Dave Pelzer was born on December 29, 1960 in Daly City, California. He is the son of Stephen Pelzer, who was of Austrian and Irish descent, and Catherine Pelzer. Dave Pelzer was the second of five boys in the family. He has experienced a truly horrific lifestyle. As a child, he endured the horrors of child abuse, this included physical torture, mental cruelty, and was nearly starved to death. His mother referred to him as “it”, he was the only child that was abused. The rest of his brothers lived a happy typical life. Dave, on the other hand, was looked at as the family slave. He was forced to sleep in the cold, dark basement on a cot with no blankets or pillow. He had only one pair of clothes and they were all torn and worn out from over the years. It all started when Dave was about two years old.…
Prior to the twenty-first century, most cases that involved trauma towards a minor were not evaluated close enough to reveal the psychological and social damage children were experiencing. Experts believed children possessed an innate attribute that allowed them recover quickly from oppression or abuse. However, in the novel The Boy who was raised as a Dog, Bruce Perry exemplifies how despairing experiences can psychologically damage a child’s brain and leave permanent damage that guide dysfunctions in behavior and cognition. Perry urges how healing sessions and social interaction with positive role models, are key to help children cope with traumatic experiences that direct their life.…
This paper examines the diagnosis of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder as demonstrated by David Pelzer in his autobiographies A Child Called It and The Lost Boy, with a focus on the latter book. Dave is the son of alcoholic parents whose mother severely abused him while his father turned the other cheek. Dave has been subjected to torturous mind games, starvation, and physical abuse so horrendous that he is left scarred, bruised, and nearly dead. The staff at his elementary school eventually takes action and David is removed from his parents’ custody. From there, he spends his teenage years in various foster homes while he struggles with the emotional scars left by the trauma he endured. His search for answers to why he was treated this way and effort to understand the frightening nightmares and emotions he experiences becomes a long journey toward self-love and forgiveness.…
In Dave Barry's essay "Lost in the Kitchen" Barry shares his opinion on sexual equality through a personal experience with his family on Thanksgiving. In the conclusion paragraph a point is made that before women's liberation, men took care of the cars and women took care of the kitchen. Now after women's liberation, men no longer feel obligated to take care of the cars. By this, Barry is meaning to say that before women's liberation, women had their specific, "feminine" jobs and men had their "masculine" duties to take care of. After women were liberated, those roles were disrupted and women became viewed as more qualified to take on those more "masculine" responsibilities. At first, one can imagine that men might have felt their definite masculinity slipping away from them and been insulted, but as time has passed that pride has subsided and men are now giving in to the new role women play in society, or as Barry implies, men have not only succumbed to this, but have gotten lazy. I disagree that the balance of responsibility between men and women is weighted more heavily on women due to men's passive or lazy tendencies because especially in a family situation, there are too many variables for the blame to rest on just one gender.…
The Vietnam War was the “unpopular” war and was intensely criticized by the Australian people for the reasons stated in the poem, Homecoming, by Bruce Dawe. In the poem “Homecoming” by Bruce Dawe, Dawe identifies his personal concerns of the Vietnam War and then presents them through the use of poetic techniques. It is clear to us that Dawe’s foremost concerns are that of the number of dead, the lack of respect and the dehumanisation of the dead, and the careless attitude of the Government towards the War.…
Researchers also have begun to explore why, given similar conditions, some children experience long-term consequences of abuse and neglect while others emerge relatively unscathed. The ability to cope, and even thrive, following a negative experience is often referred to as “resilience.” It is important to note that resilience is not an inherent trait in children but results from a mixture of both risk and protective factors that cause a child’s positive or negative reaction to adverse experiences. A number of protective and promotive factors individually, within a family, or within a community may contribute to an abused or neglected child’s resilience. These include positive attachment, self-esteem, intelligence, emotion regulation, humor, and independence (Shaffer,…
In “Homecoming”, poet Bruce Dawe uses vivid visual and aural poetic techniques to construct his attitudes towards war. He creates a specifically Australian cultural context where soldiers have been fighting in a war in Vietnam, and the dead bodies flown home. However the poem has universal appeal in that the insensitivity and anonymity accorded to Precious lives reduced to body bags are common attitudes towards soldiers in all historical conflicts. Although Dawe makes several references to the Vietnam War, the sense of moral outrage at the futile, dehumanising aspects of war is a universal theme. He also speaks on behalf of the mute, dead soldiers who have no way of expressing their suffering and loss of hope. By “speaking for those who have no means of speaking”, Dawe ultimately exposes the brutal hopelessness of soldiers caught up in foreign conflicts and the shocking impact on families.…
Many foster youth do not graduate from high school, but with the bonds between foster families and the foster children, there will be a long success in their future. Some of them have their own stories that they would love to share with the world. “A young boy suffered from abuse and neglect and responded with outbursts, bad behavior and anxiety. His foster father gave him unconditional love and helped him through disruptive visits with his birth mother that would frequently set him back. The boy healed and improved greatly and yearned for a permanent home. For Christmas this year, his foster father gave him the greatest gift of love the boy could imagine.” “Five siblings were in need of adoptive homes. One of our foster parents recruited three other families to KidsPeace Foster Care, and together, the families adopted all five children through KidsPeace. They all live in the same town and most attend the same church, so the siblings get to see each other often and celebrate birthdays and holidays in a big happy group. One of the mothers candidly tells her unique story and discusses her motivation.” “Teenage mothers to be are often placed in foster care to ensure they learn how to care for themselves and their babies. In this case, the baby was born…
Due to many children being so displaced and neglected, it is hard to provide for children because foster homes are overcrowded. Due to lack of financial stability roughly 20,000- 100,00 children in the United States are discharged to live on their own while approximately 1,100 young adults are discharged and left to fend for themselves throughout the country.” Having reached the age, they are presumed to be productive, self reliant and fully self sufficient” (Retrieved January 2, 2013, from www.childrenaidsociety.org). Unfortunately, these young adolescents are looked at as a failure before even given a chance in society due to not growing up under the best circumstances. Already troubled by their childhood experiences of neglect, abandonment and abuse, the vast majority of young people leave the system without knowledge, skills, experience, habits and relationships that can engage them in connective and productive programs within their communities. With this in mind, it also stops them from being connected members of society.…
Often times it is easier to neglect the inevitability of death, but there is no neglecting the further rebuked notion of murder. The world is quite familiar with this utmost evil and shows no tolerance, but when it comes to the instance of a child who has committed the same crime, the rationale of justice is flipped on its head. There are many conflicts to be raised by two major viewpoints. Those who believe that adolescents deserve mandatory life in prison are understandably hurt and angered by their losses, but they disregard the sheer weight of certain particulars. When a juvenile is convicted of such an act, their age and environment in which they were raised prove to be reasonable mitigation for their horrid conducts.…
This was both a challenging and emotional topic and text to read for this student. Having come from a background of severe physical and mental abuse and having been a foster parent of over 60 children whom the majority has come from the same background, the material, examples and teaching is both familiar and refreshing to read and to comprehend and apply to our lives. This author only wishes he could have read this book twenty-five years ago, life would have been so much simpler.…
There were kids who were petrified of leaving home and kept it to themselves. Then there were the kids who acted like it was a big joke and fooled around. They turned their big brown name tags around so you couldn’t see their name and age. And finally, there were the kids, who were happy and relieved to leave home because they were abused and treated badly.…
Cited: Merryn, Erin. Stolen innocence: Triumphing Over a Childhood Broken By Abuse: a Memoir. Deerfield Beacch: Health Communications, 2004. Print.…
Lost boy is a follow up to Dave Pelzer's book “A Child Called It”. This Novel is an auto-biography of Dave Pelzer. In Pelzer's The Lost Boy, he answers questions and reveals new adventures through the emotional and intense story of his life as an adolescent child in the foster system. Now considered an F-Child (Foster Child), Dave is moved to five different homes. He suffers shame and experiences displeasure from those who feel that all foster kids are trouble makers and worthless of being loved just because they are not part of a "real" family. It follows his experiences in the foster care system. After being taken from his mother Dave goes from one foster home to another describing his life. I believe the title of the book (“The Lost Boy”) relates to Dave to feeling lost, as in alone. He does not have a family.…
Expectations. It’s an odd word. It means that you believe that something will have a certain outcome. It can be either good or bad. Most people tend to forget that though, and only associate it with the good things. In reality, most expectations don’t have the outcome you want them to. No matter how hard you try to meet everyone’s expectations, it isn’t always in the cards for you. It could be that you expect a good grade for your latest essay or that you will find your yet to be discovered talent. This short story shows this exactly.…