Hey, I have a character who would be locked in a wooden box or beaten badly by their mother if they did something wrong. Would this be enough for the character to develop Reactive Attachment Disorder?
CW: child abuse, neglect, physical abuse
Yep, Reactive Attachment Disorder is heavily associated with parental/caretaker abuse / neglect.
I’m trying to make an adult character who was the victim of extreme isolation, neglect, and physical/sexual abuse as a child, but I’m not sure how to make him realistic. So far I’ve determined that he has an aversion to touch, an anxiety disorder, chronic depression, and several triggers for his anxiety, but I’m worried I’m not gonna be able to respectfully and realistically write him. Tips?
Hey anon! I’ve already got a post on this topic here:
In short…you’re really underestimating the effects that extreme isolation, neglect, and abuse have on children.
How long is it realistic for a child who used to be neglected to hoard food once in an enviroment where they actually get fed on a regular basis?
That depends on the character. Sometimes it might just be a few weeks; other times it could become a life-long problem.
My character was locked in his room for seven years (he was twelve and had committed crimes - it's a long story, murder, theft, boycotting and the like, his mother being a wanted criminal), having food given to him through a dog/cat flap and, for one year, he had to behave if he wanted light (a candle). He ended up breaking out and killing his family (for revenge). How would this affect his mental health?
@scripttorture has an excellent series of posts on solitary confinement. Check them out!
CW: Child abuse (physical abuse, neglect, child sexual abuse, and emotional abuse), the effects of which are described in detail. Injuries, body horror, burns, cutting, self-injury, suicide, eating disorders, sex, pregnancy, eye injury, animal abuse, substance abuse, alcohol, drugs
This post is very in-depth and potentially extremely triggering. I had to delete some of my default tags to make sure I got as many triggers as I could in. As such, I have decided to have this linked as a private post so people browsing my blog can skip it if they need to.
PS - posts like these will be tagged “#all the trigger warnings”
I think my MC is autistic, I've been working with her for about 2years, and noticed a few sensory/social issues. But I know that she was also neglected as a child because her sisters were chosen for the "Elite" and she was considered a shame to her family because of it. (She had to homeschool, but her sisters went to regular school/they got whatever they wanted, she was given just necessities.) how would the obvious favoritism affect her developmentally, and would it affect her autism at all?
This is a question better suited for @scriptautistic !
My MC was physically tortured as a young child, for example he was chained up against a wall and also witnessed murders in front of him. How would that affect his psyche as he got older? Is there a best case scenario?
That sounds pretty traumatic to me. Check out my demystifying PTSD thing here and my tag for PTSD here.
And the best case scenario is that your character comes through it completely normally / makes a complete recovery. It’s incredibly unlikely (especially since your character was a young child), but it is technically possible.
Hi! I'm writing a 17 year old victim of extreme childhood neglect, and need her to be able to speak English (after some therapy) but I also need her to be as un-adjusted as possible. How little Interaction with her parents can she have without her brain not developing properly (the way that Genie's brain didn't develop and kept her from learning language)
This is difficult to answer because there really isn’t any empirical data on exactly how much interaction is needed for language development. It’s obviously impossible to do testing on this ethically, and existing research pretty much exclusively focuses on the extreme cases.
However, I do have a few tips.
I’d recommend that she have had a relatively normal interaction with her parents as an infant, and only have been put into isolation once she has a grasp on language, if at all possible.
One of the factors in how Genie developed was the lack of stimulation in her environment; she was confined to one small, dark room where she was often restrained and rarely had anything to play with. I’d make sure your character has plenty of things to play with, and either have a large cell or occasionally be allowed to leave it.
If at all possible within the confines of your story, I’d recommend having your child character have access to a television with some children’s programming on it. Even a window where she could see and hear other people interacting would be enormously helpful in her language development.
There’d still have to be some face-to-face interaction, though. I don’t have any sort of empirical data to support this, but I’d say at bare minimum 3 hours per day as a toddler. The face-to-face interaction could be stepped down over the years, to the point that it could be almost entirely eliminated once the character is an adolescent and has a good grasp on English. She’d still need something to keep her knowledge of English from being forgotten (so she’d still have to interact with people every so often if the TV thing isn’t an option).
Also - you didn’t mention this, but ask yourself if you want your character to be able to read and write as well as speak English.
Regarding the TV - data has shown that babies and children do not actually learn language from watching tv at all; maybe once she has language this could keep it active, but language is learnt from people who are present. They don’t have to be talking to the child, they could even never talk to the child, but the child needs to hear language being spoken and reacted to in real time.
Good to know! I admit, child and developmental psych is one of my weak points. Thanks for the info!
For reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with a movie that just came out, I’ve decided to collect my Stockholm Syndrome posts into a single post.
CW: Abuse (neglect, physical, emotional, and sexual) on all links.
Disclaimer - This is a subject that should not be treated lightly in any medium. Before we get started, please take a moment to consider if you are using child abuse simply for shock value, or if it is truly a necessary part of your story. If you do choose to write about this topic, please add content warnings to your work.
Post under the readmore. Descriptions of abuse (all kinds), not too indepth or graphic, but still disturbing.
Disclaimer - This is a subject that should not be treated lightly in any medium. Before we get started, please take a moment to consider if you are using child abuse simply for shock value, or if it is truly a necessary part of your story. If you do choose to write about this topic, please add content warnings to your work.
This is just a brief overview. I’ll be covering this in much more depth as time goes on.
Under the jump because of descriptions of abuse. There are some fairly graphic examples hidden behind a link at the very end. If you just want the broad, theoretical strokes of what’s going on, and no examples, don’t click the link at the end.
I have a character who did not have much interaction with others during her childhood. Would this have any lasting effects on her?
CW: child abuse and extreme neglect are extensively discussed.
Being around otherpeople is CRITICAL for a child’s development.
Okay. So I’m going totalk about two levels of isolation here.
The first level is goingto be the Romanian Orphanage level of neglect.
The backstory is a bitcomplicated, but the upshot is that Romania suddenly had a hell of a lot ofunwanted children, most of which had to be raised in institutional orphanages.There were not enough caregivers for the amount of children they had to dealwith.
So what ended uphappening is that babies were left in their cribs, 24/7, and fed and changed ona strict schedule. The babies learned not to cry, because it didn’t make acaregiver come running any faster. They didn’t have toys; all they could do isstare at their hands or the ceiling.
That lack of stimulationwas found to have pretty significantly negative effects as the kids grew up. Thesekids are often physically stunted – they’re not as big as they should be fortheir age. Their brains are often actually physically smaller. They have lowerIQs. They struggle with language. They also have problems with attachment.
Things do start to getbetter if the character is put into a foster home quickly, but they may still have emotional and psychological problems (there are some links below for further research).
Now. The other level ofisolation I’m going to talk about is, for lack of a better term, the horrorstories. These are children who were raised in extreme isolation by severelyabusive caretakers, if they had caretakers at all.
Most children who arecompletely isolated or severely deprived of interaction have not learned, orhave extreme difficulties with, language.
They also havedifficulty with basic motor skills. There’s something in our brain called“mirror neurons.” @scriptbrainscientist will be able to elaborate more, butbasically it boils down to “Monkey see, monkey do.” We learn how to do thingsbecause we mimic the behaviors of people around us. If there’s no one aroundthe character, they won’t know how to do things. The character won’t know howto put on clothes or tie their shoes. They won’t know how to use a fork orknife. They may not even know how towalk.
Even if the character does have some social interaction, ifthey are mostly isolated, the level of interaction they get isn’t enough tofoster normal development.
Now. That’s not to saythat the character won’t ever be able to develop language and learn thoseskills. This kind of thing is not seen often enough for psychologists to makethat kind of a conclusion. But every report we’ve seen so far says that feralor isolated kids never reach the level of functioning of same-age peers.
The best-studied case ofa child being raised in isolation is that of a girl who was nicknamed “Genie.”
I’m putting the rest of this post under the jump because what was done to her is nothing short of horrific.
Okay, just as a heads up, I haven’t covered these two in class yet. I don’t know these as well, so please take them with a grain of salt.
These two disorders are weirdly kind of similar.
BOTH of these require social neglect – meaning that their caregivers have neglected them at some point when the character was a child.
They just have different reactions to that neglect; Reactive attachment disorder is when all the bad shit experienced is internalized, leading the character to be depressed and withdrawn from others.
Disinhibited social engagement disorder, on the other hand, is when the character externalizes their feelings, and becomes excessively and unhealthily social.
First, your child character needs to show a consistent pattern of being withdrawn and reserved behavior towards their caregivers. This is seen through BOTH:
There also needs to be problems in their social interactions and emotions, seen with two or more:
The child character also needs to have experienced abuse, in one or more of the following forms:
The neglect seen above needs to appear to be responsible for the child character’s problems.
The character can’t have autism.
The character needs to have begun showing symptoms before they’re 5 years old. The character needs to be older than 9 months.
Specifiers:
If the character has had these problems for more than 12 months, you add the specifier “Persistent”.
If the character has ALL the symptoms listed above, and at a high level, add the specifier “Severe”.
In short, the child character has been failed by their caregivers. So they won’t let anyone else close so they can be hurt again; or even have never learned how to develop those attachments in the first place.
The child character has to have a pattern of approaching and interacting with strangers, and has two or more of the following:
The child character also needs to have experienced abuse, in one or more of the following forms:
These symptoms must be distinguished from the impulsive symptoms seen in an ADHD diagnosis.
The neglect seen above needs to appear to be responsible for the child character’s problems.
The character needs to be older than 9 months.
Specifiers:
If the character has had these problems for more than 12 months, you add the specifier “Persistent”.
If the character has ALL the symptoms listed above, and at a high level, add the specifier “Severe”.
What developmental issues would someone that was abandoned as a toddler (3-4 y/o) have? Trust issues, extreme desire to please, mental illness down the road? Related: is RAD a real thing in adoptees? Finally, can postpartum depression last that long untreated after a child's birth? Thank you so much for this blog! All of the scripts are amazing!
As for post partum depression, 50% of people with it will have it for more than a year, and 30% will have it more than 3 years.
The rest sounds like a good question for @scriptsocialwork!
I’m still working on my post about the psychological effects of child abuse, but this is an excellent list for writers! (also a great blog. check ‘em out).
