Abused+Children+and+the+Roads+they+Can+Take+-+By+Courtney

Children who grow up in abusive enviornments can cope with there situations as they grow up in a variety of ways. Three typically seen roads taken are independence with some tight bonds with others that share there pain, they may repeat the cycle and be abusive, or they may crave attention and get caught up in negative social group and continue to be abused.

Independence: Websters dictionary defines the act of being independent as: not subject to control of others or not requiring or relying on something else. Many children who are abused break away from the family and create there own life. In the story The Glass Castle, is seems as tho the three oldest children take the road of independence. Although they all break away to New York, they find there own lives and even as children they avoid the abuse in there own ways.

Repeating the Cycle: One in eight boys who were sexually abused grew up to be a paedophile, a study by staff at the Great Ormond Street hospital has found. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2003/feb/07/childrensservices.childprotection This statistic shows that a decent amount of people simply do what they have seen there whole lives and don't break away from the abuse, but add to it. Tim Bredamus from Deeper Devotion discusses the sad chain of abuse that that seems to be happening in the work. He states that in many cases the abuser is continuing negative behaviors that they learned while being abused as a child. This does not excuse their behavior, but it does help to identify the root of the problem and provides some insight for how to deal with it. http://deeperdevotion.com/articles/279

Continuing to Be Abused: Many victims of abuse feel that the reason they have been abused is because they are worthless and deserve it. Because of this way of thinking, many victims just continue to be abused. The character that seems to fall into this road the most is Maureen. Although we are not given different evidence that she is abused more in life, we see that she doesn't really fit into the other two categories and she does seem to need the attention from others as her way of dealing with her childhood.


 * Authors Note**: Abuse is always a difficult thing to look at and understand. It hard for most people to even being to understand how someone could be abused there wholfe life and then turn around and do something like that to there own children. Sadly its a horrible cycle and alot of people just can't seem to get out of it. If I have learned anything from reading the book and doing some research for this project, I've learned to be very thankful that my parents have never layed a hand on me, in fact that seem to bend over backwards to make sure all of there kids are happy. Also, this story showed me that people are stronger than you think. They can go through horrible things and see to recover and make something of there life.