Child Abuse
My eyes fly open in a panic as I hear footsteps coming down the hallway. I jump out of bed and brace myself for what’s to come. My mother bursts through the door without knocking. She never knocks. My arms instinctively fly up to protect my face. But she doesn’t hit me; I can tell she has other things in mind. And in my house, recognition is key.
As you can tell from above, the child telling the story is used to abuse. No child should have to be used to abuse because it shouldn’t happen in the first place. It’s one thing to be mad at your kid, but violence is never the answer. Relationships are important, especially the relationship between kids and their parents. Having a bad relationship like this really has an effect on how the kid feels about themself. They might think it’s their fault, and they start to wonder what they did to deserve this. But, that’s just it, they don’t deserve it. No matter what that child did, they don’t deserve to be abused.
Abuse doesn’t always have to be physical. It can be emotional too. But they both have similar affects on the victim. The cruelty of the abuser varies for every situation. But no matter how harsh the abuse is, it is still wrong in every way possible. This book is actually written by the child that went through this abuse and you can feel his sadness towards his mother just by reading the words. He was more emotionally hurt than physically. Can you imagine no longer being considered a son, but a slave? No longer being a boy, but an it?
This child’s dreams are what helped him survive. Every day he would tell himself that someday he would find a family that would took care of him, love him and most importantly, consider him a son. You may wonder, was it always like this for him? Well, it wasn’t. When he was younger he used to go on vacations with his family and they loved him. But then his mom became an alcoholic. Becoming an alcoholic caused her to become mentally unstable. Which then caused her to turn to what she thought was a good idea, abusing her son Dave. Innocent Dave was left wondering what he did to make his mother hate him so much. The sad part about stories like this is he did nothing.
The reality of how many children are abused is disappointing because it represents what our society is like. According to www.dreamcatchersforabusedchildren.org every 13 seconds a child is abused. This number has gone up 84% since 1990. 48% of these children are boys just like the boy in this story. Not all kids come out of abuse like he did though. He was lucky enough to have the opportunity to tell his story and now we have the opportunity to spread it and raise awareness. Think about it, if you had the chance to change a child’s fate, would you?
