Child Abuse Day: Protecting Children Is Everyone’s Responsibility

Child abuse is a reality we should all fight against, as it exists at many different levels and can have harmful consequences on children’s health.

April 25 is the day against child abuse.

It is an opportunity to reflect and become aware of a problem that we can all improve. To offer help and comfort to children who need it.

We speak of child abuse when it comes to physical and emotional abuse of a minor, or abandonment.

According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO), a quarter of adults worldwide report having suffered from abuse as a child.

The magnitude of the problem is immense. Indeed, we also have to face the implicit but assumed violence of many countries where, for example, many little girls are forced to marry, which completely ruins their childhood and even their life.

Likewise, realities as difficult as excision, abandonment or even the harassment that many children and adolescents experience are clear examples of child abuse.

Child abuse day: the seriousness of an unresolved problem

Child abuse is a sensitive topic. He fills us with anger that we don’t always know how to approach.

Every day we see news on television or on social media that we cannot conceive of. That make us furious.

For example, children armed to go and fight in war. Children who die in bellicose conflicts like in Syria. Children who, in Nigeria, are abandoned because they are considered as “wizarding” children. And little girls who are subjected to excision because that is how their culture and religion conceive it.

These kinds of things escape us, and sometimes, it is not enough to collaborate every month with humanitarian associations to improve the situation.

We would all like to do more and one way to do it is to start with our closest realities.

Abuse is anything that affects a child’s growth and physical and emotional integrity.

Abuse is telling a child that he is “worthless”. It’s leaving him alone for a whole day. It is to humiliate him, to give him a blow.

Abuse is also everything that is not seen on the skin, but that we feel in the eyes. 

• WHO reports that each year 41,000 minors under the age of 15 die from homicide. But, according to aid agencies, the data could be much higher because often the deaths of many children are attributed to accidents, falls or even suicides.
• Today we know that the statistics of child suicides are increasing. Let us remember, for example, Diego, 11, who had decided to kill himself because he could no longer bear the harassment he suffered at school.

Child abuse takes place in all spaces and in all countries.

This is why even if we do not really know what to face the injustices committed against the children of other countries, we can think about what we can do in our own country.

Listen to your children when they tell you that a classmate receives attacks or teases from other children.

Listen to your neighbors when they are arguing over their children, because it may not be a simple reprimand. It can be an aggression to which we should react.

Trauma due to child abuse

Abuse, aggression, humiliation, abandonment create imprints in a child’s brain that they will never forget.

• Childhood trauma determines the correct emotional development of a child.
  The post-traumatic stress generated in his brain will cause his personality to be marked by lack of defense, fear or even aggressive behavior, such as a reaction to a memory that he does not know how to channel to face situations. complicated.
• No one comes out unscathed from childhood aggression and that is why it is necessary to offer resources and support to all these children who have suffered from this type of problem.
• It is necessary to provide them with a safe environment and later it is vital to strengthen their self-esteem, so that they feel loved, supported and valued.

Once they evolve in a loving space in which they can trust, it will be the time to rebuild their wounds, voids and traumas so that, little by little, they begin to open up to the world again.

In conclusion, we can all do our bit against child abuse.

You just need to be attentive and sensitive to the needs and the physical and emotional integrity that children deserve.