Damages of Neglect, Part I
Child Abuse and Neglect – perhaps it goes without saying if you are being abused, your basic needs are likely being neglected. But little is said about the neglect part of abuse. It too, can have a profound and life-time affect on a child.
My own neglect affects me to this day. We went without food and clothing a lot. Being hungry is easy to hide, no clothes or shoes is not. I was taunted daily in the fifth grade by a girl that never wore an outfit more than once. She’d look me up and down and say, “arent you sick of those same two dresses? Why don’t you wear something else?”
My 3rd grade teacher ridiculed me in front of my class over not having lunch money every Monday without fail. If some teachers only knew the damage, they caused by doing such things.
As an adult, I’ve hoarded food, clothing, and shoes. At one point, I had over 200 pairs of shoes. When I became a parent, my son always had all the things he needed, and then some. One of my siblings went over her food budget on a regular basis—not having enough money to pay her bills. The other sister was obsessed with cleaning, and clothing from a thrift store. When she’d clean her closet out, she’d pass a big trash bag full of clothes to me. I didn’t need them, but i’d take them every time.
I’d like to share one of my own stories of neglect with you from my book (Wriiten in story-form) involving my 3rd grade teacher:
The sun had gone down and Ben and I were still wading in the creek lookin’ for crawdads so we could go fishin’ tomorrow morning. We had a big coffee can about one-third of the way filled with all different sizes of crawdads. I lifted a rock, and this really big, bluish-looking crawdad went swimming backwards as fast as he could to get away, but Ben was faster and grabbed him up. Neither of us had ever seen a crawdad like him. Ben figured he was probably really, really old and said, when they get this old, they turn to blue and boy, can they pinch a lot harder than the other ones. We were closely inspecting him when I heard Mom yelling for me. I answered her but she didn’t hear me. I said, “come on Ben I gotta’ get home.” Then, I heard my dad’s shrill whistle—and answered him back, whistling as loud as I could. He had taught all three of us how to whistle for times just like this one. I picked up my pace and told Ben to hurry-up before I got into trouble. My heart began racing as I began to run so I wouldn’t get into trouble—if I wasn’t already. We finally reached the house, and I told Ben I’d meet him early in the morning at the Deep Hole to go fishin’. He said, “I get the blue crawdad for bait!”
I went running into the back of the house. My Mom looked at me with disgust and said, “where in god’s name have you been? Didn’t you hear me hollerin’ at you? Get in there and get the mud off you—we’re goin’ to town.” I hurried and got a washcloth and wiped the mud off my legs and arms. I ran up the steps to change clothes and could smell Murphy’s Oil Soap and knew Darcie and Crystal must be cleaning.
I was really hungry and hoping Mom was going to Kroger’s. Darcie and Crystal were staying home to finish washing down their bedroom walls and bed springs. Mom yelled again, “Dottie, will you hurry the hell up!” I came flying back down the steps and ran out the door to get into the car. It was so hot in the car with the windows up and the heat off the vinyl seat stung my legs. I sat back as Mom and Dad got in the car. He said, “where are you gettin’ a check cashed?” “Super-X, I guess if they’ll cash it,” she said. Panic suddenly hit me, I was the only one with them and Mom never went in to cash a check—she always made one of us do it. Dad pulled into the front of Super-X as Mom handed me a check made out for $40.00. A sickening feeling rose up through me in a rush. I said, do I have to do this? Dad squawked at me, “get your ass in there now.”
Part II of Neglect will be posted for tomorrow’s blog.
