It affects a child’s psyche on deeper levels when they continue to feel neglected by their parents on emotional and physical level. Neglect functions in a very subtle manner that the child’s neglect continues to drown deep into their psyche making them feeling so lost and at the same time so choked. The downside of neglect children often suffers through is barely recognizable, especially emotional neglect. Children often fail to even realize and look through the binaries of being neglected. They only tend to internalize the pain and loneliness and continue to blame themselves for the same.
I remember being mocked as an extremely sensitive and irritable child. There are many children who are often mocked for being too much. Sometimes they are being labelled as ‘too sensitive’ by the world around them or often being reprimanded as too selfish by their own parents if they try make their needs met in some way or other. It is not just important to protect the ‘empathetic’ and ‘sensitive’ instincts in children, but the same can only be inculcated in children if parents understand and know the worth and meaning of these words first. It’s not practically possible for children to understand the meaning of these important soft skills and traits unless their parents practise and know the depth of these words. Parents are required to be more empathetically inclined towards their kids. But parents with the apparent dearth of the same trait fails to realize the pain they unknowingly subject their children to and many of them are too thoughtless to even care about it.
For them, taking care of their routine needs, providing them a shelter, food, education, playmates and toys is all that is required to harness their growth and development. But, the underlying depth of their emotional cravings are always neglected. The traumatic experiences at home and even in their surroundings, the abuse either at the hands of their grandparents or any other member can have an adverse impact on child’s psychological development.
The brain of a young child is really sensitive and malleable. What you feed into it, it becomes like that only.
Studies and clinical experience also show that the adult clients who were neglected, most of them were found diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder and significant trauma to resolve. Inadequacy of emotional attachment a child is bound to suffer in childhood tends to affect the relationships at the later point of life. Fear is often expressed and felt without always understanding why.
In today’s times, modern parents are pretty much besotted with their own personal space, professional circle has enhanced and me zone, they produce kids but their own lifestyle tends to get affected or altered. In order to invest time for their inevitable pursuits, they let their kids suffer. Kids often face the loneliness and become too accustomed with it, that seclusion and solitude become their eternal solace.
Young children naturally have a vivacious and carefree spirit around them. It is important for the parents to let their children explore their new dimension, breath freely and explore their interests and the marvels this world beholds. But in order to give their own space, parents need to ensure that they are not abandoning their children. If the children remain neglected, unattended, their same inquisitive and ingenuous spirit can be squashed and damaged.
Many a time, parents snub their kids for wanting their time, affection and more importantly their attention. The child will eventually stop trying, and the loneliness will lead the child in the pit of shame, humiliation and extreme loneliness and such children tend to become too much untrustworthy of their surroundings.
Parents must learn to respect their babies and kids. They are not puppies and their psychological and emotional needs should be given equal importance as their basic, quintessential needs. Try to befriend your kids. They crave for your presence, for your affection and more than that your attention. Don’t keep them deprived of it. Don’t let your child be grown into an emotionally vacant adult with severe depression and anxiety.