"Tlc's Wild Child; the Story of Feral Children" Essay

Ever since I was young, I knew something was different about me. I’ve always had an active imagination and would write all kinds of stories, sometimes through pictures and sometimes through words. Not until I was in first grade did I notice my writing was different than my friends. It didn’t bother me though because I was too young to realize something was wrong; I was just different. One weekend, after playing restaurant with my mom and brother, my mom contacted my teacher to talk about some concerns she had with my reading and writing. She was told that I seemed to be progressing on an age-appropriate level with my peers and that nothing appeared to be wrong. But my mom persisted, and insisted that I be tested for a reading disability. My dad is dyslexic and my mom, knowing it can be passed down, was watching for the signs in my older brother first and now me. After testing, one of SV’s school psychologists announced that my results showed I had a learning disability. I then went to my pedestrian to talk about it and then to a special learning center in Sewickley for further

Her mother received a BS in Child-Life Development at MSU and her father earned a Business Management of Sales at Rasmussen. Her mother never had any educational problems while she went to school. She always enjoyed reading and was advance compared to her peers. Nealy’s dad did struggle at school, he had to repeat 2nd Grade. Nealy’s mom didn’t know that her husband struggled with reading until Nealy was born. At night when Nealy’s dad would read to her, he would skip over words and would sound extremely “choppy.” According to Nealy’s mother, her husband claims he can read fine when reading to himself, he just “can’t read out-loud.” Therefore, Nealy’s mom does the majority of the bedtime reading to all their children. Nealy’s mother is an in-home daycare provider and her father co-owns a Bio Wood Processing Business. Since Nealy’s mom is a daycare provider, she works with all her “kids” on reading and writing every day. In the summertime, there is less emphasis on academics and more on outside exploration and

Society is a man made system that allows humans to have an orderly life, and it is important because of its provision of betterment of the world. It is essential for the world to have an organizational system like society, considering that we would struggle to better our lives without someone to take charge or lead us. Feral children are children who lack exposure to society and its factors. They do not experience society like most people do. Because of this, they tend to act wild and abnormal in comparison to normal social standards. In the book Lord of the Flies, the boys stranded on an island lack an organized society. Without society and social skills, it would be hard to find a way to better lives. We would not feel a need to fix the

I was surprised to learn about our documentary assignment yesterday. Watching documentaries is one of my favorite things to do, so naturally, I’m struggling with choosing which documentary to write my essay on. Recently, aside from the documentary I mentioned last week, I also had the opportunity to watch one of the most widely known, award-winning documentaries regarding child language development, Secret of the Wild Child.

Feral hogs have recently become a problem in middle Tennessee. Although these animals are not native to this area, it is believed that the hogs were brought in illegally for sport hunting. Although this move was ill advised, the wild hogs were trapped and brought into North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee. If not controlled, the overpopulation of these animals will continue to cause extensive damage for residents. Wild hogs have continued to overpopulate areas and in an effort to find new land and areas of food sources, have continued to move west. These hogs are becoming a nuisance as far west as Wilson County in Tennessee.

With a very young child, they may not coo or babble during infancy, produce first words late and lack some sounds, only produce a few different consonant and vowel sounds, have difficulty combining sounds, avoid using difficult sounds by replacing or deleting them, and experience eating problems. In older children, common signs are that they can comprehend language much easier than they can produce it, struggle more with language production when anxious, are hard to understand, sound choppy and monotonous, seem to grope to produce certain sounds, and have difficulty imitating speech, though they are more fluid and clear with imitation than with spontaneous production. At any age, a child may portray delayed language development, issues with expressive language, fine motor impairments, hypersensitivity, hyposensitivity, and difficulty learning to write (“Childhood Apraxia,” 2011). Other reported possible symptoms of CAS include extended reliance on nonverbal communication and omission of consonant sounds in the initial and final positions of words (“Apraxia: Symptoms, Causes,” n.d.).

I seemed like a normal child, but the only problem was that still couldn’t speak, not a word, not at all. So I had to throw fits to communicate my feelings and needs. My sister, who was only 19 months younger than me, had more words than me and was developmentally ahead of me when it came to Language/Social development. She did more stuff

Susan Wiley, or most commonly known as Genie the Wild Child was born on the 18th of April 1957. She was the fourth child of Clark and Irene Wiley and was one of two children that survived childhood. Her parents were married in 1944 Clark was 20 years his wife’s senior and their marriage was riddled with domestic violence. Their first two children were both suspiciously killed before their first birthday. It was reported that Clark Wiley extremely disliked children and was very mentally unstable. The third of the Wiley children John lived with Clarks mother Pearl, when she was killed in a hit and run accident Clark held his son responsible which only added to his fragile mental health.

The biggest obstacle that I have encountered in my ability to read and write are my learning disabilities. I’ve went through 18 years of my life before they were identified, and they have caused me so much frustration. I couldn’t understand why other kids could read out loud so well and I couldn’t. I couldn’t understand why it took me so long to read only a few pages of a book when other kids were at the end of the chapter. I had no idea why I couldn’t even sit down to write a single paper when other kids were doing their essays in a span of a couple hours.

Learning disabilities are a life long struggle but if caught at a young age and early intervention takes place. The stress on the child and family is greatly reduced. Learning disabilities spread to every part of a child’s life affecting them socially. Teachers must remain professional and refrain from calling students lazy as in Adams case. A good teacher or specialist can demystify a learning disability and help a child’s

From the diaries of Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard, The Wild Child is a movie made in 1970, with a setting in France from the18th century, and based on a child who had lived in nature his whole life without any human contact. Itard, a well known French doctor for working with deaf-mutes, had taken in this feral child under his care for the purposes of his studies on the child’s intellectual and social education. Given the time period of the movie Itard had taken the “wild-child” in under his own care, and helped teach the child to be more civilized, even though he went against the beliefs of how mentally retarded children were to be taken care of during the 18th century. Although most of the medical doctors who had been in contact with the feral

For Bobby, this wasn’t an option due to the fact that he could hardly hear. When Bobby was about to turn three years old his parents had become increasingly concerned about his progress with speech. He was making sounds, but wasn’t forming words correctly, and he slurred a mass of noises together when he got excited or needed something. His family realized that he would only respond to their words if they put their faces right in front of Bobby’s when they spoke to him. After his parents’ concerns grew and they spoke to doctors, they determined that Bobby had been reading lips since age one, and had been trying to make words, but was unsuccessful due to the fact that he had no sense of hearing in his left ear, and his right ear was impaired as well. After multiple surgeries, the hearing in his right ear was significantly strengthened, and he was immediately put in to many special programs to help him catch up on his speech, and equally important, his ability to read. Due to the fact that he did not have a relationship with words for the first two years of his life, “independent literacy” became a task that would haunt him for the rest of his school days.

Humans require nurturing and human interaction in order to live a normal life. Once an infant is born, a parent cares and watches for the child. The parents teach the child how to communicate, walk, and know what’s right and wrong. Humans require their humanness through social interaction. Without socializing, a human can be brought up differently. Even though children are biologically human, they don’t have the instincts or natural drive that makes them human. Social interaction is needed such as personality, love, freedom, justice, right and wrong, and reality. Humans are the social creations of society. For example, feral children. There are hundreds of documentations on cases of feral children all throughout history. These feral children had been raised without human interaction or by other animals they have come in contact with. There was a case in 1974 about a young boy whose story was similar to Tarzan. In central Africa, he was discovered at only six years old with a group of gray monkeys. For many years, he still remained a monkey by eating only fruits and vegetables and jumping up and down in excitement. Also another case with a young girl named Anna. Throughout her life she lived in seclusion and loneliness. Her grandfather refused to acknowledged her existence while her mother ignored her and kept her in an attic. Once she was discovered by a social worker they

But what if we were completely untouched by society, isolated from all forms of humanity? Without other people to interact with and learn from, babies would grow to be nothing more than a wild animal. Every human being is born with the potential to develop into an intelligent, social creature, but without human influence a person can never develop into what we consider to be a member of human society. One can clearly see this through the reports of feral children. There has been only a few cases reported and very few studied. In cases from the past feral children are reported as wild children who could not speak or communicate in anyway. These children bit, scratched, growled, and walked on all fours. In addition to this primal behavior, they ate grass, ravenously tared apart small animals and devoured the raw meat. The most shocking quality of the children was their apparent lack of sensitivity to pain or cold. (Henslin 66-7) The most famous case of a feral child was “The wild boy of Aveyron” in 1798. At first this case would have been written off as just another folk tale, but a French scientist, Jean Marc Gaspard Itard, conducted immense studies of the

The definition of the word feral children is undomesticated children. It has been a proven case that young children cannot survive on their own in the wild they are merely adopted by animals that choose to love them and want to help the children and teach them their way of life. An animal can sense when they’re in danger but when these children pose no threat all they want is devotion, love, protection they didn’t receive from the parents or guardians that abounded them.