A Child Called It – Personal Biography by Dave Pelzer
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“A Child Called It”
Dave Pelzer
A Child Called “It” is a personal biography by Dave Pelzer. He talks about his struggle to survive physical and emotional abuse by his mother. The story beings with the school where Dave attends finally reporting what has been happening to Dave to the proper authorities. Dave is finally a “free” child, no longer to be abused by his mother. The story also talks about how is life was before his mother began abusing him, he talks about all the happy memories that he went through. Dave then begins to tell about how his mothers discipline that eventually got out of control; extremely out of control. Daves mother is also an alcoholic and this contributes to his abuse. Also his father works as a firefighter and is gone a lot, and even when he is around, he really doesnt do a lot to help Dave; he ignores it as though maybe if he does this then its not really happening.
This book was a real eye opener. I think that its defiantely a must read for everyone. We all know that this stuff goes on in peoples lives everyday, but I think that we forget about it a lot of times just because we dont see it and/or it isnt really affecting our life; which is really sad. After reading this book though I do think about abuse more often and keep my eyes open for signs of abuse. I know at home when I worked in the elementary schools after school program, there were a lot of children whom I would say showed some signs of abuse. One child I did talk to a teacher about it and they said that they had been monitoring her for awhile, and that they had to be careful with the girl because they last time she was in a school and they reported he as an abuse case, the mother and father had moved away so that nothing could be done. This was frustrating to me because I wanted to do something right away, but couldnt for the childs sake. After reading this book, I wondering if thats why the teachers at Daves school took so long to report what was happening with him. I think that as teachers, you do need to be careful in reporting because you could be putting the childs live in more danger by reporting it too soon.
This book was a hard read, only because it was so sad! I think that it was good to be able to really see into someones