Dave Pelzer: The Misfortunate Child

A Child Called “It” brings our attention to mental abuse that adults may inflict on a human being and in this particular case, a child. David’s mother respects the family’s dogs more than she respects her own son. The dogs are fed every day, yet she attempts to starve David. Although David has two other brothers,

Although the reading level of A Child Called “It” by Dave Pelzer wasn’t difficult, processing the horror of the events that inspired the story was. People who experience traumatic situations can often recall the events with sharp clarity, which is exactly what Pelzer did. Riddled with grim details, the text takes readers on a journey through Dave Pelzer’s troubled early years. Through his meticulously documented experiences, readers get a perfect view into the torture that shaped his childhood. Although painful, the descriptions give students the opportunity to make observations and apply different approaches about development to Pelzer’s harrowing tale.

As a child Dave Pelzer was brutally beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother; a mother who played tortuous, unpredictable games that left one of her sons nearly dead. She no longer considered him a son, but a slave; no longer a boy, but an 'it'. His bed was an old army cot in the basement, his clothes were torn and smelly, and when he was allowed the luxury of food it was scraps from the dogs' bowl. The outside world knew nothing of the nightmare played out behind closed doors. Dave dreamed of finding a family to love him and call him their son. It took years of struggle, deprivation and despair to find his dreams and make something of himself. A Child Called 'It' covers the early years of

In 1995, David Pelzer wrote a book describing his childhood, a book that is highly recommend as a must read. The book starts off with a happy home and quickly turns into his very own nightmare. Pelzer is a survivor of child abuse. This story is so nauseating that while reading it you find found yourself praying that his parents would rot in hell for all eternity.

Through his experiences, Dave Pelzer struggle to find his self-existences and self-worth as a human being. The struggle for self-existence and self-worth is depicted in his novels A Child Called “It” and The Lost Boy. The two novels discuss about the autobiography of Dave Pelzer. The autobiography of Dave Pelzer‘s life highlights issues concerning the youth. His novels, A Child Called “It” and The Lost Boy demonstrated the awareness of abuse and mistreatment in the homes of family members and sometimes non-family related members. Pelzer‘s story is not the first of many stories to depict a child trying to survive in a home where there is many afflicted injuries. In other words, the afflicted injuries represented abuse. The work of Pelzer suggests

A Child Called “It” is a powerful book written by Dave Pelzer about his childhood and the hardships he encountered with his family, peers, and community. Middle childhood can be a life altering point in a young child’s life, which many theorist have studied over the years. This paper will review a few of those theorist thoughts, and how their theories apply to young David’s childhood. The theorist work that will be covered will be Bronfenbrenner and his ecological systems model, Piaget’s theory of development, and lastly Kohlberg’s theory of moral reasoning. It is important to understand what was going through David’s mind as he dealt with this trauma and how he was able to survive it.

     The conflict of the story was Dave’s mother. She was cruel and unloving. She would drink and abuse Dave. For some reasons she never beat any of her other kids. Every time he stood up to her she would tell him he was a nobody or an “it”. She did cruel things for no reason. For example one time she tried putting him on the stove to burn him. Other times she would make a gas out of ammonia and Clorox in the bathroom and lock him in there for hours. The climax of the story is when people at school start noticing cuts and bruises on David. When a social worker is sent to his house, his mother starts treating him with love and pretends she’s sorry. Dave believes it and doesn’t say anything when the social worker comes. Dave thinks his dreams have come true and is very happy not knowing when the social

At this point, Dave is two different people. One is the normal, cheerful, and innocent Dave. The other, is what Dave refers to as: “The Boy who’d escaped from Wolves.” (Lehane 300) whom is the one that is suffering from the trauma. Fast forward a little bit and Dave is brought on to kill a pedophile by The Boy.

abuse he endured at the hands of a figure that should represent security and comfort-his

A Child Called It, is an astonishingly horrific true story of “one child’s courage to survive”. Once said “Such a story cannot fail to move.” this is exactly how I felt about this book. Dave Pelzer the author and protagonist of A Child Called It tells the story of his life as one of the worst seen cases of child abuse in the state of California. Dave’s mental strength and resilience is what truly drives the theme of the story and the physical and mental abuse that he had to endure.

There are situations in life where trusting other people can save them from ending up dead. Dave Pelzer's biography, “A Child Called 'It'” is about the time period and the situations he had gone through when growing up. Throughout the book, he explains the horrific experience of being beaten, starved, and much more by his unstable mother. He shows how there are times where he goes and trusts others to help himself escape from the torture. Throughout “Running out of time” by Margaret Peterson Haddix, many of the characters also use their trust in one another to save others.

Dave had three brothers who never once were abused; his mother chose only to torture him. Throughout his terrible childhood, Dave somehow managed to maintain a hopeful outlook on life and somehow kept his will to survive.

“It’s useless Dave,” my aunt confessed, “She loses every time we play. Hasn’t she learned?” As their conversation continued on, I blocked out all the horrid filled memories from the game. I created a brand new slate. With this thinking, I was ready to play. I was ready to win.

In A Heartbreaking Work of a Staggering Genius part IV, readers like myself, get a look inside the battle of being Dave. We have seen him as caregiver, a brother, a boyfriend of sorts, and now a man who was chosen to be a father to his younger brother. Most parents battle with the idea of how to parent and typically have time to prepare on the type and style of parenting they would choose, Dave didn’t have the luxury of preparing for this moment. None of his friends, this far, are parents and so, he has no one to discuss the rights and wrongs, no absolute mentor in the world of parenting, one of the hardest and sometimes unrewarding roles a person can have.

The Lost Boy was written by David Pelzer. David pelzer was born in California and was abused by his Mother in childhood, he is currently 55 years old. The genre of this book is an autobiography because it is written by David Pelzer himself. The age group of this book is anywhere from about 13-18 the years of your life where you begin to mature. Dave is rescued from his mother. He makes a