Forgotten Children: Neglected And Left Behind

Today we want to talk about forgotten children. Those children who were not loved by their parents. The children who were always left behind and who grew up lonely. If a child’s childhood has been stolen and love denied, they will be stuck there for decades to come as an adult. There is something in these people that is still tied to that love-hungry and angry child that they once were. And some of them remain trapped in this childhood trauma their entire lives.

The book Living Together, Growing Together (original title: Parenting from the Inside Out ) by the psychiatrist and professor Daniel J. Siegel provides the perfect term for forgotten children: culture of shame. Behind these words is a dark reality that we are often unaware of.

We are talking about the young children who, ashamed and confused, wander through life because they do not live in a typical family. They receive no appreciation, compassion, care or security.

Forgotten children and the culture of shame

Forgotten children have no meaning in their home, they just don’t matter. It is those children who ask and never receive and those who have learned that crying is useless. It’s the children who have never seen each other in their parents’ eyes or felt their embrace. Forgotten children never had a real and authentic home. They never received a hug or caress that assured them that everything would be fine. Nobody taught them to believe in magic, in the universe and of course in themselves.

These children of the culture of shame get lost in the abyss of uprooting, anger and silence. Although this seems like a very sad and harrowing scenario, you have to know that it is very common in our society. Believe it or not.

Forgotten children, neglected lives

When you think of forgotten children, dysfunctional families certainly come to mind. These are environments where physical and verbal abuse, immature parents, and mental trauma are virtually the order of the day. It is family environments that are characterized by emotional imbalance, insecurity and fear and in which children are marginalized.

At this point we need to clarify something very important: Forgotten children live much closer to you than you would think. One could even live in your direct neighborhood. Maybe in the chic, modern house with three floors. Or that child with their parents, who are always so friendly and always have a smile on their face. You may see the parents holding a silent child by the hand and you may notice a hidden sadness in their eyes when they are brought to or picked up from school.

Or maybe the child has their own bunch of keys and you watch them go in and out of the house alone because both parents are at work all day. Then they come home tired and have no more energy to deal with or listen to their child. None of this should ever happen.

Although physical violence is not involved in such situations, the dysfunctions in these families are fairly obvious. Because this, too, is a form of abuse: the lack of real love, the lack of a conscious and present parent, the lack of feelings for the child. 

Nobody should have to live alone in a corner

Nobody should have to live completely lonely in a dark room without affection. When a child has spent their childhood in an environment that was full of gloomy shadows and without affection, this leads to internal conflicts in the child, which can take decades to resolve. Interestingly, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross wrote in her book What Death Can Teach Us that people who have had a traumatic childhood have to go through a very specific kind of grief.

The Swiss-American psychiatrist explains that it’s like starting an operation on a series of disordered emotions hidden in boxes. Every box gets messier the deeper you go into it. It’s a chaotic inner world where everything exists at the same time: anger, anger, disappointment, neglect and depression. 

The forgotten child often becomes an inaccessible adult, a person who isolates himself and cannot enter into lasting and deep relationships. That’s because, in a way, such people still live in that culture of shame. In that world where they keep wondering what they have done that they are not worth loving. Because forgotten children have never received the love that is necessary to build and grow as human beings.

All children deserve loving care and affection

Nobody deserves to be deported, forgotten and unloved in a corner. And certainly not children. Children deserve to be looked after with loving words and gestures. They deserve your time and attention even after you’ve had a long day. They also deserve your infinite patience and comfort.  

We would like to close this article with an appeal: Let’s invest together in a more conscious upbringing. We all need to reduce the number of forgotten children who have been deprived of their childhood. Think about the consequences your actions will have on the rest of your child’s life.