Children with disabilities are more likely to be physically and sexually abused than children without disabilities. Risk factors for child abuse include the following:
- Lack of knowledge of normal child development.
- Lack of social support.
- Developmental Delay, Prematurity or Disability
- Adolescent Mothers
All of the above are related. Young mothers are more likely to have babies born premature or children with developmental delay. Lower education, lack of social support and teenage pregnancy are all more common in low-income families and communities.
Parenting advice- How to prevent abuse:
I. Understand normal child development
Because infants are growing at such a phenomenal rate, they do need to eat all of the time - eight to fourteen times a day. Because infants wake up several times a day AND need to eat many times a day AND because their crying literally demands attention, the normal infant can leave parents exhausted. Think for a moment of the state of the parents. They are sleep-deprived, constantly interrupted by demands of the infant to be fed immediately, to be changed, to be made warmer or cooler. Which parents would be most likely to abuse their children? Before you protest - but it's a baby! - consider a few facts:
If you had the (mistaken) idea that by six months or eight months babies should be sleeping through the night, or that you could teach a baby to sleep through the night, then you might have a different view.
When you have time, Spirit Lake Consulting, Inc. offers a free Developmental Psychology course over the Internet, that discusses typical development including sections on infancy and early childhood development. Of course, this workshop you are taking right now includes information on development and parenting of children with special needs.
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