Emotional Neglect and Child Development

Abstract

In this chapter, we briefly put the domain of organizational development aside and explore developmental psychology, in particular child development. Schuiling and I happened upon this domain during our research and were pleasantly surprised to find that it provided us with an entirely new perspective on issues we had struggled with in our OD practice (Kampen and Schuiling, 2005). The literature on child abuse and neglect helped me define what neglect in an organizational context is and how it can be diagnosed and treated. This chapter will focus specifically on those aspects of child abuse and neglect that are relevant to organization development problems, namely, the hallmarks of neglectful parents/caretakers, children’s responses to neglect, good and bad parenting styles, and effective treatment of neglectful parents and neglected children. For the purposes of this book, I will disregard physical abuse and focus solely on emotional abuse and neglect.