A study published in the international journal Child Abuse is now suggesting that childhood verbal abuse should be treated as a child maltreatment subtype on its own, something perhaps quite a few people who still flinch at a raised voice can, unfortunately, agree on. Parents who indulge in losing their control over children – their own or others, will be horrified to learn that their verbal barrage – from swearing, name-calling, verbal put-downs, raised voices, and lectures – are now considered by scientists to be a form of mistreatment on par with physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect. This new understanding has been reached through an extensive review of data obtained from 149 quantitative and 17 qualitative studies. This review was commissioned by the charity organisation ‘Words Matter’, an organisation that is on a mission to improve the mental and physical health of children by helping end the verbal abuse of children by the adults around them.
According to the organisation’s website, children learn to understand the world around them and their place in it in response to the relationships they grow up with, of which a significant part is informed by the words and tones used around them. Warm and encouraging words provide children with the security and stability they need to grow and thrive as adults later on in their lives. Verbal abuse on the other hand actively weakens the foundations of their brains, leading to complicated issues later on in life. According to the new study, ‘Child verbal abuse as a child maltreatment subtype: a systematic review of the current evidence’;
“Just as children require nurturing, safe, and supportive physical environments from their caregivers, they also require communication from adults that does not denigrate but promotes healthy self-concept and development”.
The lack of such nurturing words and the presence of harmful and derogatory words are found to have lasting impacts on children. The studies considered in the review, for example, suggest several specific lasting issues that childhood verbal abuse leaves behind- depression, anxiety, and substance abuse are specifically mentioned.
At present, child abuse is classified into four main categories: physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, and emotional abuse. The last of these – emotional abuse – is not as well defined as the first three, and most would argue that verbal abuse falls within the emotional abuse category. The truth is that both emotional and verbal abuse lacks a widely accepted definition. Broadly speaking, speaking in a manner or language that belittles, frightens, and threatens a child and makes them fear for their safety or hurts them emotionally can be defined as verbal abuse. However, cultural contexts are apt to muddy this definition as people from different cultures, brought up under different parenting styles will have different understandings of what even constitutes a threat or a raised voice. How the study defines childhood verbal abuse is helpful for our own understanding of what verbal abuse might entail: the characteristics considered in the study were ‘negative speech volume, tone, speech content, and their immediate impact’.
The study, which reviewed findings based on different contexts around the world, found that 76.5% of all verbal abuse was inflicted on children by their own parents, followed closely by other caregivers and close adults in their lives. The World Health Organisation, for example, estimates that nearly 3 in 4 of all children regularly suffer from physical punishments and/or psychological violence at the hands of parents and caregivers. Unfortunately, parents and caregivers rarely consider or understand the gravity of the damage they inflict on the hapless children in their care. Professor Shanta R Dube, a US expert who co-authored the study, highlighted this aspect of verbal abuse.
“Often adults are unaware of how their shouting tone and criticising words, such as ‘stupid’ and ‘lazy’ can negatively impact children, particularly if that is how they experienced being parented (themselves).”
When asked what the most pleasing words they heard were on the other hand, the answers most often repeated by children tend to be ‘I am proud of you’, ‘you can do it’, and ‘I believe in you’.
The researchers hope that a new categorisation of verbal abuse as opposed to the oft-used ‘emotional abuse’ will help shift more attention towards the issue. It will also hopefully shift attention away from the victims of the abuse towards those who perpetrate it. Hopefully, the research also sheds some light on this unseen, unheard crime taking place inside our homes, which should go some way towards helping both children and parents overcome the issue. For one, it would certainly help the professionals and caregivers who interact with children suffering from behavioural and development issues from a treatment standpoint. For parents, it should also help them unlearn their toxic behaviour, and even direct them into getting help for their own unaddressed issues, such as the childhood traumas they carry themselves. Other welfare systems and institutions such as child welfare organisations, clinical institutions, and judicial systems will also find an increasing body of study about childhood verbal abuse and its long-term effects on those who suffer under it helpful.
Of course, parents are only human and most don’t have access to the patience normally associated with saints. A loud voice raised in anger might sometimes appear to be the only way to reign in a misbehaving child – or even several. However, it’s important to recognise that verbal abuse is unjustifiable no matter the reason or the extent of the frustration experienced on the part of the adult. A sincere apology, in words and tones that a child can understand and appreciate, is always in order after such an unfortunate event.
It is also important to understand the distinction between losing your temper at a moment of heightened stress and a sustained pattern of verbal abuse. Snapping at a child to behave themselves when they’re being particularly rowdy and insulting their intelligence, for example, is very different. Attempts at disciplining a child can never involve making them feel insecure or instilling new insecurities in them, bullying them, insulting or otherwise denigrating them. Parents have the key responsibility of breaking cycles of generational abuse as well as taking great care to ensure that new cycles of abuse are not created with them.
(Theruni Liyanage)