Neglect. Child neglect is failure to provide adequate food, clothing, shelter, clean living conditions, affection, supervision, education, or dental or medical care.
Signs of neglect such as dirty clothing will be apparent, which may lead to embarrassment and social difficulties. Children without boundaries may find it difficult to follow school rules, and if neglect includes failure to ensure school attendance their attainment is likely to be affected.
For example, a mother may leave her child home alone when the child care provider fails to show up. If the mother does not go to work, she can lose her job and will not be able to take care of her child. However, if she leaves the child alone, she will be guilty of neglect.
What happens when a child is neglected emotionally?
For children, affectional neglect may have devastating consequences, including failure to thrive, developmental delay, hyperactivity, aggression, depression, low self-esteem, running away from home, substance abuse, and a host of other emotional disorders.
Maltreatment can cause victims to feel isolation, fear, and distrust, which can translate into lifelong psychological consequences that can manifest as educational difficulties, low self-esteem, depression, and trouble forming and maintaining relationships.
Neglect occurs when a person, either through his/her action or inaction, deprives a vulnerable adult of the care necessary to maintain the vulnerable adult's physical or mental health. Examples include not providing basic items such as food, water, clothing, a safe place to live, medicine, or health care.
Child emotional neglect (CEN) is the parent's failure to meet their child's emotional needs during the early years. It involves unresponsive, unavailable, and limited emotional interactions between that person and the child. Children's emotional needs for affection, support, attention, or competence are ignored.
Emotional Neglect, also known as Psychological Neglect, refers to a situation where a parent or caregiver does not provide the basic emotional care, attention and affection that a child needs in order to develop proper emotional well-being.
Mild forms of neglectful parenting involve putting little effort into parenting and focusing more on other areas of life. In extreme cases, uninvolved parents neglect their child's needs for food, water, shelter, and love. Severely neglectful parents may even abandon their children and leave them in the care of others.
Uninvolved parenting — also called neglectful parenting, which obviously carries more negative connotations — is a style of parenting where parents don't respond to their child's needs or desires beyond the basics of food, clothing, and shelter.
Examples include: if the child begins to display inappropriate behavior that is immature or too mature for his/her age, clinging behavior, compulsive attention or affection seeking behavior, aggressiveness, uncooperativeness, bed-wetting, destructive behavior or constantly being sad or withdrawn.
Physical neglect is by far the most common type of neglect. In most cases, the parent or caregiver is not providing the child with all of the basic necessities like food, clothing and shelter. In some cases, young children are left without proper supervision for extended periods of time.
Active neglect is the willful failure by a caregiver to fulfill care-taking functions and responsibilities. This includes, but is not limited to, abandonment, deprivation of food, medication, water, heat, cleanliness, eyeglasses, dentures, or health-related services.
