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Sunday, August 30, 2009

Precious Time

She wakes up in the morning to a mother that has no friends and praises her own self while finding fault in others, a tactic *Lilah claims was like to a child a sneaky form of brainwashing, because *Lilah actually began to believe that her mother was perfect. *Patsy would readily proclaim, 'Why can't people think like me?' Her mother would also tell her that she did not want any friends and that she could have if she wanted to, but friends cause too much trouble.

She tries to make her way to school, clinging on to the watch that her uncle gave her as a gift because of her stellar performance in her grades. Her mother takes it away, telling her that she would not need the watch at school and that she needed it more than *Lilah did. *Lilah was crushed. She would sullenly look on as her mother neurotically ate an almost 5 inch mound of food with the watch clasped in her soiled hands. *Patsy compulsively looked at the watch every minute, every second. The watch would be covered with rotted sauces from food, so much so that you could not tell the time without scraping the food from the watch's face.

*Lilah still hoped that one day the watch would be hers again. Her uncle had instructed her to wear the watch every day. When he realized that she was not wearing it, he would enquire what had happened. * Kara felt afraid and dared not tell the truth that would expose her mother's behaviour. Instead, she would claim that she had forgotten to wear it. An excuse that would make her uncle frown and she thought, seemingly believe that she did not appreciate the gift and that she was ungrateful and irresponsible. She said that she would then go on to live a life of making herself look erratic to hide her mother's secrets. She admits she does not know how she passed her examinations to go on to Secondary school.

Child abuse has many infestations, sexual abuse and flat out physical abuse emotional are all damaging, but what is surprising to me as I was doing research is that Emotional abuse can be most volatile as it may not be as readily detected and proved like Sexual Molestation and Physical Abuse. Most people cannot prove it. It destabilizes the child in a vicious way, a case of your word against mine with no physical evidence to prove any misdeed. Children as such, go on to be sometimes mislabeled mentally unstable.


What is also saddening is that like hazing, it can lead to a lifetime of self-destructive tendencies. Can you identify children in your neighbourhood like this, or even perhaps in your family?

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