Feral Children
I've been reading about feral children lately. It seems a sad and bleak subject to be interested in I know, but it really says a lot about the human race. Or to be fair: about some human beings, specifically some parents. Feral children, or Wild Childs are rare cases of children who've been lost or (more often than not) purposefully neglected so that they grew up in isolation from human society. In some cases the children are raised by stray dogs. In all cases they did not fully regain their mental stability, and in the most severe cases never learned to speak.
When I first found out about Feral Children I was horrified and shocked. The first case I read about was a girl nicknamed Genie. In this case she wasn't lost in the wild, but was found in Arcadia, a suburb of Los Angeles. Her abusive parents had locked her in a room for more than ten years and she was thirteen!!!!!! No one talked to her, she wasn't given any books or toys, she was intellectually and sensorially deprived all her life. When she was found she was small for her age, and didn't know how to speak or interact normally.
Another case I read and watched a documentary about was Oxana Malaya. As a toddler one night her drunken parents forgot about her and she crawled out into the backyard. She was found six years later living in a kennel with dogs. She couldn't speak, was unaffected by extreme temperatures, and had picked up canine behaviors. In the documentary (which I have to warn it's dramaticized and borders on being exploitative) she is 22 years old. She's partially habilitated. She is able to speak, and is capable of leading a somewhat normal life though it is clear she's still in pain and not all there.
The most heart wrenching part of the documentary is when a doctor holds up brain scans of feral children next to scans of normal children. There were dark (empty) areas in various parts of their brains. This was the saddest part for me--realizing that these children lost parts of their brains (their lives, and their souls) because they have terrible, horrible monstrous parents. YES, I blame their parents. Why didn't Oxana's parents look for her? Or why did they give up? It wasn't as though Oxana Malaya was found far from her home. And Genie's parents were simply INSANE.
IT MAKES ME SOOOO ANGRY!#$%?!!!!!! If dogs are better at parenting than some people, those people ought to be neutered.
...
errr--that's my anger talking--RARRRR!!!! it makes me SO MAD!!!! I know that parents are human too, and perhaps they were in terrible pain to be so neglectful and abusive--still how could we as a society, let this happen? It certainly questions the boundaries between human and animals. Maybe animals are better--you don't see an animal killing off a member of their own species do you? Or (unless it was part of their development) purposefully leaving their cub to die in the wilderness?
Learning about feral children, I learned how fragile human development is and how incredible the human spirit persist for survival. Also it dawns on me that a person can be in so much pain that they are oblivious to everything else--and that it makes them capable of evil.
When I first found out about Feral Children I was horrified and shocked. The first case I read about was a girl nicknamed Genie. In this case she wasn't lost in the wild, but was found in Arcadia, a suburb of Los Angeles. Her abusive parents had locked her in a room for more than ten years and she was thirteen!!!!!! No one talked to her, she wasn't given any books or toys, she was intellectually and sensorially deprived all her life. When she was found she was small for her age, and didn't know how to speak or interact normally.
Another case I read and watched a documentary about was Oxana Malaya. As a toddler one night her drunken parents forgot about her and she crawled out into the backyard. She was found six years later living in a kennel with dogs. She couldn't speak, was unaffected by extreme temperatures, and had picked up canine behaviors. In the documentary (which I have to warn it's dramaticized and borders on being exploitative) she is 22 years old. She's partially habilitated. She is able to speak, and is capable of leading a somewhat normal life though it is clear she's still in pain and not all there.
The most heart wrenching part of the documentary is when a doctor holds up brain scans of feral children next to scans of normal children. There were dark (empty) areas in various parts of their brains. This was the saddest part for me--realizing that these children lost parts of their brains (their lives, and their souls) because they have terrible, horrible monstrous parents. YES, I blame their parents. Why didn't Oxana's parents look for her? Or why did they give up? It wasn't as though Oxana Malaya was found far from her home. And Genie's parents were simply INSANE.
IT MAKES ME SOOOO ANGRY!#$%?!!!!!! If dogs are better at parenting than some people, those people ought to be neutered.
...
errr--that's my anger talking--RARRRR!!!! it makes me SO MAD!!!! I know that parents are human too, and perhaps they were in terrible pain to be so neglectful and abusive--still how could we as a society, let this happen? It certainly questions the boundaries between human and animals. Maybe animals are better--you don't see an animal killing off a member of their own species do you? Or (unless it was part of their development) purposefully leaving their cub to die in the wilderness?
Learning about feral children, I learned how fragile human development is and how incredible the human spirit persist for survival. Also it dawns on me that a person can be in so much pain that they are oblivious to everything else--and that it makes them capable of evil.
posted by Zoey at 7:59:00 AM
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