Noticing Signs of Abuse

As an educator, in the beginning of your teaching career, you will start to notice the subjects your students thrive in, the subjects they have trouble in, their favorite colors, and friends they gravitate toward to play with at recess. As the school year goes on, you will become closer with your students and develop relationships that are unbreakable. You will begin to notice the smallest things about your students such as the colors of their shoes, the color of his or her eyes, and when the student walks in with a significant bruise on his or her inner thigh. You may think: “that does not look right” and this thought is most likely correct. According to Cynthia Crosson-Tower, an associate of the Office on Child Abuse and Neglect, Children’s Bureau (2003), seeing, acting upon, and stopping child abuse and neglect is a major part of an educator’s job. It is vital to know how to identify indicators of physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect of a child in a classroom, and how it will negatively affect the child in the future. Physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect all have their own set of mental and physical signs and symptoms that need to be noticed, documented, and brought up to an official.

Determining the signs of physical abuse in children can be difficult. The Department of Health and Human Services of Michigan defines physical abuse as “non-accidental injury to a child” (The Department of Human Services of Michigan, n.d). Physical signs of physical abuse include injuries that go unexplained, such as, “bruises, fractures or burns, injuries that don’t match the given explanation, and untreated medical or dental problems” (Mayo-Clinic Staff, 2012). The reason why classifying abuse from a bruise on a child may become difficult is because children are very active. He or she is going to be more susceptible to falling, when bruising from falling is more likely to occur. The way to tell the difference between normal bruising on a child and the bruising of an...