Buy an essay on Verbal Aggression at Children

Once during my internship I witnessed the situation where the mother was shouting at her daughter. Although in our country it is still a rather common tendency among parents to use sarcastic words, shouting and threatening of bodily harm to control their children I suppose that it is not a good tactics at all. The situation I witnessed seemed to me rather vivid, so I made up my mind to ponder what could cause such attitude to a child, whether the mother of the child was aware of her actions and what consequences could follow.
After talking to the mother of a girl I got to know the situation in details. The 5-year old girl didn’t want to go home from the Center crying very loudly for quite a long period of time. At first the mother tried to calm the child down explaining her the norms of behavior, but gradually she lost her temper and started saying different inappropriate things such as: “God, if not you I would be already at home…”, “You are just like your father…”, “It seems to me you don’t understand anything…” and etc. She was very aggressive to the child, though (as she told me later) she knew that the girl was exhausted and needed some rest. Although the mother didn’t get to physical abuse of her child, she actively promised to the girl to do that. At the end of the quarrel the mother was depressed and felt guilty for the words she told her child. Nevertheless she said to me that she believed that children easily forgot such events. Also the mother of the girl was sure she had never committed verbal abuse at her daughter, because she had never called her names.
First of all it is necessary to clear up what actually verbal abuse of a child implies excluding calling the child names: insulting, threatening with abandonment, threatening bodily harm, scapegoating and blaming and using sarcasm. It is not necessary to call the child names to lower her self-esteem and to hurt her.
If a child frequently witnesses verbal aggression in the family, especially directed toward her she becomes vulnerable and feels very unstable. “If a child is abused or is witness to abuse, the child suffers.” Moreover there far more chances for such children to develop the same model of behavior in their own families. Verbal punishment is no less harmful for children as the physical one, as it deals with their self-esteems. Verbal abuse has very strong long-term consequences. The children who experienced parental verbal aggression may either be verbally abusive in their future or abuse other people including their own children in future. Moreover such children are more apt to physical violence, self-destructiveness, and uncontrollable angriness.
Parental verbal aggression directed towards children may be no less harmful than physical one. It is not necessary to insult the child calling him or her names to commit verbal abuse: children are very touchy and it would be enough for them to hear hidden sarcasm in the tone of their parents to think that something might be wrong with them. It is vitally important o eliminate verbal aggression from the families with small children, as such kind of aggression may have very strong negative consequences in their future lives.

 
References
Evans, Patricia M. “The Verbally Abusive Relationship”. Expanded Second Edition. Adams Media Corporation, Holbrook, MA , 1992, p. 200
Vissing, YM. “Verbal Aggression by Parents and Psychosocial Problems of Children.” 1991;15(3):223-38.