A Child Called It

A Child Called â€Å"It† is a true story based on one of the most severe child abuse cases in California history. It is a twisted, brutal, and emotional book about the childhood of the author Dave Pelzer and his alcoholic mother who played many sick games on him as a child. It is about his struggles everyday to live and go on and try to beat his mother in her games. Until he is one day taken away by the Daly City Police Department and put in custody of the San Mateo Juvenile Department. His mother, Catherine Pelzer, started out as the perfect mother. Loving, caring, fun, nice, and she and her husband, Stephen, took Dave and his siblings on many trips to different places in California and all around the United States. Until one day things changed in the Pelzer household, Catherine and Stephen began arguing. The arguing caused Catherine to take all of her pent up aggression out on Dave, which is when the abuse started. She first began the abuse by burning him on a gas stove and then the abuse got much worse and she began playing â€Å"games† on him and not feeding him until his chores were done in a certain time. If they were not done in the allotted time, he was not fed that day. His father first began trying to help Dave, by sneaking him food whenever he was home from work and trying to convince Dave that things would get better in the Pelzer household. Until one day, he was caught. When Stephen was caught, arguing broke out and the â€Å"games† played on Stephen became a lot worse and more brutal than ever before. Stephen Pelzer began not coming home after work but would instead drink all night at bars and stay at hotels to avoid the arguing with his wife. Dave Pelzer,the protagonist, first began scared that the beatings and the â€Å"games† would never stop. He began to tell himself that he couldn't give up and that he had to try his mother at her own â€Å"games† and try to survive everyday or his mother would end up killing him. But as time went on and he was beginning to be fed less and less, he decided to come up with different plans to feed himself everyday. So he came up with the plan that everyday he was going to get to school extra early and steal food out of the other children's lunchboxes. Then one day children began complaining that they had food missing and then then the principal decided that Dave was stealing the food. So the principal called his mother, and the beatings gotten severely worse. Another plan he came up with is that during his lunch hour, he was going to go the grocery store and steal food during the hour. But this plan did not last long when he was caught by the manager, and he called the school and he was then reported to his mother and the beating got even worse. In the end, the nurse saw all the wounds that his mother had inflicted on him and the nurse and the principal talked about it. They then decided that they would report his wounds to the police department. The San Mateo Juvenile Department then took custody of Dave and he was removed from the household. His mother was never arrested but Dave was moved into foster care and he was never abused again. A child called â€Å"it† I don’t believe that anyone could read this book and not be disturbed it. It is a poignant and heart wrenching book of one child’s great misery at the hands of his extremely â€Å"ill† mother.The types of abuse that were inflicted upon him were horrific and terrifying to read about, let alone to have suffered through. I had to pause several times in the reading just to take a breath and try to absorb that anyone could have endured such horrors and survived it. It often brought me to tears and shock from the sheer sadness of it. David Pelzer’s writings were clear, concise, and held back no punches.At times, I felt myself filled with rage at the injustice and cruelty this man bore as a helpless child and the incredulity that it was permitted to go unchecked for so long. It seemed so inconceivable that no one interfered or made any attempt to stop it from family to public officials. This did not happen in the Dark Ages but in the 1970’s in California a nd in a country which was and is supposed to be a nation of freedom and enlightenment.How could the system have so totally and miserably failed this child? The â€Å"why† of that was still a mystery to me when I had reached the conclusion of the book? The only answer I could come up with was that no one could be bothered until it just finally became so evident that it could no longer be ignored. That, in itself, is almost as dire a tragedy as the misery and pain this child had to feel and live through.First question: A discussion of how this book impacted you emotionally and cognitively.The first real reaction I had was to the way the boy felt so unworthy in the beginning chapter of the book. This is a classic sign of child abuse, where it becomes the purpose of the abuser to demean and belittle the abused until they have no self confidence left or any sense of personal dignity. A human being that believes in themselves will fight back and refuse to be submissive.The motherâ €™s constant spew of criticism was intended for just that purpose so that David would not try to oppose her and would suffer through her abuse without fighting her. It gave her a sense of power over him, ill regardless of the fact that she was an adult and he was a child where the physical odds were against him.As each stage of the abuse became more violent and degrading as well as life threatening, my shock grew the further I read into the book. At points, it was hard to believe that a mother could be so uncaring of her child. Her coldness and lack of guilt amazed me but David’s mental and emotional fight to preserve his sanity and survival awed me more.When she broke his arm was horrible but to make him suffer through the night just so she pass it off as a fall off a top bunk and therefore, in her mind, take away any risk that she might be held accountable for it, impressed upon me just what a callous coward she was. Yet that incident seemed to pale in the mockery of th e stabbing where she simply bound his wounds and let him heal at home without any medical help.She knew if she took him to the hospital that there would questions and reactions and she would come under suspicion but in truth, the saddest and most despicable action came from his father when David turned to him for help and the man simply told him to go back and finish the dishes before the mother noticed.He let his child stand there and bleed on the carpet and did nothing. Why? Because he was afraid of his wife and her mouth! He put his comfort over the safety of his child and that is unbelievable that any loving parent would do that!I could better understand David’s siblings’ withdrawal out of fear of the mother but the father and the grandmother, both adults, failing to act in David’s defense was almost beyond comprehension.The malicious way that the mother taught her youngest son to view his older brother was feasible because a child, especially a very young o ne, reacts to the way they are taught. He was blameless in a way and more so than David’s older brothers. It brought forth the question to my mind as to why â€Å"just David† and not the other boys?Why were they allowed to eat and have privileges and David wasn’t? What was it about David that made his mother single him out as the one to be despised and abused? These were questions that the book never quite answered in my opinion. Of course, the book was written from the first person point of view, which of David and in only being a child, how would he know what caused his mother to turn on him and treat him so abominably?Second question: A discussion of the instances of where people could have stopped the maltreatment but did not.This question goes back to the instance of the father in particular. He was the only other adult in the house and it should have fallen on him to stop the abuse when it first began. Despite the fact that his wife hid the abuse from him in the beginning and made David never reveal it to his father, how could he have not noticed? With the mother denying the child food, the boy would have grown thinner and wan with an unusual lack of energy or vibrancy normal to a child David’s age.The father would have also had to see how the child clung to him when he was home. Then as time progressed and the father did openly admit to what was happening, why did he not stop it? If he had been a truly loving and caring parent, he would have taken immediate action to stop it, no matter how much he cared about his wife.He simply did not want to â€Å"rock the boat†, to use an old adage. He chose to ignore the situation and pretend that it was not happening. David was alone in a world that he was too small to be able to defend himself in.