The Way I See It Is Child Abuse

Besides twenty years as a paramedic, and about as long as a foster parent, I adopted my son because he was being abused (actually abused, as opposed to being called a name), and the disorder my nephew suffered is caused by childhood trauma, generally abuse and neglect, and I am well familiar with the subject. I actually did something about it, however. In the first case, I hired an attorney, filed for custody, became a foster parent, and then adopted him. In the second, we raised him from his twelfth birthday. In both cases, they came out quite well, this despite the fact that I wasn't afraid to speak, for fear that I might insult them.

 

That depends on how it's intended and how it's received. I grew up with four brothers and no sisters, so we insulted one another every day. We still do. That's not abuse. My dad had a good sense of humor, and he would insult us, as well. There was no abuse intended, and none was received. However, someone overhearing a conversation, misinterpreting it, and falsely assuming that it was a regular thing and intended to be taken seriously, might wrongly consider it to be abusive, and that's why teachers and others can do as much harm as good when their perception is based on an overheard remark or on something told them by a student, who may be lying.

 

Let me give you a few examples. My nephew suffered from reactive attachment disorder, which generally stems from early childhood abuse or neglect, or what the non-verbal infant might perceive as abuse or neglect. Children with this disorder have not learned to attach to anyone, and are prone to distrusting or hating their parents, or anyone who is parenting them. In many cases, their emotions are underdeveloped, as well as their understanding of cause and effect. Typically, they have a public face and a private face. With their parents, or whoever is parenting them, they tend to be angry whenever they don't get their way. Although most don't go so far, these are the kids who kill their parents in their sleep.

In public, they can be quite charming but they lie constantly, and they do so particularly when doing so has the potential of getting their parents - or whoever is parenting them - in trouble. Teachers are willing victims of their lies because teachers tend to believe whatever the child tells them, particularly if the child seems charming. Because they are teachers, they are, like you, self-assured in their status as the professional who was trained to judge everyone else.

When we took our nephew in, he was indeed highly intelligent, and he seemed quite charming. That's called the honeymoon period. We enrolled him in school in the fall and sent him to school with money for the cafeteria lunch. One month in, we were called to see the school counselor. She told us that our nephew needs to have lunch every day at school, and if we couldn't afford to pay for his lunch, there were programs that he could be enrolled in. She advised us that his teachers had been paying for his lunch every day. When we tried to assure her that we were sending him with money to pay for his lunch, her response was, "Oh, I don't see any reason why he would lie to us about that." She didn't doubt that we would lie to her about that, however, and not only had she already formed her opinion before she even talked to us, but she was unwilling to change it after speaking to us. Since teaching him that actions had consequences was a big part of our job, my wife actually went to school and sat with him during lunch, and the "professionals" in the school probably considered that to be abusive too.

Since we both worked from home, I generally drove him to school in the morning because he didn't want to take the bus. It was only a few blocks so we'd let him walk home if he wanted to. This isn't Chicago, and people don't gun children down in the streets here, so about half of the kids in the school walked to and from school. One morning, he asked if he could walk to school. I told him he could. Again, we get a call from the school after his teacher was appalled that we had made him walk to school in the winter with no coat, no hat, and no gloves. Of course, he had all of these things when he left the house, but had ditched them along the way, knowing that these trained professionals known as teachers would believe whatever he told them. After all, they are trained to recognize abuse when they saw it. His teacher actually told me that he can tell when a boy is lying to him.

I could go on, but I won't. The point is that these teachers believed themselves to be the professionals, and they were self-assured that they, and only they, had the child's best interests in mind. They didn't have a clue as to what they were dealing with and, so sure were they that they knew everything they needed to know about everything, that they refused to even be educated as to what reactive attachment disorder was. I wasn't just a hapless uncle trying to figure things out. I didn't just blunder into it. Our nephew was seen by one of the foremost experts on the subject, who happened to live here in Maine. He was seeing a therapist, and I had attended training sessions and conferences on the subject, as well as reading every book available on reactive attachment disorder. The teachers and the school counselor didn't need to know anything about it because they didn't need to know real stuff - they were human lie detectors, infallible in every way. In their own minds, anyhow.

Except for his senior year, we homeschooled him for the rest of the time that he was with us. By then, he had learned a lot and was well on his way to recovery. Therapeutic parenting is difficult enough without teachers enabling his disorder. He is now married, with a child of his own, and, from all I can determine, he is a pretty responsible guy. That took a lot of work, on his part and ours. The public schools just got in the way.

By the way, my brother and sister-in-law were teachers, and I was a teacher, although I taught adults. I don't hate teachers. I just don't have an inflated opinion of their capabilities.

 

I am not arguing over the merits of your opening post. That woman may have indeed have been abusive. I can't tell from what you have said because there's may well be a backstory to it. My comments were to your blanket statements that all forms of abuse are equal and that teachers are trained to recognize abuse. Teachers are trained to know when to make accusations. When they are right, a child may be saved. When they are wrong, the whole family can be lost, and the teachers aren't there for the consequences and aren't interested in picking up the pieces.

 

While raising my son, common phrases from me to him included...

• "Don't be such an idiot."
• "What are you? A moron?"
• "You're such a loser," that said generally after beating him in a game.
• "I bought and paid for a worthless kid. Where is he?"

I just talked to him on the phone a few days ago. Remarkedly, he survived the abuse. I was more careful about what I said to my nephew because he did make me angry, sometimes, and it wasn't so easy to know how he would take something. As a parent, I knew my kids. Teachers don't.

Of course, I wouldn't call him such names when I was angry because, for one thing, I wasn't angry very often, but also because they might be taken seriously when said in anger. Yes, I was abusive as a teacher too. I would assure each class that there was no such thing as a stupid question, there were only stupid people who asked them.

 

That is a blanket statement.