Child emotional neglect: characteristics, effects and treatment.

Let's look at what child emotional neglect is and how it affects children and families.

Children can be victims of all kinds of harmful behaviors, even those that are not intentionally done. We usually think of maltreatment and physical and verbal abuse as the main ways in which harm is done to young children, but it can also happen when more unconscious neglect takes its toll on their well-being.

Emotional child neglect is the failure of parents and other caregivers to identify and respond to the emotional needs of young children.. Although not usually malicious, this type of behavior has long-term consequences for the infant, both personally and relationally.

Understanding why this type of neglect occurs and what its main symptoms are can help to avoid it, making parents more aware of how their children feel and understand that the needs of the little ones are not only physiological, such as eating or sleeping, but that there are also emotional needs that must be met.

What is child emotional neglect?

The infantile emotional negligence can be described as the situation that takes place when one or both parents of a child do not satisfy adequately its emotional needs.. This type of emotional neglect stands out because it does not necessarily imply emotional abuse in childhood, but is rather a situation resulting from the parents' conscious or unconscious neglect of their child's emotions. Parents treat their children's emotions as irrelevant, invalid, or excessive.

This type of emotional neglect can be evidenced in the type of phrases often heard by victims of child emotional neglect.

• "You don't really feel that way."
• "It wasn't that big a deal."
• "It's not worth bothering about."
• "You're being overly sensitive."

We can better understand this type of emotional neglect with the following example.:

A child tells his father that he is sad about a class friend. The parent, who doesn't grasp that his child needs emotional support because he feels discomfort, doesn't understand. The adult thinks it is just child's play, instead of stopping for a moment to listen to his child and support him in whatever way is necessary. As situations of this type are repeated, the child will begin to believe that his or her emotional needs are not important and will stop seeking support.

Child emotional abuse and neglect are not the same thing. Abuse is usually intentional, a deliberate choice by one person to harm another. While emotional neglect may be an intentional disregard for a child's feelings, it is most often a failure to identify the emotional needs of the child. This is why it is possible to find situations where there is emotional neglect but not in other aspects of child care, such as feeding or hygiene.

The effects of emotional neglect in infancy can be very subtle and, on top of that, parents may not even know they are doing it. Even the parents who love their children the most can fall into this type of dynamic.. Added to this, it is difficult for child professionals such as pediatricians, teachers or even child psychologists to recognize this phenomenon. The more serious the case, the greater the emotional child neglect, the easier they are to detect and the more they attract attention.

How does emotional neglect affect children?

As we said, depending on the severity of the case, it will be more or less easy to identify a case of child emotional neglect. The symptoms of this type of neglect can vary from very subtle to very striking although, at first, the damage caused by this type of situation is rather silent. However, the effects will eventually appear sooner or later and will worsen if nothing is done to prevent it. Among them we find:

• Depression
• Anxiety
• Apathy
• Developmental delay
• Hyperactivity
• Aggressiveness
• Low self-esteem
• Addiction
• Social isolation
• Insensitive or indifferent personality
• Avoidance of intimacy and emotional closeness

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How does adult child neglect affect children?

Children who have been subjected to emotional neglect as children often become adults with dysfunctional personality and maladaptive social behavior. often grow into adults with dysfunctional personalities and maladaptive social behavior.. Because their emotional needs were not adequately met and validated by their parents or other attachment figures, they end up becoming adults who do not know very well how to deal with their own emotions.

In addition, multiple mental health problems and relational dysfunctions are associated with having experienced emotional neglect during childhood.

• Post-traumatic stress disorder
• Depression
• Emotional Distress
• Increased risk of eating disorders
• Avoidance of intimacy
• Feeling deeply damaged
• Feeling empty
• Poor self-discipline
• Guilt and shame
• Anger and aggression
• Difficulty in trusting others
• Avoidance of any type of emotional dependency

It is common for adults who experienced childhood emotional neglect to end up replicating with their children what their parents did. That is, in these cases there is a greater risk of becoming parents who emotionally neglect their children because, as children, they were not validated and their emotions were not given importance, it is difficult for them to know how to listen to and understand the emotional concerns of their own children..

What makes parents emotionally neglectful?

The fact that some parents do not identify nor value adequately the affective states of their children can be a consequence of several causes. As with child abuse, the causes of neglect are multifaceted and often difficult to understand. Most parents try to be the best they can for their children, trying to meet their children's needs and offering them safety and protection.Most parents try to be the best for their children by trying to meet their needs and offering them safety and security.

Therefore, before assuming that emotional child neglect is a consequence of parents being bad people, it is necessary to take into consideration several aspects that could be the cause of this neglectful behavior towards their children:

• Depression
• Anxiety disorders
• Autism Spectrum Disorder
• Bipolar disorder
• Suffering from a terminal illness
• Going through a divorce
• Losing a job
• Addictions
• Resentment toward your child (e.g., unwanted pregnancy)
• Personal lack of emotional fulfillment
• History of parental neglect
• Lack of healthy parenting skills
• Recent bereavement
• Being a victim of abuse (e.g., partner, family member...)
• Fatiguing job
• Financial worries

Many neglectful parents come from families in which they themselves were emotionally ignored by their parents as children. As a result they may not have the parenting skills necessary to meet the emotional needs of their children.. It can also happen that the child is unwanted or has exasperating behavior, something that provokes anger and resentment in the parent and makes him or her ignore the child's pleas and questions.

It often happens that parents who emotionally neglect their children also neglect their own emotions. Adults who lack strong, emotionally satisfying relationships with partners, friends or family members are at greater risk of not being able to respond appropriately to their children's emotional demands.

Treatment for childhood emotional neglect

Even if the person is now an adult, it is possible to help them manage their past experience of emotional neglectIt is possible to help the person manage their past emotional neglect by giving them the tools to deal with the emotions that their parents did not pay attention to and teach them how to avoid committing the same type of neglect with their own children.

Among the options for treating the effects of emotional child neglect we find:

Child therapy

A clinical child psychologist can help children who have been emotionally unheard by their parents learn how to deal with their emotions in a healthy and assertive manner.. If the child is used to repressing his emotions when he sees that his attachment figures do not pay attention to him, it will be difficult to teach him to recognize and experience emotions in a healthy way, although it is not impossible.

If the patient is already an adult, the consequences of childhood emotional neglect will be profound, the result of years of repressing emotions. It will be more difficult for the patient to learn to manage and express the emotions that he will undoubtedly experience throughout his adult life, as these are responses to the social environment in which we find ourselves.

Be that as it may, the point is that therapists and mental health professionals can contribute to reducing and mitigating the effects of childhood emotional neglect by helping both children and adults learn to identify, accept and express their emotions in a healthy way.

Family therapy

Since the infantile emotional negligence is usually given between parents and children, the family therapy is fundamental.. This type of neglect has as its main component the quality of the relationship between parents and children which, without the need for the adults to be bad parents or abusers, has the problem that emotions are not properly recognized and managed.

Therefore, the task of the family therapist will be to help parents understand the impact they are having by not paying adequate attention to the emotional well-being of their children, even if they have not done so with bad intentions or on purpose. Added to this, this therapist can help the child learn to cope with the problems he or she may face. The earlier the intervention in the family, the less the effects of the child's emotional neglect on the child and the better the relationships between family members.

Conclusion

Childhood emotional neglect, even if unintentional and unconscious, can damage a child's emotional health and self-esteem. Ignoring how a child feels or downplaying emotional distress can cause the child to internalize the idea that his or her emotions are not important and that expressing them is not worthwhile. and that expressing them is not worthwhile. The consequences of this can be very deep and manifest themselves for life, causing psychological wounds that are difficult to heal without the help of psychotherapy.

Children have emotional needs that are as important as physiological ones. They need to feel listened to and valued by their parents, no matter how old they are. Learning to manage their emotions and to listen to the emotions of others is something that should be part of every family's education, and should be passed on from generation to generation. Children who were listened to by their parents will be adults who will listen to their own children.

Treatment for the effects of emotional child neglect can help children manage their emotions, understand that they deserve to be listened to and overcome feelings of emptiness. On the other hand, it also serves to teach parents to relate better to their children and to appreciate how they feel, understanding that even if there is no maltreatment or abuse, emotional neglect can be very painful for children.