ok, there is a level of physicality that is ok, there is never a level of sexuality that is ok when talking adult to child interactions. I understand they are talking in the extreme in all cases but making these out to be the same, even if limiting to the extreme, is not ok.
This isn't about the moral weight of one type of abuse over another, it's only about the psychological impact of abuse on people who were abused as children. There is literally no one saying anything like "sexual abuse is the same as verbal abuse." That is the strawman argument you created
Is it really? Honestly I'd rather a child touch something hot and learn the lesson that it is unsafe than potentially learn the lesson the people charged with taking care of them are unsafe. I mean, I remember burning a finger on the stove when I was little. It sucked but I was and am fine. I was lightly verbally abused by my Dad exactly once (he apologized after), and it was much, much worse. I was verbally abused by teachers and peers, and it was much, much worse.
[edit: I retract the sentence "Honestly I'd rather a child touch something hot and learn the lesson that it is unsafe than potentially learn the lesson the people charged with taking care of them are unsafe." It was poorly thought through and poorly worded. To be clear, I do not condone intentionally allowing a child to touch a stove to teach them it is dangerous. I also do not think that the threat of a child touching a stove justifies physically and verbally abusing a child, as OP said.]
Letting your child touch something hot (like a stove) to teach them a lesson is in itself physical abuse...
This is a generation of soft pussies. Triggered little bitches who can't live in the real world.
Lol. Calm down snowflake. No reason to get offended. You have some big feelings about this but you don't have to be a wuss about it. You can sack up and face them.
How much you wanna bet their parents say the same type of “this generation” things to them?
Or that they get called a pussy by their dad?
Says the guy crying about a scientific study online.
Whose triggered here? It seems like you're the one getting emotional.
If you went through the same type of shit as me growing up, get help. It's much better not feeling angry 24/7.
Found the absolute loser. Guaranteed to be a present or future old single white guy bitching about how the divorce court judge screwed him.
Sounds like you need a hug
why does the real world have to be hard? because you say so and refuse to adapt to gentler standards??
If you're not able to control your emotions well enough to be kind you're the soft one.
So... like trump supporters who cant handle the fact they lost an election you mean?
Did the existence of soft pussies ... trigger you?