Understanding Child Development

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Emotional neglect is one of the least understood childhood experiences, even among professionals.

It is not abuse; abuse is what a parent does, while neglect is what a parent fails to do.

It is not about how many parents you had or whether your parents loved you.

Because it’s quiet and easy to forget, its effects can be even more pernicious, yet they can be healed.

Of the hundreds of psychological and emotional conditions, childhood emotional neglect is, in my opinion, among the least widely understood.

That's because we have spent decades talking about and studying the negative things that can happen to a child. As we've done all of this vital and important work, we have overlooked, and essentially ignored, an equal but opposite force: what fails to happen for a child.

Childhood emotional neglect is a parent's failure to respond enough to a child's emotional needs.

Here are five natural, automatic assumptions that are frequently held and expressed, even by mental health professionals.

Myth 1: Emotional neglect is a form of child abuse

This has been the default assumption of many people for many years. In professional articles and research studies, emotional neglect is typically lumped in with the various forms of child abuse. It's assumed that all of these forms of childhood mistreatment belong in the same category and have similar effects upon the........

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