Contending with the trauma of child abuse (Part 2)
Correspondent | Friday November 27, 2020 14:37
What do the following men have in common? Persian Ustad-Ahmad Lahori, the chief architect of the Taj Mahal mausoleum in India; Danish Jørn Utzon, the architect of Sydney Opera House in Australia; Japanese Satoshi Kashima, the engineer who designed the approximately two-kilometre long Akashi Kaikyō, the world’s longest suspension bridge found in Kobe, Japan and South African Christiaan Barnard, the cardiac surgeon who performed the world’s first successful human heart transplant.
All of them were once children. Their guardians did not abdicate their responsibility. They took good care of them. Protected them. Guided them. Encouraged them to reach for the stars. And they did! In their own different ways. Lesson? For as long as we do the same for our children, they too will rise and conquer the world. In their own way of course. Amongst other things, we need to protect our children from child abuse otherwise we will run the risk of exposing them to a traumatic lifespan fraught with negative self-image and compromised self-respect. A case in point is Gaone*, the 42-year-old woman who is struggling with releasing the painful pent up emotions that she has always suppressed from childhood. She often walks around with a flicker of a fake smile on her face, a thin fragile grin that barely masks the cumulative effect of years of physical pain, mental wretchedness, dejection, depression and extreme emotional agony.
Child abuse is a worldwide scourge. Surely we can turn the tide on this epidemic. A plague that continues to crush the spirit of innocent people. The perpetrators are not always strangers. Nor are they notorious outcasts or deranged social misfits. You can’t easily tell from their physical appearance that they are abusers.
Some of these perverts are close relatives, family friends, biological parents and stepparents to the abused children. People whose appetite for voyeurism has reached predatory levels.
To varying degrees, paedophilia has gripped the entire globe and online child pornography is on the rise. While this article assumes that it is the girl-child that gets abused, however, the principles captured herein apply with equal force and effect to an abused boy-child.
We all have a part to play in breaking the cycle of abuse and ensuring that children do not go through what professionals call Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE). And that is important because contrary to popular opinion, children do not forget these traumatic experiences.
Owing to their chronic nature, they do not always heal with time. Even the most confident victim of child abuse will frequently contend with ugly and depressing flashbacks, a phenomenon associated with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
I want to run through a few factors that can help us prevent this from ever happening to our loved ones and students. These factors go beyond simply walking for this noble cause or the cosmetic posting of carefully selected pictures on social media platforms followed by the words, “I say no to child abuse.”
These short-term campaigns have their place, and might be good, but perhaps not good enough. They should only serve as precursors to activities of more enduring value. A results-focused deeper dive into what can be done is in order.
One: Be a committed teacher and purposefully connect with your pupils. Proactively look out for signs of abuse and neglect. Stop abuse or take positive action to prevent it. Put your mind and heart to what you do. Always call to mind that you teach live beings, not inanimate objects. Show concern when your pupils frequently succumb to truancy or when there are signs of physical injuries or bruises.
Be amongst the first to notice signs of hyper vigilance, compromised social skills and regression in the children’s emotional and psychological development. Endeavour to identify sources of problems encountered by your pupils. It would take an observant teacher to spot hidden emotional scars that might be tearing the children apart.
Don’t shy away from engaging a child who behaves in an abnormal way. Kindly ask her/him direct questions.
How is life at home? Are you exposed to violence, physical or sexual abuse? Do your parents threaten you? Do they call you demeaning names? Do they insult you? Have you seen them drunk? Have you ever been molested or has that ever happened to anyone close to you? This is not prying. Believe you me, it is caring.
Open your ears wide and allow your auditory hair cells to absorb all responses with keen interest and empathy. You may receive answers that would reveal that two or three children have been groaning and screaming inwardly for attention.
If abuse is confirmed, acknowledge it and report it to the police or to any of the state-ran or reputable state-sanctioned non-governmental child protection service providers. Follow through until a qualified therapist is deployed to help.
Don’t wait for some administrators or policy makers to produce a document that forces you to play your part. Its absence could numb your desire to be proactive in helping children in need. Though children might be anergic to crying out for help, they will appreciate if you take the initiative to reach out to them.
Two: Be a committed parent. Take your parental role seriously. Unless incapacitated and unable to speak, this is a critical aspect of your parental profile that you should never shirk or outsource. Remember, to your child, you will always be elevated to the level of a role model until you make a bungle of your privileged position.
Set an inspiring example worthy of emulation. It would be unloving to neglect your child and abandon her to careen through different stages of life without guidance. The world is a complicated maze and if you do not hold your child’s hand, she would have no choice but to navigate through its labyrinth blindly with a very low chance of success.
Let your home be a haven of safety for your child. Create a warm, joyful and convivial atmosphere at home. A welcoming place where she feels loved and wanted. Where she knows she is at liberty to express her views and feelings. Ensure the home environment is stable and conducive for your child to spread her wings and soar.
Don’t help abusers to clip those fledgling wings. Behave in a way that would earn you her trust. Be a good friend. A cistern overflowing with kindness, comfort and compassion. Laugh with your child. Weep with her/him. Buy out time to engage her/him. Failure to do so might contribute to the searing of your child’s conscience.
Unfortunately, this could result in social and emotional shutdown. S/he may want to isolate her- or himself from her/his peers and even family members. Under extreme distress, suicidal thoughts may invade their brain.
Identify gaps in your parenting skills and take positive action to plug them. If you perform your role satisfactorily, you will contribute to the calming of children exposed to beastly and ruthless abusers. If necessary, seek professional help for your child. Resist the tendency to be indecisive.
Do not allow prioritisation of work, attention to other children or the pressure to keep up with your network of friends blur your vision and force you to condone something that you know is profoundly heinous and diabolic.
When your child behaves in an abnormal way, don’t be in a haste to blame it on juvenile folly. Avoid talking to your child. Talk with her/him in a mild manner. Don’t skirt around issues. Develop the skill of drawing your child out. Parental intuition is an incredibly powerful and unignorable force.
Trust your gut feeling. Ask your child direct questions and if need be, coax her/him to respond. Refrain from extracting the truth by force or through threats. Do not behave like an impersonal novice sleuth keen to prove that he is worth his salt in his debut quickfire interrogation.
A more accommodating genteel and persuasive spirit works much better. Talk to your child in a way that would dispel fear from her/his mind. Let her/him effortlessly pick your love, compassion and empathy.
You may be surprised at how much your child would open up to you without being coerced.
Proactively look out for signs of abuse. Has your child’s eating pattern changed from a moderate appetite to anorexic or ravenous levels? Does s/he appear to be stressed for no reason? Is s/he inclined to isolate herself in an abnormal manner? Does s/he walk with difficulty? Does s/he tend to space out? Has s/he developed an inexplicable fear for being left with a particular person or for being too quiet in the presence of someone? Is s/he exhibiting signs of waning self-confidence and self-esteem? Your child might be throwing subtle hints of abuse at you. Please take note of them.
While helping your child, take stock of your attitude. Resist the pressure to be judgemental. Don’t tread the easy route of telling your child off. With laser beam precision, aim your missiles at the problem and attack it, not the child.
Attempt to understand what s/he is going through. Cultivate patience, resilience and staying power. Glow with optimism. If you get overwhelmed, which often happens to the best of us, seek professional help.
You may also find it helpful to engage parents who have faced similar situations in the past. The nuggets of wisdom you glean from them might help you in addressing your challenge.
Three: Raise your child’s awareness to abuse. This is largely a preventative measure. Ensure that your child knows that s/he could be abused by people closest to her/him. That love and fear should not silence her/him.
Sensitise them to the need for them to open their eyes to abuse and decisively confront it. Encourage them to tell on their abusers. Assure them that they do not have to be ashamed about it.
That what others force them to do is not a reflection of wrongdoing on their part. Alert them to the manipulative nature of abusers and the sly tactics and threats they often use to numb their victims’ desire to seek help.
Drum into her/his head that whenever s/he is uncomfortable about what s/he is asked to do, s/he must have the courage to say ‘No’ or to tell potential perpetrators of abuse that, “I’d rather seek guidance from my parents.”
Tell her/him about parts of her/his body that can only be seen and touched by her/him. Make sure s/he understands that those parts are out of bounds for everyone else, including her/his closest kin and kith. Encourage them to resist unsolicited gifts particularly when offered by suspicious characters and strangers.
Four: Share your stories. Connect with victims and other concerned parties. Share your knowledge liberally. Learn from others. Leverage on your experience and effectively use it to positively transform lives of affected persons.
In 1985, Dr Vincent Felitti, a faculty member at the Alberta Family Wellness Initiative and a clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, came up with a pyramid trajectory that summed up horrifying experiences suffered by abused persons from day one of abuse to their death. Together with researchers from Centres for Disease Control and Prevention they embarked on a 25-year study of 17,000 adults.
Their objective was to measure the impact of child abuse on adult health, well-being and lifespan. Amongst other things, the study concluded that frequent acts of exposure to childhood trauma resulted in health concerns and that children affected by ACEs suffered, “behavioural, learning, social, criminal and chronic health problems”.
A pyramid of the traumatic effects of child abuse was developed. At its base were ACEs, at its centre socio-emotional impairment as well as health-risk behaviours and at its apex disease and early death.
The traumatic effects of abuse transcend victims’ childhood stage. The emotional and psychological scars can haunt them for life and even shorten their lifespan.
In a bid to fight the scourge of child abuse and its associated PSTD, all critical players, be they victims, parents, teachers and child protection service providers have to find a meaningful way of pulling childhood trauma casualties off the pyramid trajectory at the earliest time possible.
The road to healing will always be fraught with challenges. As long as humans are imperfect, we will never develop a perfect system for crushing child abuse. On this issue, as is indeed true with many others, obsession with perfection will always be anti-progressive. An 18th century French philosopher named François-Marie Arouet, widely known by his nom de plume; Voltaire, famous for the statement he penned in 1768, Si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer,” meaning, “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him,” came up with this pithy aphorism, “Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien” which translates to, “The perfect is the enemy of the good!”
Let’s not wait for the perfect time to stem the tide of child abuse because if we do, we will still be waiting tomorrow and the day after. Nothing is as compellingly cogent as appreciation of the fact that now is the opportune time to take action.
Victims feel trapped in a dark tunnel of gloom. May compassion impel us to shine a torch that would flood their dysphoric space with bright rays of hope. Yes, may we do our part in decisively snatching them out of the danger zone.
Let’s all say no to child abuse and save fellow human beings from the clutches of a lifespan fraught with trauma. We cannot afford to be complicit by our apathetic acts of omission or irresponsible acts of commission. This is a legitimate call to action. May we take time to reflect on the Gaones of this world, and do our little part in dousing the flames of emotional trauma that they are forced to endure day by day.
KEVIN MOKENTO*
*Mokento is the pseudonym of Mmegi contributor who has requested anonymity for professional reasons.
*Gaone is not her real name.