For Parents

It's not easy to be a parent. Sometimes it even feels overwhelming & all you feel like doing is running away, or hiding under the bed & never coming out.
There are days that you are more than frustrated & you have this little one, who usually is such an angel, trying your patience like no other day in your life.
You feel so frustrated & stressed & in today's daily routine you probably have every reason to be. There are bills to pay, a job to go to, a home to take care of & most importantly & most demanding you have a child or children that have no one else but you to take care of their every need. And sometimes all that frustration can get the better of you, but those are the days that we need to be more alert & more careful.
Because there is a terrible fact about frustration, it can lead to abuse!
So we need to know how to control it in order to never bring harm to our children because we are frustrated or stressed.
I think this is probably one of the most taboo subjects when talking about child abuse. And it’s funny that it should be, but even sexual abuse isn't quite looked on as critically as this when talking to people about it, especially parents.
Because when we talk about abuse, we picture in our heads these terribly sick men or women like Fish, Dodd, and Yates etc... & think that those are who the abusers are, there is no way that the sweet mother next door, or the new family from across the street, much less themselves could in any way be in a situation where they would abuse their children.
Abuse can come in lots of different forms & we as parents need to identify them in order to not fall into any of these forms of abuse.

Physical abuse: Physical abuse is when you cause bodily harm to you child & especially when you do so out of anger or rage that comes from frustration or stress or depression.
Even if you love your kids, you can fall into this form of abuse when we don't have control over our frustration we can do a lot of harm to the people we claim to love the most.
I believe that one of the best ways to show your children that you love them is to love yourself & help yourself.
As a parent have a very big responsibility & if you are not well, if you’re over stressed for whatever reason, then your ability as a fair caretaker may not be what you thought it was, and you may find yourself reacting in ways that you thought you never would.
So for the love of God PLEASE get help when feel yourself getting too frustrated with your children or when you find yourself doing things that you know you shouldn't and in any way resemble abuse!

Emotional & Psychological Abuse: Emotional abuse is when you deny your child emotional support. Sometimes in the rush of the day we forget how important a hug is, but to our kids & especially when they are infants, hugging, cuddling & holding are just as important as eating & sleeping.
Showing your kids how much you care for them is an essential thing.
Sometimes we take for granted how much a child needs care & love from their parents but a child notices things that you as a busy adult don't even think about.
Like when the last time was you said something nice to them, or if you kissed them goodnight, said good morning, hugged them, gave them a tap on the shoulder, or showed them a gesture of affection.
But more than noticing what you don't do though they notice what you do. Yelling, threatening, screaming, bullying are some of the ways that we can emotionally and psychologically abuse our kids as well, we need to watch out to not do it.
Yelling can be something that is very easily done & sometimes it might seem impossible to stop doing, especially if you have come from a family where you were yelled at a lot. You almost feel that its a part of your subconscious.
But it can be stopped, not one day to the next of course, but slowly day by day & moment by moment.
Lets say you are having a stressful day & your toddler just wet his pants, or worse pooed his pants & you were about go out the door, you are running late & the taxi is waiting outside.
The most natural reaction may be to yell your head off, maybe even scream a little, but counting to 10 or 20 or 100 can help reduce the stress a lot.
Believe me I know from experience!
Another form of emotional abuse can be letting your children see arguments in the home. A child has this inborn feeling of guilt whenever his/her parent or people that they care about argue or fight and they feel they are to blame for the disagreements between them.
So it’s important to keep stressful situation like arguments away from the kids.
There are even times when we may blame our kids for things that we feel stressed about & that is big mistake! Our kids are learning about life & they are not to blame for problems in the home. They are learning & they make mistakes, if we make mistakes so will they & in their case it’s a thousand times more understandable.
So don't ever place the blame on your children. Because they carry it around with them & they might take it with them all the way to adulthood & that is very dangerous.
There are types of extreme forms of emotional and psychological abuse that sometimes parents do without noticing how bad they are & how horrible they can feel for the child, for example, humiliating them, name-calling, negatively comparing to others. Telling the child he or she is "worthless," "bad," or "a mistake."
When we compare our children with other people’s children or with their siblings & sometimes even with ourselves when we were kids, can be very detrimental.
When you do this you teach your kids that they are not good enough how they are & that they should be like someone else. You directly attack their identity & when they are desperately trying to find one during their teenage years, they may have even grater difficulty because of those comparisons.
We as adults & parents need to have a healthy way to look at ourselves & others in order to pass that on to our children.
We as grow ups need to love ourselves & have a high self esteem in order to pass that on to our kids & not destroy theirs.
So we must remember that there are different things that constitute as emotional and psychological abuse & I believe somethings most of us have done without knowing how bad it is.
It's only human to make these mistakes but we need to try to do them as least as possible, doing our best to reduce the times we do these things can help us eventually not do them at all.

Neglect: I believe neglect is one of the saddest forms of abuse because children that suffer from this kind of abuse feel very alone and suffer from sickness & hunger & if they are young, they can die because their basic needs were not met. Neglect can vary from being a latch-key-kid to being a child that sleeps on a park bench.
"Neglect is a very common type of child abuse. According to Child Welfare Information Gateway, more children suffer from neglect than from physical and sexual abuse combined. Yet victims are not often identified, primarily because neglect is a type of child abuse that is an act of omission — of not doing something."(Help guide.com)
As parents our most important mission in life is to lovingly care & provide for our children, no matter what kind of difficulty we may be encountering or how bad we may feel, how poor we may be or what circumstances we may be in. If we were old enough to have a child then we are old enough to work hard to take good care of him/her.
One thing that is important to know about neglect is that although one act of neglect may not constitute as abuse, repeated acts of neglect most definitely are .
So we need to realize that the habits that we form as parents are extremely important, we need to form good habits because one habit that is a neglectful habit can turn us into a child abuser.

The best way to prevent child abuse is to educate ourselves on the subject & make a conscious change.
Learn how to control our emotions to better the life of our kids.