Child Abuse

Children need to be carefully watched for tell-tale signs of physical, emotional, sexual abuse and neglect. These are serious issues that affect approximately 29,000 children just in Ontario.
On the child abuse prevention website they list signs that should be watched for in children to determine if they are being abused. They list things like; overly-compliant, to well mannered, extreme attention seeking behaviour, poor peer relationships, using violence as a subject for writing or art, runaway attempts ect.
There are at least 100 different physical and behavioral indicators that could be linked to abuse of a child. With this in mind, it is hard to determine whether a child is actually being abused or not. The site says that these signs alone do not prove abuse or neglect and children should be assessed by a professional to make the call of abuse.

Personally, I would be less inclined to call child services if I only saw a few of these signs, especially if none of them were visual. It is more difficult to tell if a child is being abused if there is no physical signs showing the abuse. Unless I knew the family well I would not feel comfortable prying into their lives on a hunch of them abusing their child. Maybe this it why so many children keep getting abused, because people don’t want to stick there nose where they think it doesn’t belong. In the end, it is not your pride or status with the family that suffers, it is the child.