MSN Encarta Article on Child Abuse

[M]

Now I understand that Encarta offers broad, general information on topics but I really take exception to the following paragraph in the article:

"Despite being abused, the majority of maltreated children do not show signs of extreme disturbance, and many can cope with their problems. A number of factors help insulate children from the effects of maltreatment. These include high intelligence, good scholastic achievement, good temperament, and having close personal relationships. "

encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761562624_2/Child_Abuse.html#endads

That sounds like to me that it's the author's belief that if we were just smart enough, or made good grades or never lost our temper or were more popular then we'd be able to cope and society wouldn't have to deal with us. What a load of horse manure!

[bluelake]

m you are right. it's bs. it's crap.

[portlander]

I dunno, maybe there's some truth to it - but maybe a better explanation is that "smart" kids aren't necessarily better at coping with it, but are better at either hiding it or appearing to cope with it.

For instance take bedwetting, a well-known indicator of possible abuse. When it happened to me for a while at 8 years old just after the abuse started, I was able to hide it by taking a sudden interest in helping with laundry and was able to pull it off (as far as I know) without anyone ever knowing.

Or behavioural problems. I became inattentive, restless, fidgety, etc in school. My grades suffered. Some of it I masked by becoming the "class clown" so that whenever I didn't have the right answer it was assumed that I was just goofing off or being a smartass. Whatever I couldn't mask was dismissed as either hyperactivity or that I was just so smart that I was bored. Some of the latter was probably true but wasn't the whole story.

In any other kid's circumstance, IF the behaviour couldn't be passed off as just being "too smart and bored", and IF had been bedwetting was known about, this probably would have caused instant alarm bells. But in my case, I was smart enough to be able to hide it from the age of 8 until about 15.