Stop Child Abuse

Being a psychology student this year, part of our syllabus was to learn Freud’s theory on personality development. According to Freud, our personality is built based on childhood experiences and parental influence.

A child when born, newly experiences everything. They are innocent and naive and perceive the world as a bright and happy place. Then, the child starts growing up. This is when parental influence plays an important role of building a child’s personality.

Child Abuse is word that can be used to describe different forms of abuse against a child. in my personal opinion, i feel that even giving up a child for adoption is a form of child abuse. If a person isn’t ready to have a child, don’t have sex. It’s as simple as that. Of course a person could argue that by adoption, many families who are unable to have children have a chance to have children. But this isn’t a good reason, it doesn’t excuse those who give up their child.

Child Abuse can be split into two forms, physical abuse and mental abuse.

Physical abuse would be abuse directed to a child through physical means. this includes hitting with things or with hands, kicking, sexual assault, rape, not providing the basic needs for a child such as food, shelter and education and other forms of causing physical harm to a child. physical abuse towards a child can be carried out by people other than the parents of the child themselves as well.

Mental abuse would be abuse through mental means. Ever felt put down by your parent? Your parent calling you stupid, or always scolding you for no reason at all? or they laugh at your achievements? etc. that is mental abuse. mental abuse can even include abuse by other people such as teachers, the community and relatives as well as friends. mental abuse for a child basically covers all the words spoken or facial expressions against the child that causes the child to feel hurt or discomfort.

i would love to see all forms of child abuse cease, physical and mental abuse. as well as a decrease in the rate of children given up for adoption. in school, secondary school expecially, we are taught a line in Bahasa Malaysia to start or end our essays. when translated to English, it’s “children are the future of our nation, we should protect them and provide them with all their basic needs to ensure a good future.” Then we would proceed with this sentence “everybody has to work together to make this future come true and become reality”.

Sadly, how many of us are actually aware of this social issue? how many of us are taking a stand against it? and how many of us are showing support for the actions carried out by Unicef in the hopes of stopping child abuse from happening.

Personally, i had a blessed childhood. not only was i provided with the basic needs, i have a loving family and other aspects that make me the person i am today. i would want all the children in the world to have the blessed childhood that i had. sadly, what i want doesn’t always come true, but we can help unicef in its effort right? so i encourage all the readers to sign up with unicef today! i can’t find the original link that i signed up with but you can go through here. http://malaysia.youthsays.com/joannay/unicef or http://uniteagainstabuse.my/joanna-yap

if i can do it, why can’t you?

xoxo

Joanna