Parental NEGLECT can take on many forms. It might be neglecting a child’s physical need for proper nutrition — as in the case when a parent or parents capitulate to a child’s demands to only eat a handful of specific comfort food items that fail to offer them the right combination of vitamins and minerals sourced directly from food that allows proper brain function and physical growth or daily healthcare maintenance. It can be related to a parent or care unit failing to meet the physical needs of a child by denying them proper life essentials such as providing them with CONSISTENTLY secure, habitable shelter, a bed of their own, proper clothing and shoes, everyday personal essentials such as toothbrush / toothpaste / soap / shampoo / a hairbrush / deodorant, any food whatsoever, things like a proper backpack for school, money for books and school related functions, etcetera. Or, in serious cases, it might be overindulging a child while UNDERPARENTING. Parents who encourage age inappropriate egocentrism in a child do more damage to children, oftentimes, than if a parent is situationally abusive. Parents who refuse to teach children life skills like how to use silverware, how to behave in a respectful manner when dining out, how to properly groom or bathe themselves, or how to be respectful of other people’s time, feelings and personal property are guilty of abuse by neglecting PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITIES. In the case of Cluster B parents, a parent may willfully strive to deprive a child of contact with human beings outside their immediate social sphere, thereby neglecting to help a youngster meet the life demand of needing to learn how to interact with people in the outside world without fear. Parents who fail to teach their children things like culturally appropriate habits and mannerisms likely to help their youngsters succeed as adults are guilty of failing to hold up the social evolutionary compact. Child abuse by neglect produces adults who are likely to behave egocentrically with tunnel vision. It’s also likely to foster xenophobia (meaning fear of other or, in this case, others), limiting an adult child’s functional ability to readily and respectfully adapt pro-actively to a wide variety of social sphere influences and personal environment change settings. Children who are under parented by adults tend to come from toxic homes. Socio-economic status does NOT ensure a child won’t be psychologically, emotionally, physically, or spiritually neglected by abusive, willfully negligent, self-indulgent parents. A parent who allows a toddler to run wild, for instance, then fails to teach the little one proper social skills early on directly cultivates and nurtures traits in their offspring that lead to things like Oppositional Defiant Disorder in teens and Narcissistic Personality Disorder in adulthood. Adult children of abusive or neglectful parents typically have been neglected psychologically and emotionally as well as socially. If you fail to take the time to parent a youngster because letting them do or say what they want without requiring them to reflect or consider the impact of their words or behaviors choices on all they encounter is CHILD ABUSE BY UNDERPARENTING. The only person who benefits from underparenting a child is the grown adult human who elects to sacrifice the future well-being of their own child or children for the sake of their own short-term satisfaction, comfort, lazy indulgence, or emotions. It’s one thing to pick your battles with a willful child. It’s another to raise a baby in such a way that he or she becomes compulsively abusive to other people while believing not only are they entitled to do so but that they are being victimized by any person, professional organization, or group who fails to warm up to them or do their personal bidding upon demand at the culturally nurtured toxic adult child’s will. Having a neglectful parent is no excuse for an intelligent older child to behave poorly, but it is a key element that tends to influence the psychological development of all types of folks with personality disorders — including but not limited to the Cluster B cluster. The child neglected becomes an adult who NEGLECTS. Whether they neglect their love interest, family members, co-workers, or their own children, be mindful that pretending a true need for intelligent emotional or psychological or abusive behavior has no impact on an actor or the people they impact is gaslighting by denial. Bottom line, negligence in the form of social NEGLECT — by definition — is failure to use reasonable care, resulting in damage or injury to another.