feral children

(noun)

A feral child is a human child who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age, and has no experience of human care, loving or social behavior, and, crucially, of human language.

Related Terms

Examples of feral children in the following topics:

  • Feral Children

    • Some feral children have been confined in isolation by other people, usually their own parents.
    • Feral children may have experienced severe child abuse or trauma before being abandoned or running away.
    • The fact that feral children lack these abilities pinpoints the role of socialization in human development.
    • Tragically, feral children are not just fictional.
    • Analyze the differences between the fictional and real-life depictions of feral children

  • Deprivation and Development

    • Thus, social deprivation may delay or hinder development, especially for children.
    • Feral children provide an example of the effects of severe social deprivation during critical developmental periods.
    • Feral children are children who grow up without social interaction.
    • In several recorded cases, feral children failed to develop language skills, had only limited social understanding, and could not be rehabilitated.
    • Attachment theory may explain why social deprivation has such dire effects for children .

  • Elements of Socialization

    • Such children are called "feral" or wild.
    • Some feral children have been confined by people (usually their own parents); in some cases this child abandonment was due to the parents' rejection of a child's severe intellectual or physical impairment.
    • Feral children may have experienced severe child abuse or trauma before being abandoned or running away.
    • Feral children lack the basic social skills which are normally learned in the process of socialization.
    • There are, unfortunately, a number of examples of such children that have been well-documented, including:

  • Human Language Development

    • Humans, especially children, have an amazing ability to learn language.
    • Skinner believed that children learn language through operant conditioning; in other words, children receive "rewards" for using language in a functional manner.
    • He also believes children have a natural need to use language, and that in the absence of formal language children will develop a system of communication to meet their needs.
    • 9 years and older: Children understand almost all forms of language.
    • One of the canonical case studies that supporters of the critical-period hypothesis turn to is Genie the "feral child," a young girl born in 1957 who, due to horrible abuse and neglect, never learned a language.

  • Case Studies

    • Little Albert: John Watson's study of classical conditioning in a 9-month-old boy named Albert examined whether it was possible to condition an otherwise emotionally stable child to fear a stimulus that most children would not find fearful.
    • Genie: The case study of a child who was raised in total isolation and thought of as "feral."

  • Child Labor

    • These laws do not consider all work by children as child labor; exceptions include work by child artists, supervised training, certain categories of work such as those by Amish children, and others.
    • In coal mines, children would crawl through tunnels too narrow and low for adults.
    • Especially in textile mills, children were often hired together with their parents.
    • As a result, by 1910, 72 percent of American children attended school.
    • Half the nation's children attended one-room schools.

  • Pathogenic Escherichia coli

    • Common routes of transmission include unhygienic food preparation, farm contamination due to manure fertilization, irrigation of crops with contaminated greywater or raw sewage, feral pigs on cropland, or direct consumption of sewage-contaminated water.

  • Children of Divorce and Impact of Divorce

    • Children at this age have more of a difficult time adjusting to the parental divorce than younger or older children.
    • Often children experience feelings of anger, grief, and embarrassment.
    • Teens experience some of the same feelings as school-aged children.
    • Constance Ahron, who has published books suggesting there may be positive effects for children, interviewed ninety-eight divorced families' children for We're Still Family: What Grown Children Have to Say About Their Parents' Divorce.
    • The best practice to avoid problems for children is to spend more or equal time with them while minimizing the amount of transitions for the children.

  • Skin Color in the South

    • Because of the mother's status, those children were born free and often married other free people of color.
    • The result was numerous mixed-race children.
    • Sometimes planters used mixed-race slaves as house servants or favored artisans because they were their own children or the children of their relatives.
    • Planters who had mixed-race children sometimes arranged for their children's education, even sending them to schools in the North, or securing their employment as apprentices in crafts.
    • Some planters freed both the children and the mothers of their children.

  • Educational Psychology

    • School psychology applies educational psychology, along with the principles of clinical psychology, to treat children's learning and/or behavior problems.
    • Each looks at how children progress through learning stages as they age.
    • Educational and school psychologists can use these stages to assess how children learn and what interventions are necessary to help them progress most effectively.
    • It was at this first clinic that children with learning and/or behavior problems were assessed and treated to help improve their educational potential.
    • Arnold Gesell is noted as being the first official school psychologist; he evaluated children and made recommendations for the special education of exceptional children.