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Children and Verbal Abuse

Aug 17, 2009 Editorial

The long “August school vacation” is slowly drawing to a close: exam results are trickling in; parents are frantically scouring the stores for school uniforms and books and children are just as frantically trying to enjoy their last bit of “freedom” to the “max”.

After a long drawn-out campaign by a dedicated band of activists, the schools to which those children will be returning will hopefully be a little less fearsome now that the authorities have placed some control over the ritual daily dose of floggings that had long been the lot of the Guyanese schoolchild.

But we have no reason to become sanguine over the overall well-being of our children – there are still many deep-rooted obstacles in their way. The old school rhyme that declares, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me…” is not only misleading, but downright dangerous.

As a matter of fact, numerous studies have conclusively demonstrated that verbal abuse – of which name-calling” is a subset – is as damaging to an individual’s development, if not more than physical abuse – especially to children. It is the psychological deformations caused by the verbal abuse that lingers and inflict the most damage.

Verbal abuse can be described as frequent disparaging or critical comments that demean and diminish a person’s self-esteem – even if they may not consciously be so intended. Verbal abuse of children begins in our homes and continues unabated in our schools.

Even those parents who virtuously declare that they do not “beat” their children would concede that on too many occasions they end up berating them for one reason or the other. Frequently they may compare one child’s performance disparagingly in comparison with another or with some other child.

The school report or exam results provide easy opportunities for this abuse. Children learn to dread these occasions and there have been instances when some have even committed suicide.

Children quickly get into the act and become verbally abusive to their siblings. Most parents dismiss even cruel taunts hurled by some of their children at another as harmless symptoms of “normal” sibling rivalry.

The victims are advised to learn to go along with the ragging or they would be called “losers” or “wimps”; the perpetrators earn a pat on the head because they are adjudged to be “strong” or “witty”. Not so incidentally, this is how bullies are created.

Not so surprisingly, the taunting and other forms of verbal abuse continue into the schoolyard and classroom. The field is actually expanded, with ethnic, racial, religious and other differences providing rich fodder for the bullies.

Children, it has been observed, are most cruel to other children – but it all began in the home. Teachers are feared not only for their whips – their tongues create even deeper scars. No child has passed through school without experiencing some excruciatingly humiliating, and never forgotten, tongue-lashings from teachers.

The prevalent practice of “streaming” in our Primary Schools is in itself a form of verbal abuse since the children in the “B” and “C” classes are reminded every day by the classroom to which they are directed that they are “not quite good enough”.

Researchers have reported that children who are verbally abused may suffer lasting negative effects in their brain’s ability to process language. Brain scans of people who were verbally abused as children showed that they have 10% less grey matter in the part of their brains involved in language, compared with non-abused adults.

The reduction was in the region known as the right superior temporal gyrus, which contains a section responsible for auditory processing and is believed to help the brain understand the tone of speech. The scans also showed a significant reduction in a small part of the left superior temporal gyrus, which is thought to be involved in understanding the syntax of speech.

So as we prepare to send off our children, whom we profess to love, to be “schooled”, let us spare a thought to the lessons of verbal abuse we might have imparted to them right in our homes.

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