Understanding Emotional Neglect in Children

As practitioners, when children’s behaviour is disruptive or unusual this instigates a response. Such changes are overtly present and generate immediate action, with safeguarding a key part of our assessment process. We are prompted to build a collective picture in order to try to explain such changes.

However, some children don’t shout or cry for help. They don’t act out or storm off. Instead, they fade into the background. They are polite, quiet, and rarely cause a fuss.

Yet, something is not quite right. It may be in the way they avoid eye contact, brush off praise or seem to not to expect positive interaction. This is a form of emotional neglect, and it is one of the most overlooked forms of harm a child can experience.

Emotional Neglet

Emotional neglect doesn’t always present as direct abusive action; it can be about what is not being done. No comfort offered when a child is upset, interest in how they are feeling, no offers of encouragement, or consistent parental attention and support.

The impact of this kind of abuse leaves its mark. Unaddressed, children may grow up believing their feelings don’t matter or be made to believe that they are too demanding.

Sadly, when this neglect is not identified and where there is no help to process what they are experiencing, children often learn to hide the impact of this abuse.

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)

Emotional neglect is one of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) recognised in long-term studies on child development. These are events or conditions that can deeply affect a child’s wellbeing, especially when they go unsupported. Other ACEs include domestic violence, substance misuse at home, parental mental illness, and physical or sexual abuse.

The more ACEs a child faces, the greater their risk of poor mental health, lower attainment, and long-term health issues later in life. One or two ACEs, if left unacknowledged, may significantly impact on their wellbeing and influence how a child sees themselves and the world. Emotional neglect is often the most hidden harm, but it is just as harmful as other types of abuse. Recognising this is an essential element of child protection training.

Signs of Emotional Abuse

Children affected by emotional neglect rarely draw attention to themselves. But there are signs which may indicate presence of this abuse such as:

• Reluctance to speak up, even when help is clearly needed
• Discomfort with expressions of praise or emotional warmth
• Flat, emotionless responses, or indeed the opposite e.g. intense feelings with no obvious trigger
• Difficulty making or keeping friends
• Extremely independent or avoidant behaviour, where children will say they are fine, even when they are not
• Struggling to name their emotions, or understand others’ emotions

Behaviours relating to emotional neglect may individually seem low-level on the surface, but the collective pattern can tell a deeper story.

These children are rarely ‘on the radar.’ They may not present as disruptive or defiant and are unlikely to have outward public displays of challenging behaviour.

Many children learn to keep their feelings to themselves sometimes due to no response or a negative unsupportive response when they didn’t. Some are caring for parents or younger siblings. Some live in homes where survival, not connection, is the priority.

In school, they blend in. It is their way of coping but that doesn’t mean they are okay.

Above all if something doesn’t seem right, even if you are not sure quite what that is, speak to your DSL. Safeguarding concerns don’t need to come with evidential proof, they often start with a feeling, a different pattern, or a worry that something just doesn’t seem right. Your role isn’t to investigate, it is to notice and report.

Unlike other forms of abuse, emotional neglect may be hard to identify but the action of a caring adult can keep a child safe and give them the tools to build resilience to cope with the trauma of adverse childhood experiences.

SSS Learning

7 July 2025