Parents who shout at their children or call them “stupid” are leaving their offspring at greater risk of self-harm, drug use and ending up in jail, new research claims.

Talking harshly to children should be recognised as a form of abuse because of the huge damage it does, experts say.

The authors of a new study into such behaviour say “adult-to-child perpetration of verbal abuse … is characterised by shouting, yelling, denigrating the child, and verbal threats”.

“These types of adult actions can be as damaging to a child’s development as other currently recognised and forensically established subtypes of mistreatment such as childhood physical and sexual abuse,” the academics say in their paper in the journal Child Abuse & Neglect.

    • BreakDecks@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      27
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      They’re not equivocating the malice of verbal abuse vs. sexual abuse. They are equivocating the damage this kind of abuse can do to children, which their research supports. There’s no reason to take offense as if they were taking a stand on the non-severity child sexual abuse, which they are not.

    • 【J】【u】【s】【t】【Z】@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Why?

      I will say, verbal abuse is harder to pinpoint.

      In some ways, it’s easier to have a source of trauma to point to and say “that’s the cause,” so you can address and treat it.

      I was verbally abused. My inner dialogue was one of critisism, guilt and shame, that I didn’t realize until well into adulthood. I thought that was how everyone talked to themselves.

      If I had been physically abused, I would have known about it. Much less insidious to the mind.

      E: Was also just thinking about triggers. If you were a victim of physical trauma, your triggers might be very obvious. With verbal trauma, for me anyway, they were much less obvious. To think back, I went years and years having fight or flight reactions for no obvious reason, often manifested as anxiety or poor impulse control, wasted so many days just feeling anxious instead of working on myself. One trigger for me is loud voices. Had no idea until well into adulthood things started making sense. Damn near had a panic attack one day when a chef started yelling at the line cooks while I was waiting for my order.

      • aceshigh@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        absolutely. verbal abuse doesn’t leave anything physical behind, which makes it much harder to pinpoint the cause and effect. so you might be feeling depressed and anxious but not understand why because dissociative amnesia become your normal response to verbal abuse.

    • wokehobbit@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      arrow-down
      82
      ·
      1 year ago

      This is a generation of soft pussies. Triggered little bitches who can’t live in the real world.

      • ZagamTheVile@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        37
        arrow-down
        6
        ·
        1 year ago

        Lol. Calm down snowflake. No reason to get offended. You have some big feelings about this but you don’t have to be a wuss about it. You can sack up and face them.

      • _number8_@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        1 year ago

        why does the real world have to be hard? because you say so and refuse to adapt to gentler standards??

      • KneeTitts@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        This is a generation of soft pussies. Triggered little bitches who can’t live in the real worl

        So… like trump supporters who cant handle the fact they lost an election you mean?