Bullying, neglect and violence leave marks that linger well into adulthood.

Childhood is described as a formative period. The entire span of childhood carries deep vulnerability. These years do not merely shape a person but they can make or break them. With the brain at its most malleable, childhood is when experiences, environments and relationships leave their strongest imprints. Love, gentle communication, companionship, care and time are not luxuries at this age. They are necessities. When they are present, they lay the foundation for a healthy mind and body. When they are absent, development may continue outwardly but something essential remains incomplete.

The deepest childhood wounds rarely announce themselves; they are subtle, quiet, persistent and overlooked. Harm enters gradually through humiliating words emotional neglect, physical punishment and abuse by parents or teachers. Homes where love is conditional or absent, classrooms where bullying is tolerated, body-shaming by relatives and violence framed as discipline becomes so normalized that children learn endurance instead of resistance. At that age, a child does not recognize these experiences as harm. They internalize them as truth. What is repeatedly seen, said or done becomes the lens through which they begin to understand themselves and the world.

When childhood is emotionally, physically or socially unsafe, harm accumulates rather than occurring in isolation. A tense home environment, betrayal in friendships, parental neglect, separation or death of a parent steadily undermines a child’s sense of security. In schools, this damage often intensifies. Teachers who punish instead of support, who shame academic weaknesses or rely on harsh discipline leave lasting imprints. Physical punishment by parents or teacher’s erodes self-esteem, fostering fear, shame and internalized failure that often persists into adulthood. Bullying becomes routine through humiliation, intimidation or public ridicule. Poverty becomes a source of mockery and religious identity becomes a basis for exclusion.

In many Pakistani schools, discipline has hardened into a system of cruelty rather than care. Government schools and Madaris often function less as spaces of learning and more as sites of psychological and physical control. Children are not encouraged to think, question or explore; their capacity to learn independently is steadily dismantled. Violence is so routine that parents rarely ask why their child was beaten. Some even request harsher punishment, believing fear to be an effective educational tool. Under such conditions, education cannot thrive. A mind conditioned by fear cannot think freely or creatively. Systems built on obedience may produce compliance but they do not produce thinkers.

Michel Foucault, French philosopher and historian, argued that institutions such as schools are not neutral spaces of learning but mechanisms of control. In Discipline and Punish, he noted that schools and similar systems “train bodies and govern souls” molding children to obey rather than think critically – a reality deeply reflected in the experiences of many Pakistani children.

For Shia children studying in Sunni-majority classrooms, exclusion is often more direct and more aggressive. They face intrusive questions about their faith, labelled as outsiders and in some cases explicitly declared non-Muslim. Friendships are withheld not because of behavior but because prejudice has already defined their worth. This hostility is not spontaneous, it is inherited. Parents transmit fear and bias to their children, teaching distance instead of acceptance and suspicion instead of understanding. Children absorb narratives that dehumanize others. Such thinking fractures communities and inflicts intergenerational damage. Yet, among younger generations, where understanding is slowly replacing intolerance and people are choosing to know one another rather than repeat inherited hatred.

When harm is sustained, a child’s ability to articulate beings to erode. Fear disrupts language. Many children unable to explain to their parents what unfolds in classrooms and corridors. Even when they try their experiences are misunderstood, minimized or met without meaningful intervention. Exposure continues and the child adapts not through healing but through endurance. Pain becomes embedded in daily life, treated as ordinary rather than alarming. What is lost in this process is irretrievable. Years meant for play, exploration, expression and learning are gradually replaced with fear, silence and premature emotional restraint.

Psychologist Alice Miller writes in her book, The Drama of the Gifted Child:

“What a child experiences silently in the depths of the soul is often more powerful than the lessons loudly taught by adults.”

I carried harsh memories from school, a place that made my childhood unbearably painful. I hated going there long before I understood why. I was bullied. My friend broke her friendship with me. At home my grandfather passed away. Academically, I began to fall behind, while my mother, burdened by the demands of a joint family, had little time to notice how deeply I was struggling. These experiences were more than enough to shatter a child’s confidence, self-esteem and sense of worth. When my grades declined, I was sent to tuition in the hope that I would improve. Instead, fear replaced learning. The tutor’s scolding escalated to physical punishment. I was slapped, beaten with a thick wooden stick and ordered to hold out my hands as pain was delivered as discipline. I cried, but I tried not to let my tears fall. Showing weakness felt like giving victory to power.

I often looked out of the window. Outside, birds gathered on a lush green tree – Free, loud and unafraid. Their flight became my escape. I wished I could be one of them untouched, unpunished, unreachable. Instead of asking why I was distracted, my tutor pulled my ear so violently it felt as though it had been torn. When I finally told my mother, her response was simple: you must not have listened to her. In that moment, something inside me collapsed.

The world called Vincent van Gogh mad, yet from confinement he painted The Starry Night, shaping an entire universe from the view of his asylum window. Isolation restricted his body, not his perception.

I was once a colorful, lively child – shy but curious. Those experiences slowly took my childhood away and turned me into a silent one. The harm I carried inward reshaped itself into social anxiety, emotional withdrawal, frequent zoning out and an increased discomfort in people’s company. Whenever a teacher addressed me in class, my body reacted before my mind could respond: my heartbeat would accelerate, my chest tightened and my words stammered before reaching my voice. Fatigue followed me constantly, both mental and physical. I stopped forming friendships and learned solitude not as preference but as protection.

Childhood harm does not need to be dramatic to be devastating. What is endured quietly often shapes adulthood more forcefully than anything openly explained or addressed. These are not individual failures but social outcomes shaped by families, schools and institutions that confuse discipline with domination and silence with success. Awareness allows compassion and compassion allows change. The marks left behind are not signs of weakness, they are evidence of survival. Healing, even delayed, remains possible but only when societies are willing to confront how deeply they have failed their children.

This is why today’s youth appears so broken and quietly lost. What we witness as anxiety, withdrawal or anger is often not rebellion or fragility but the unfinished weight of unsafe childhoods. A society that wounds its children should not be surprised when its youth struggles to stand whole.

The writer is an MS Applied Anthropology student at Bahria University, Islamabad, exploring social and cultural issues affecting youth today.