A feral child is a human child who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age. A feral child has little to no experience of human care, loving or social behavior, and of human language. Some feral children have been abandoned by people, usually their own parents, and in some cases this child abandonment was due to the parents’ rejection of a child’s severe intellectual or physical impairment. Feral children may have experienced severe child abuse or trauma before being abandoned or running away.
Feral children are sometimes the subjects of folklore and legends, typically portrayed as having been brought up by animals. Myths, legends, and fictional stories have depicted feral children raised by wild animals such as wolves, apes, and bears. A few examples of this would be Tarzan or Mowgli from Jungle Book. Legendary and fictional feral children are often portrayed as growing up with relatively normal human intelligence and skills and an innate sense of culture or civilization, and survival instincts; their union into human society is made to seem relatively easy, however this is not the case.
Feral children tend to lack the basic social skills that are normally learned in the process of development. For example, they may be unable to learn to use a toilet, have trouble learning to walk upright after walking on fours all their life, and display a complete lack of interest in the human activity around them due to not learning these things in the critical time of learning. They often seem mentally impaired and have almost unconquerable trouble learning a human language.
The Essay on Professional practice in children’s care learning and development
It is my understanding that in my continued professional development, as manager of my setting it is my role to ensure that myself and every member of the staff and management committee understand the values, principles and statutory framework that underpins service provision in children’s care, learning and development At all times in our centre the welfare of the child is paramount and we ...
The impaired ability to learn a formal language after having been isolated for so many years is often attributed to the existence of a critical period for language learning, and taken as evidence in favor of the critical period hypothesis. The mythical children are often depicted as having superior strength, intelligence and morals compared to “normal” humans, the implication being that because of their upbringing they represent humanity in a pure and uncorrupted state: similar to the noble savage.
There is little scientific knowledge about feral children. One of the best-known examples, the “detailed diaries” of Reverend Singh, who claimed to have discovered Amala and Kamala (two girls who had been “brought up from birth by wolves”) in a forest in India, has been proven a fraud to obtain funds for his orphanage. Child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim states that Amala and Kamala were born mentally and physically disabled.
