Don't Turn Your Back on Child Abuse

One day I was walking through Wal-Mart, there was an unruly child screaming at the top of her lungs and her mother swirled around so fast she scared me. She give her child an evil look and proceeded to slap her in the face. Shocked, feeling that it was none of my business, I simply went the other way but what should I have done?

A few days later, still thinking about the incident, I approached a friend of mine and I told her about it. My friend was furious and she said, "I can't believe you walked away!" She was very persistent that she would've have approached the mother. Naturally, feeling worse than I did I talked to another friend later and told her about it. This friend had a different opinion, she said I was right to walk away because it was none of my business.

Confused, I began to wonder how everyone interprets child abuse. What is child abuse? In my own opinion, slapping a child in the face is child abuse but some people don't think so. I have to admit that I've spanked my own children before, our oldest probably got his behind burned quite a bit more than our others did until we saw that it wasn't effective for us. We didn't want our children to be afraid of us, we simply wanted to teach them what we believe to be right and wrong. We found alternatives and by the time our second child was born, we had developed new strategies that worked for the most part.

That's the way it is for most parents, we learn through our trials and tribulations, experiments better said to see what works for your children. Discipline is a touchy subject with most and for good reason. Some people, have religious beliefs about punishment while others don't believe in punishing a child by hitting at all. It really did bother me seeing that little girl get slapped, she appeared to be about two years old and her mother about twenty.

I ended up talking to several people about what I witnessed, most had different opinions about whether I should have spoken up or kept my mouth shut but almost all said that slapping the child in the face to them, did classify as child abuse. I still feel badly about what happened and I wonder if that mother slaps that poor child in the face often, I'm sure she does if she did it in public for all to see. The things that we do to our children, carries over into what they will do when they grow up and parents should be really careful.

I hope that my children, will find an effective way to discipline my grandchildren because God knows if I saw one smack my grandchild........... that would be enough for me to beat my own! I think if I had have approached the young mother, hopefully she would've felt shame but if I did, then again it may have added more stress to her day in turn causing just more of a dilemma for her child. Either way, I wasn't happy with my actions and still feel torn. I believe people are innocent until proven guilty, who knows, that mother could've exited the store feeling guilty for losing control and right now could be one of the best mother's in her community.

Evidently there's a mighty fine line between child abuse and discipline when it comes to physically hitting a child in the minds of different parents. Factors like religion, values, experiences and such play major roles in parenting. I decided that if I saw another mother, act in the same way, I would indeed approach her.

As luck would have it, it happened and I did approach the mother. I did it in a friendly manner, I looked at her with disbelief and I just told her, "I need to talk to you."

I could tell she didn't want to talk to me but she did. She told me that she didn't mean to hit her child but she was suffering from bi-polar, a mental condition and that at times it was hard for her to control her anger. The mother told me that she needed help, she was collecting disability, she had no relatives and surprisingly this mother's children had been taken away from her before for, you guessed it, child abuse. I was just shocked, it turned out that this mother had two children that were in the care of the state and her one year old baby was the only one she had left.

Some people simply don't deserve the God given right to reproduce. I can't say that the laws outlining child abuse are a joke, but the enforcement apparently is. How can a mother, with a mental condition, who would confess it to a total stranger in the middle of a grocery store, one who's other two children are in foster care as we speak, possibly be allowed to care for a one year old baby under those circumstances?

I started studying deeper and deeper until I found some common signs that may mean a child is being abused, physically, emotionally, neglected or even sexually abused. All in all, if you merely suspect a child is being abused in any way, don't hesitate to report your suspicions. It doesn't matter if you're claim is wrong or right, you may just save the life of a child living in need.

Signs of Physical Abuse: (include but aren't limited to)

Ï genital mutilation
Ï bruises
Ï bite marks
Ï broken bones, fractures
Ï burns
Ï marks in the shape of objects
Ï belt marks, whelps
Ï black eyes
Ï bald spots in the child's scalp
Ï shakiness
Ï unexplained nervousness, sensitivity to particular situations

Sometimes children who have been abused keep to themselves, some children who have been sexually abused often times end up abusing others in the same fashion. Help break the cycles that create these horrible worlds for children who will become adults, who live in pain with nightmares that last lifetimes.

The way that I originally responded to what I saw is quite common, a 1999 study by Prevent Child Abuse America showed that out of 1250 surveyed Americans who witnessed different forms of child abuse, 63% verbally reprimanded the abuser, 55% gave a look of disapproval, while a whopping 44% failed to do anything at all because they simply didn't know what to do. That sounds incredibly wrong but it's true, most people don't know how to respond and we often second guess ourselves as to what we think really classifies as child abuse. Don't worry about "society" or the definition of child abuse, nine chances out of ten, if you think that you have witnessed abuse-----you have! If you see a child being abused or if you suspect that a child is being abused, neglected, molested or emotionally tormented....... the stakes are high! Call your local child protection agency and report what you have witnessed, you can make a difference.