Child Abuse and the Importance of Belonging Discussed in David Pelzer's A Child Called It

The mother in “The Other Family”, by Himani Bannerji, has numerous static traits. Perhaps one of her most dominant traits being affection. It is clear various times in the text that she is affectionate when she felt “sorry that she was putting such a heavy burden on such young shoulders” (Bannerji 2). Before, she had also said that she did not want “frighten [her daughter]”(Bannerji 2). She even manifests panic just from thinking of potentially losing her daughter. Her second most evident trait is loneliness. The mother displays loneliness when she sometimes is “unsettled” with the news contained in “letters that [arrived] from home”(Bannerji 1). This could most likely be that the letters may be about certain people or things she misses from

Virginia, Laura's mother, cared deeply for her daughter. Virginia just did not know how to give and show that care on an emotional level as a result of her own upbringing. As read in chapter five, specifically on page one hundred sixty-eight, experiences that affect thecaregiver's own childhood, particularly emotionally, tends to show itself when the caregiver who in this case is Virginia, become a parent their self. Page eighty-seven of Skin Hunger details how Virginia wanted to do the right thing for her unborn child, just as her foster parents had taught her to always do. When Virginia sought prenatal care, that was a great example of a factor of her personal life story coming into play when she had her own child. The story of Virginia and

As a child Dave Pelzer was brutally beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother; a mother who played tortuous, unpredictable games that left one of her sons nearly dead. She no longer considered him a son, but a slave; no longer a boy, but an 'it'. His bed was an old army cot in the basement, his clothes were torn and smelly, and when he was allowed the luxury of food it was scraps from the dogs' bowl. The outside world knew nothing of the nightmare played out behind closed doors. Dave dreamed of finding a family to love him and call him their son. It took years of struggle, deprivation and despair to find his dreams and make something of himself. A Child Called 'It' covers the early years of

A Child Called “It” is a powerful book written by Dave Pelzer about his childhood and the hardships he encountered with his family, peers, and community. Middle childhood can be a life altering point in a young child’s life, which many theorist have studied over the years. This paper will review a few of those theorist thoughts, and how their theories apply to young David’s childhood. The theorist work that will be covered will be Bronfenbrenner and his ecological systems model, Piaget’s theory of development, and lastly Kohlberg’s theory of moral reasoning. It is important to understand what was going through David’s mind as he dealt with this trauma and how he was able to survive it.

     The conflict of the story was Dave’s mother. She was cruel and unloving. She would drink and abuse Dave. For some reasons she never beat any of her other kids. Every time he stood up to her she would tell him he was a nobody or an “it”. She did cruel things for no reason. For example one time she tried putting him on the stove to burn him. Other times she would make a gas out of ammonia and Clorox in the bathroom and lock him in there for hours. The climax of the story is when people at school start noticing cuts and bruises on David. When a social worker is sent to his house, his mother starts treating him with love and pretends she’s sorry. Dave believes it and doesn’t say anything when the social worker comes. Dave thinks his dreams have come true and is very happy not knowing when the social

A Child Called It, is an astonishingly horrific true story of “one child’s courage to survive”. Once said “Such a story cannot fail to move.” this is exactly how I felt about this book. Dave Pelzer the author and protagonist of A Child Called It tells the story of his life as one of the worst seen cases of child abuse in the state of California. Dave’s mental strength and resilience is what truly drives the theme of the story and the physical and mental abuse that he had to endure.

The autobiography, A Child Called “It”, draws its readers in with both the tragic tale of David Pelzer’s abuse as well as his unyielding determination to keep living. The book itself focuses less on the oppression Pelzer lived through and more on how he overcame it, despite all of the obstacles thrown in his path. What David Pelzer survived is not what the typical person would define as oppression, a word so often tied to a government, but it is by the definition of the word. This story is so different from the other two due to his mother being the one to oppress him and pure emotion showcased throughout it. However, it also shares some similarities with the others, such as the theme of hope despite the odds. Pelzer never let his spirit die,

Here, the recurring motif is: what exactly explains parenthood? The act of making a child and giving birth, or the challenge of raising a child who is not biologically your own, but is also a 'stolen' child from the natural parents, (father in this case) who gives her away? Moral and emotional dilemmas meet to reveal certain overwhelming truths about human nature.

She was washing the dishes as if though she was racing against time, when suddenly the front door slammed shut. The startling sound made her drop a glass onto the floor. In a frantic effort to clean up the broken glass, she immediately was struck in the back of the head, only to awaken in a cold damp basement several hours later. When discovered, she had two broken ribs and a fractured arm. Her eyes were black and blue, swollen shut apparently from crying for hours. Her body appeared to be extremely malnourished as if though she was using her own urine and defecation as means of nutrition. Once the coroner completed the autopsy, he concluded that the result of death was a beating so hard across the abdomen that the five-year-olds intestines ruptured, which led to an internal bleeding. Two weeks prior to her death, a social worker noticed the abused child when the mother sought out services for food stamps. She had noticed the bruising on her arms, and her eyes, her eyes told a story no one could describe.

Sadly, within the first few paragraphs of the story, the author presents Jill’s frustration with the mother, “God, we been over there to eat two or three times in this last month alone. Is she ever actually going to move?”(582). Furthermore, the son explains how Jill has “run out of patients with my mother” (582). Finally, the narrator seems to suggest that Jill is free from any psychological boxes “Jill always says what’s on her mind” (582). The son states this as if to suggest that she does not hide or conceal any thoughts, unlike the son who has to conceal certain thoughts and feeling as not to hurt his mother’s

The young man begins to see the immaturity and he can see what he “thought” he fell in love with. The game brings out the true personality in the young woman, and the man doesn’t enjoy what he sees. He begins to treat her cruelly because he knows what the two share

The police took David to the station questioning him about the night his mother was murdered. David was the son of Diana Dixon, who adopted him as well as his sister Jennifer. He worked at a gas station just down the road from his house, the place his mother was murdered.

In the poem “Mother's” mother was rarely mentioned,but she was mentioned enough to give us a good look at things. Mother stayed up every night while her child slept waiting on her husband to get back from his night job. “She was very deliberately waiting perhaps for my father to come home from his night job, or maybe for a dream that had promised to come by.”(Mothers) although mother was mentioned little to none, mommy was brought up a lot

Children do not have the option to come into this world. They come into this world because of either of their parents’ choice or because of their mistake. However, once children are born, their parents have the opportunity to write whatever they wish to write on their clean slate –“life.” Indeed, some kids grow up in a safe environment and have loving parents, but some children are reared by the parents who themselves grew up in an abusive family and do not know how to raise kids. Abuse does not see race, gender, or stature, yet it happens every day in a close - knit relationship. Abuse can be so subtle that it slowly chips away a person’s identity, and the person does not even realize that they are in an abusive relationship. In James Joyce’s, “Eveline,” Eveline exhibits the classical signs of a victim to abuse. She lacks self-confidence due to her father’s verbal, emotional, and financial abuse.

For the first year or so of Jolie’s life, she was kept in a white office five floors above her mother's apartment and tended by a rotation of babysitters (her mother finding her too similar-looking to her just-run-off husband). There were days when her mother would not visit. Psychiatrists speculate that Angelina’s mother became unhinged after her husband was discovered to be cheating on her while Angelina was just a babe in arms.