What Is Dave Pelzer Use Of Abuse

First, where was Pelzer’s father during this abuse? Pelzer’s dad wasn’t there because he was working and Pelzer never saw him and his mother treated him really different when his dad is there. Pelzer’s dad works every single day and he works morning to night around 3 in the morning. I think that his mother just wants to treat him like that because he did something wrong but otherwise she shouldn’t be beating him every single day.

The part of David Pelzer’s life that I admire most is when he told someone about the “family secret”. Even after four years of being brainwashed, by doing that he showed a lot of responsibility . After that everyone seemed to care about him. David’s mother always claimed that she never loved him and that he was no longer a boy but an it. David was discarded from “The Family” at a very young age. Soon after he was known as the servant of the family. But he kept praying and finally his teachers rescued him from his

He was often punished when his brothers weren 't, even if they were doing the same thing. He was able to be adventurous but instead was stuck with guilt. Throughout his years he also faced the emotional toll of abuse in many ways. One way his mother did this was by no longer calling him by his name, and not referring to him as a human. Dave states in his book, “that death would be better than my prospects for any kind of happiness. I was nothing but an “it”.” Children and adolescents go through a stage where they are trying to figure out who they are. With an abusive mother who takes away your identity it would be really hard to figure out who you are and you would be confused on what roles to play. Erikson’s stages emphasize family and culture. Erikson noted that psychological conflicts, especially in childhood within families, affect people lifelong.

Although the reading level of A Child Called “It” by Dave Pelzer wasn’t difficult, processing the horror of the events that inspired the story was. People who experience traumatic situations can often recall the events with sharp clarity, which is exactly what Pelzer did. Riddled with grim details, the text takes readers on a journey through Dave Pelzer’s troubled early years. Through his meticulously documented experiences, readers get a perfect view into the torture that shaped his childhood. Although painful, the descriptions give students the opportunity to make observations and apply different approaches about development to Pelzer’s harrowing tale.

Abuse and neglect comes in all different forms and each one of them are as equally as damaging as the next. Others will agree that abuse and neglect are hard to define in some cases, but there are clues and signs that professionals and nonprofessionals can detect in a child if they just pay attention. Being observant isn’t the only key to saving these children, but also being willing to speak up and tell someone what you know and or saw. In “A Child Called It”, David Pelzer is a young boy who goes through horrendous abuse and neglect who might have been able to endure much less pain if one adult would have spoken up, despite the fear of any consequences. There is a disgusting number of examples of abuse and neglect in this book, but there will be three different experiences that will showcase neglect, psychological abuse, and physical abuse discussed in the rest of this text.

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

In 1995, David Pelzer wrote a book describing his childhood, a book that is highly recommend as a must read. The book starts off with a happy home and quickly turns into his very own nightmare. Pelzer is a survivor of child abuse. This story is so nauseating that while reading it you find found yourself praying that his parents would rot in hell for all eternity.

     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

At this point, Dave is two different people. One is the normal, cheerful, and innocent Dave. The other, is what Dave refers to as: “The Boy who’d escaped from Wolves.” (Lehane 300) whom is the one that is suffering from the trauma. Fast forward a little bit and Dave is brought on to kill a pedophile by The Boy.

At the age of 5 years old, not only did he began to take showers with his father, but when they went to the beach club, his mother bathed him in the shower in the presence of other naked women. By the age of 6 years old, David noticed the power men had over women, “when a male entered the women’s side of the bathhouse, all the women shrieked”. (Gale Biography). At the age of 7 and 8 years old, he experienced a series of head accidents. First, he was hit by a car and suffered head injuries. A few months later he ran into a wall and again suffered head injuries. Then he was hit in the head with a pipe and received a four inch gash in the forehead. Believing his natural mother died while giving birth to him was the source of intense guilt, and anger inside David. His size and appearance did not help matters. He was larger than most kids his age and not particularly attractive, which he was teased by his classmates. His parents were not social people, and David followed in that path, developing a reputation for being a loner. At the age of 14 years old David became very depressed after his adoptive mother Pearl, died from breast cancer. He viewed his mother’s death as a monster plot designed to destroy him. (Gale Biography). He began to fail in school and began an infatuation with petty larceny and pyromania. He sets fires,

abuse he endured at the hands of a figure that should represent security and comfort-his

The beginning of the book talks about what it was like before things went horrifyingly wrong. The family took vacations together, his mother was a loving mother and wife, and Dave's father was his hero. This eventually changed, as did everything in Dave's life. His father never turned out to be his hero, but a drunken firefighter who left him, and at times he wished his mother dead. When the torture and abuse began it was minimal, Dave describes it in the book as punishment instead of discipline but as the book progressed so does the intensity. As the story progresses Dave's feelings are expresses, he speaks of his mother, as either "The Bitch" or just "Mother" there is absolutely no love in the way he speaks of her at all. His anger is also expressed and shown in way he talks about his, once beloved hero, his father and his brothers.

In the case of Angelique Lyn Lavelle was acquitted by the jury. I believe she was guilty of the crime even though her partner abused her and as testified in the case by Dr. Shane that was hired by the defense stated that Lavelle was characterized as a battered women based on his experience. To some extent this is true however, we have learned that sometimes that battered women are ashamed to tell others of their abuse and sometimes they are so much in love with that person that they keep going back to them

Problems that comes up in this case study appears to child; physical, emotional, mental, verbal and personal abuse, along with environmental factors that created the initial “family secret,” that Dave talks about throughout the book. His parents have their own personal conflicted problems, along with their abused in substances like alcohol. The family social economic status seems to range in the lower class, as Dave’ father occupation was a firefighter and his mother’s occupation is unknown. Physical abuse of children is a nonaccidental injury inflicted on a child (Crosson-Tower, p.180, 2013). Dave’s mother made him sit at the bottom of the stairs with his hands under his bottom, starved and slept with no blanket in the cold basement. His mother’s alcoholic problems made him, his mother’s sole target for frustration and anger, basically as his mother’s punching bag. Neglectful mother were more than likely to used words like shame and sad more than non-neglectful mother during the study (Camilo, Garrido & Calheiros, 2016). Dave’s mother called him “it,” while his

Personal interviews with several of Meirhofer’s surviving relatives provided a look into the childhood of this troubled man. Meirhofer’s aunt, Layne Meirhofer-Greeney said, “David had a relatively normal childhood upbringing. He was raised just as any of us kids. He wasn’t abused or neglected, and had traditional Catholic values. We had frequent family gatherings, and always included David. As kids, we were very close” (L.Meirhofer-Greeney, personal communication, October 10, 2014) Wayne Meirhofer, David’s uncle, says, “David was a smart kid. He got good grades, and always seemed like he had a good head on his shoulders. He went into the military, and it seemed to us that he was traveling in the right direction in life. It floored us to hear of the things he had done” (W.Meirhofer, personal communication, October18, 2014) My father and Meirhofer’s uncle, Lou Carlassara, said, “I was very young when all the drama happened with David. I don’t remember much about him, but I remember being told we could no longer make trips to Montana to see that side of the family because David had done