Consciously Rejected Children

Abstract

Children who are rejected give a clinical impression of making interpersonal relationships with difficulty. Wolberg (1944) described the consequences of parental rejection as depending upon the age of the child at the time of the rejection, the manner in which frustration was imposed by the parents, the nature and extent of compensatory gratification from others, and the success or failure of spontaneous reparative attempts on the part of the child to establish accepting relationships. Earlier studies of the child's reaction to rejection were marred by the tendency to define rejection too loosely, so that both conscious and unconscious forms were included as well as more frequent ambivalent parental attitudes, with a resultant wide scatter in the form of the children's responses. However, it has been shown by comparison with accepted children that the rejected child is uncommunicative, rebellious, less friendly, and bewildered about life (Symonds, 1938). Rejected children have been noted to be hypersensitive, and it has been speculated that this stems from feelings of insecurity and of not belonging to a permanent setting (Childers, 1935). The types of reaction to rejection were sub-divided into two broad groups—aggressive and submissive (Newell, 1934). Aggressive behaviour, including rebelliousness, disobedience, temper tantrums, quarrelsomeness, stealing and truancy occurred when the parental handling was consistently hostile; while submissive behaviour, including shyness, seclusiveness, cravings for attention, occurred more frequently when the parental behaviour was consistently over-protective (Newell, 1936). The aggressive response to hostile rejection was confirmed by Wolberg, who also thought that the symptoms of delinquency, truancy, enuresis and frustration intolerance should be interpreted in the larger framework of the child's attitudes towards himself and the world.