Emotional harm to children

No rosequartz these cases will not be dealt with by Family Courts but by criminal courts.

Yes Stansgran. I will never get over it. I look at my gorgeous granddaughters with their long (sometimes straggly) hair and wonder what possessed my dad and mum (although she didn't actually do the deed) to do what they did? I don't think of it as an intrusion at all (I did write about it on the forum afterall) just suprised you remember.

Gillybob are you thinking of when you had your hair cut? Perhaps that is an intrusion to comment but your remark has stayed with me. I had a hairdresser aunt who was allowed to "experiment" on my hair which angers me now .at the time I had no option so I really felt for you.

Extremely interesting subject. I agree with jingl when she says "I don't believe any child gets through childhood without experiencing at least a bit of unintentional emotional abuse from a parent................."

Personally I can remember at least 2 incidents that I would call abuse. One was emotional and one physical. Both incidents have haunted me throughout my life and even more so now that I am a grandma.

Will cases be dealt with in secret Family Courts?
In which case the media will be gagged and the public will know nothing about it.

Surely the decision to prosecute will rest on intent to harm; persistence; nature of methods used & impact on child. I think we can rely on the British public & media to shout loudly if a prosecution is deemed to cross the line to unfairness.

My younger grandson begs me to tell him some more swearwords.

What is wrong with telling a kid to stop effing and blinding? If she has been doing it, presumably she already knows the words. Perfectly good way to put it in my book.

Agree Nonnie, that some parents know no better. Others have had 'good enough' or even very good, loving and appropriate parenting, but a controlling relationship, descent into drug or alcohol abuse leads what they know in their hearts to go missing.
All the research to date confirms the importance of early years to a successful transition into adult hood. The savage cuts on Early Years Centres, Sure Start Centres is so depressing. Especially at a time when as a society we not only have the evidence, and the financial wherewithal. It's cost effective to support families with young children. I'd love to see more resources going in to parents struggling with "difficult" children, but they're being cut as well. Sorry folks for bringing politics into it, but for me, it's unavoidable.

Penstemmon presumably the parent knew no better surely it is up to society to help such children? No, I don't know how but I don't think such parents do either. We saw a parent telling a child to "stop effin and blindin" on Sunday and discussed it with a young friend who thought the parent was terribly and had no control but I suspect she didn't know any better. Unless society intervenes then this just carries on from one generation to another and the poor offspring will be the same.

MY DH has just come home from visiting a 14 yr old child who is supposed to be being educated at home. In fact he is just not going to school..which is very different. Mother does not appear to have the capacity to manage his day to day behaviour let alone his education. She 'took him out' of the third secondary school he has attended:moved away from one then excluded from another school and now removed by mum because he was 'being bullied'. He may have been. The mother went to the school and threatened the head with a knife. She herself appeared to be a very unhappy woman. The lad was pretty uncommunicative but did manage to say to DH that a typical day was up at about 10:30, watch TV, play xbox games until he went to bed at abut midnight. Sometimes he went shopping with his mum.

These kids exist all over the place.

Anniebach It could also happen for a child of a parent with a physical disability if the child's own emotional needs are not addressed.

My apologies night owl I had not picked that up. On a personal level I would be very happy to introduce emotional abuse as a criminal offence. In my previous career as a family worker for social services for children at risk and in need I saw many cases which frustrated me and my co workers of emotional abuse which were not dealt with by the courts as we would have wished.

Twiceasnice there is a difference as this is a proposal to introduce a criminal offence of emotional abuse. This does not currently exist.

It seems to me that the social workers on here understand emotional abuse very well and the fact of a law relating to it will give those who see it a better chance of dealing with it. It is one thing to have a care order because of emotional abuse but court proceedings add another dimension.

What about the child who is emotionally abused as a means of getting at the other parent in a separation? I know of a case of this. What about the parent who has a very decided preference for one child over another sibling? I know of 2 such cases. I know of a parent who blames a toddler for things which are way beyond her age to deal with. I would hope that when the new law comes in such abuse could be dealt with.

Most children seem to go to nursery these days so it is my hope that the nurseries will have the courage to note any odd behaviour in young children and draw it to the appropriate people's attention.

There is a category already for emotional abuse with the Childrens Act. The others are sexual abuse, physical abuse, and neglect. Emotional abuse has always been harder to prove as people can argue it,s more difficult to define as it can be seen as more subjective and has no obvious physical symptoms.

With any kind of abuse social services has to suggest the child has suffered significant harm because of what has happened to them and this has always been more difficult with emotional abuse.we should be trying harder with legislation we already have rather than pretending we are introducing something different.

Pennstemmon, if a parent with a mental illness can emotionally abuse their child by depending on them for company then parents with physical illnesses who depend on their child is also guilty of emotional abuse.

Yes, hard to legislate for Penstemmon, but not impossible. It isn't impossible to define, police or prove as apricot fears. The threshold for any care proceedings is that the child has suffered or is likely to suffer significant harm. That's the key 'significant' harm. That doesn't include ordinary parents losing their rags and shouting at children who announce 10 minutes before the family are due to leave the house, that it's cookery today and I need 4 lemons, 10 oz of sugar and some flour, oh yes, and some eggs…….

I have worked with some emotionally abused children. It is not to do with a parent occasionally losing their temper or sometimes putting adult needs over a child's. That's called being a good enough parent.

It is the child who, daily, does not receive any signs of approval from a parent: a smile, a hug, a conversation about their day etc. They are frequently ignored, intimidated/threatened,disparaged & undermined, punished for minor actions etc etc.The responses from their carer is inconsistent and unpredictable. Children live in a continuous atmosphere of threat of violence. They may be clean, very well behaved and reasonably well nourished. Like any form of abuse it crosses all social strata.

It is not so hard to spot if you work a lot with children but getting sufficient evidence will be hard because of the intimidating nature of emotional abuse.

There is also the 'over protective' emotional abuse, less pernicious but can also be damaging: the parents who over protect their child, sap its confidence, keep the child over dependent on the parent to feed the parent's need to be needed an in control.

And of course the 'vicarious' parent who pushes their child to be the best at something the parent always wanted to be good at. The child feels a huge responsibility to please the parent and despite their own preferred wishes succumbs to parental demands.

The parent who has a mental illness and over relies on their child to keep them company, to become a mini adult and take responsibility for things the parent ought to do so the child feels trapped and their own needs are not addressed.

So many ways children can be emotionally damaged.. all unhealthy and all hard to legislate for.

Yes, that's the sort of sustained, systematic emotional abuse I meant, nightowl. Probably more common than we know, but kept quiet by everyone involved, of course (or more likely, many blind eyes are turned).

They already have to decide where to try to draw the line, in care proceedings. And believe me, emotional abuse is far more than shouting, failing to pay enough attention to your child, etc. It's about systematically bullying, verbally abusing, playing mind games, excluding one child in the family, scapegoating, making a child fear you by never letting them know exactly how you will react to them and by abusing your power as an adult. It's making a child shake in your presence and soil their knickers without ever raising your hand. I saw all of this in the one case I spoke about above. And as I said, I doubt very much that we would have enough evidence to take that case to court even today. So I don't think we have any need to worry that there will be lots of prosecutions or that ordinary parents have anything to fear.

I don't believe that any child gets through childhood without experiencing at least a bit of unintentional emotional abuse from a parent, no matter how well-intentioned, and perhaps even excellent most of the time, the parents are. Parents are human.

I'm not sure where they think they will be able to draw a line with this.

Impossible to define or police or prove, it's just nonsense.
Following on from schools and childcare, parents will have to keep records of every interaction. How many smiles and hugs each day? On a scale of 1 to 10, how irritating did you find each child each hour? Did 2 hours sleep every night make your jaw tighten/make you cry/make you swear? If you confess on Mumsnet that you were ashamed of your screaming biting toddler, he will be promptly taken into care.
I could go on, this is quite fun and as likely as become law as the daft proposal.

That's true Ana but it is a step in the right direction. When I started as a social worker we had no mechanism for acknowledging emotional harm. We often didn't acknowledge the fact that sexual abuse happened then either, but we have made a lot of progress there. Unfortunately, children will always find it difficult to tell adults that they are being harmed, bruises will always be easier to recognise, but the challenge for all adults is to be vigilant for other harm and to take what action they can.

Section b of the Welfare Checklist set out by the Children Act identifies the physical and emotional needs of the children. One of the cases I was involved with was issued on the grounds of physical neglect. By the time it was concluding, the Judge said that it was the worst case of emotional neglect/abuse he had seen in 30 years. That was 15 years ago, so awareness of the emotional needs of children is already enshrined in public law.
I've only come across the 'risk of emotional harm' to the children set out in an application for care proceedings when I have been involved in private law disputes, and it's been clear the children were suffering / at risk of suffering emotional harm as a direct result of the parents behaviour in their dispute about where the children should live, who they should see etc. I rarely saw emotional abuse happening in isolation from exposure to domestic, drug, alcohol abuse.
My own belief is that it's appropriate to have a criminal threshold for emotional abuse.