How do I help children who are abused and neglected?

Many care­givers won­der “How do I help chil­dren who are abused and neglect­ed?” Care Cours­es offers a child care train­ing course to help ear­ly child­hood pro­fes­sion­als iden­ti­fy and sup­port abused and neglect­ed children.

In this blog we focus on a few ideas from our course, Child Abuse and Neglect: A Caregiver’s Guide to Adverse Child­hood Experiences.

Every day in the Unit­ed States 1,875 chil­dren are abused and neglected.

At an ear­ly edu­ca­tion con­fer­ence in the Mid­west, a Head Start teacher con­fid­ed that of 18 chil­dren in her class, two-thirds of them have already expe­ri­enced some form of phys­i­cal or sex­u­al child abuse in their short lives.

So, as care­givers, it is our respon­si­bil­i­ty to act in the best inter­ests of the chil­dren in our care.

Ways to support children who have been abused

In our course, Child Abuse and Neglect: A Caregiver’s Guide to Adverse Child­hood Expe­ri­ences, we dis­cuss many ways to sup­port chil­dren who have been abused.

Some of these ways include the pow­er of nature to heal, and pro­vid­ing a sta­ble, secure, con­sis­tent, and lov­ing envi­ron­ment. In addi­tion, we cov­er pos­i­tive ways of talk­ing to abused and neglect­ed children.

We sug­gest:

• Being avail­able for plen­ty of one-on-one time with the child, and
• When the child wants to talk with you, give the child your undi­vid­ed attention.

We also suggest:

• Teach­ing chil­dren self pro­tec­tion strategies,
• Giv­ing chil­dren choic­es when­ev­er pos­si­ble because mak­ing choic­es helps chil­dren feel powerful.

In our course, Child Abuse and Neglect: A Caregiver’s Guide to Adverse Child­hood Expe­ri­ences, we dis­cuss a vari­ety of ways to sup­port abused and neglect­ed chil­dren. We’ve touched on just a few of them in this blog. 

Addi­tion­al­ly, read our blog Reduc­ing Children’s Stress in Child Care to learn more strate­gies for reduc­ing chil­dren’s stress.

Please let us know how we can be of addi­tion­al assis­tance! Call us: 1–800-685‑7610, Mon­day through Fri­day, 9–5 ET, or email us days, evenings and week­ends: info@CareCourses.com. We’re here to help!