What is child abuse? According to the dictionary, Child abuse is “mistreatment of a child by a parent or guardian, including neglect or beating." This is an issue that still occurs today. Child abuse can happen to children below the age of eighteen years. Child abuse has a negative and harmful effect mentally and physically, to where an unhealthy impact is left in a child’s life growing up due to lack of prevention.

"Verbal Abuse" consists of any words used to hurt a child emotionally or mentally. Yelling, cursing, and rebuking their births tend to be the common examples of verbal abuse. This can cause emotional pain, and can cause the child to feel as if they are not wanted or loved by their guardian. Generally a parent or guardian starts with mean words, then moves their way up to actually hitting a child.

Physical Abuse is any form of contact that causes a child pain anywhere on the body through touch. This consists of punching, biting, slapping, burning, and strangling a child. Afterwards, there are usually marks left on their body like bruises, finger prints, cuts, and even boils. Stress from children’s ignorance causes these kind of actions to occur. Most victims are around the age of 7. This is because unprepared parents can get overwhelmed with the responsibility and physically harm their children.

Abuse can have many difficult impacts on a child's life. They can develop certain mental disorders like post traumatic disorder, anxiety, dissociative identity disorder, depression and can also fail at understanding social cues. The child or adult may become angry and harm other people or animals. They may bite, hit, and even cut other people. Another impact would be a child’s inability to trust others. They may not be able to love or build positive relationships. They could isolate themselves from any form of adult. This is a form of detachment. A child that is detached cannot feel anything because they do not have a conscience. This means they can kill a person and not know it is wrong. They lack the love they need in order to maintain an acceptable status in society.

It can take many years of therapy for them to recover enough to fit into society. No child can ever fully recover from such a confusing event.

Preventing child abuse can be the difference between a child living or dying. If any form of abuse is seen, it is important to call DSS. These people will go into the home and investigate complaints. If they feel that the home is not safe for the child, then they will remove them from the dangerous situation. It is also important for one to keep an eye on a child’s body language and physical being. The abused child may be jumpy and isolated. They could seem to have a low amount of interactions and possible dirty or torn clothes. Physically, one should observe reoccurring injuries and listen for the same story like “running into a doorknob”.

Therefore, child abuse can be through physical and emotional pain and is detrimental to their health because of the missing act of prevention. There are guardians who abuse their children because stress, poverty, alcohol abuse, substance abuse, and mental instabilities. One can see the signs of child abuse whether they are physical or mental. People of that area must call someone to help the child get out of the situation and prevent any further negative impacts. The life of an abused child can mean the difference of living and dying. Who can help these children? The people of America! So save the maltreated adolescents before it is too late!