Abstract
This chapter examines the history, description, classification, assessment, and treatment of feral children. It also offers information on prognosis and future research directions. Feral children are familiar figures in popular lore and literature. The story of children growing up alone or raised by wild animals, untouched by human society, has a global and persistent appeal. The idea of feral children may draw its appeal from their unusual position of occupying the gap between animal and human, an extension of the conceptual continuum running from civilization to savagery. By definition, feral children live outside of human contact, and therefore documentation of wild animals feeding and nurturing them does not exist. Reports of feral children have stated that they were discovered in the proximity of animals, but no credible accounts relate witnessing animals caring for children. More common than isolated children are the abandoned children. These individuals are so frequently encountered in some urban areas that they have been referred to as a group by the term children of the street. Children of the street have been deserted, entirely or largely, to their own caretaking or that of other children and sustain some of the physical and affective needs deficits borne by feral children. They may, therefore, be at risk for some of the same developmental delays and dysfunctions as feral children, albeit under less pervasive environmental stressors.
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Dombrowski, S.C., Gischlar, K.L., Mrazik, M., Greer, F.W. (2011). Feral Children. In: Assessing and Treating Low Incidence/High Severity Psychological Disorders of Childhood. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9970-2_5
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