A Child Is Not For Abuse.

It’s high time we ask ourselves this question, “Are we really that inhuman?” Remember when you saw that little boy wash cups and dishes with a pale face in some roadside Dhaba (a small cafe, usually roadside in India is called a Dhaba.) and you felt terrible about it? Remember you wanted to do something about it but all you could do is the place early with a heavy heart. Yes, that’s how child abuse managed to find its way and kept moving in that as there were very little or no one to raise a voice against it or take a step against it by calling a helpline number. A child cried in darkness every single time and the society just continued its process of creating another antisocial. Shocked? Ashamed of yourself? Feeling guilty? Wondering? Yes, that's how deep the consequences are. And yes, today we are gonna talk about Child abuse, but one of its kind which is even more disappointing for us humans.

The one we will be talking about, today is not that far away from us. We don’t need to travel as far as a remote roadside cafe or somewhere. It takes place in our very own drawing rooms and kitchens. Its special of its kind and parents love to call it a kind of affection! You heard me correct – “Affection”. Wondering how can abuse be termed as affection? Well, let's bring a small story over here. It happened just a few days back while I was traveling on a train.

It was near about 40 degrees outside and the train was mildly crowded. I board the train from a suburban railway station in West Bengal and with me boarded a couple with a child as well. They were a middle-aged couple and the child was around five years of age as it appeared to me. The girl started crying from the very next instance we boarded the train and the couple tried to calm her down for some time with little or no positive outcome. In the meantime let me describe the atmosphere within the train’s coach. It was so heated up that even an adult with best of endurance will think when to get down. Although it was not that crowded, yet it is enough to make a child as young as five to make her feel claustrophobic. But why would the parent think that much, they themselves were feeling hectic about the journey and so the very shortcut to make her stop crying is to give her a tight slap? Probably that’s what was playing in the mind of the hyper-irritated father.

Watching him do that in that situation, thinking it as the right solution, made me remember another incident where a relative of mine would often beat her daughter and verbally abuse her as well, for similar reasons. And if someone would ask her the reason for such a terrible step, she would give a very flamboyant reply, “নাহলে মানুশ হবেনা” which in English can be translated as – Otherwise, she won’t learn things and grow up to be a proper human being. And I would always wonder how can anything as inappropriate as a Child Abuse help a child grow up appropriately? And it felt the same thing this time as well while I watched the baby girl get more and more hyper-excited with deep breathing and tears all over. Her cheeks had become red already with slaps of her father and there was not even the minimum sign of parental affection in the eyes of her father that moment. The very next station they boarded off the train and my journey continued. I could see her father slap her one more time while the train left the station.

All throughout the way I couldn’t stop thinking about it and kept wondering what kind of affection can it be? Parents are always considered as the epitome of affection yet we often come across such situations where it appears contradictory. How could a slap at the little girls face in that terrible atmosphere have helped her calm down when everything else couldn’t? That heavy breathing, that hyper-excitement in that excess heat could have caused a medical situation for a kid as old as five years. Yet it would be termed as a parental affection! What can be the justification? Isn’t it just the anger at that moment that needed a vent to express? Isn’t it that the father who was unable to calm the child and that feeling of irritation needed something or someone on whom he could vent out all his anger so as to calm himself down? Can it be the justification? It might not result in an antisocial but is it not equally brutal as the one taking place in a roadside Dhaba?

Here are some facts –

1. Approximately 5 children die every day because of child abuse.
2. Children who experience child abuse and neglect are 59% more likely to be arrested as a juvenile, 28% more likely to be arrested as an adult, and 30% more likely to commit violent crime.
3. 90% of child abuse victims know the perpetrator in some way. 68% are abused by a family member.
4. About 80% of 21-year-old who were abused as children met criteria for at least one psychological disorder.

Other effects being –

1. Lack of trust and relationship difficulties.
2. Core feelings of being “worthless.”
3. Trouble regulating emotions.

 

Be a parent when you are prepared to be one and it’s not a burden for you. Be a responsible parent and help that little mind grow up the best possible way, the most appropriate way. Say no to Child Abuse (period).