Competency #7: Read and Discuss A Child Called "It" with TS

Dave Pelzer's A Child Called "It" chronicles the utterly horrific abuse the author suffered as a boy. His mother seems to have had a severe mental disorder and singled out Dave, literally torturing him, while treating his brothers relatively well. For instance, she often failed to feed him, sometimes going several days without giving him so much as a morsel. Young Dave resorted to stealing food from his classmates. Once his teachers learned he was the culprit, they labeled him a thief and told his mother, never suspecting that there might be deeper reasons underlying his behavior. His mother in turn responded by beating him. When the stealing persisted, she started making him gag himself once he got home. In one particularly gut-wrenching scene, she makes him dig his vomited food out of the toilet and eat it again. Dave is so hungry that he doesn't resist.

As someone preparing to enter social work, my main takeaway from the book is that it's so important to scrutinize every situation, every detail. Social workers cannot take things at face value. A kid who is stealing food cannot simply be dismissed as a thief. More questions need to be asked. Had Dave's teachers asked more questions they could have saved him years of abuse.

Another takeaway is how much the social work profession has matured. The social worker we meet in the book is preposterously awful. She never talks to Dave alone. Rather, she asks Dave, right in front of his mother, with his mother's hand resting on his shoulder, if she ever beats him. Dave nervously answers no, and this is enough to convince the social worker. Awareness of child abuse has grown, and it is difficult to imagine this sort of professional negligence occurring today.