To return to Convening's homepage, click here.

To return to Convening XXV's Table of Contents, click here.

Hearts that Darken Too Soon: An Examination of Youth Violence

Caroljean Kores Rodesch CICSW

Family Services

300 Crooks St.

Green Bay, WI 54301

crodesch@execpc.com

This presentation examines youth violence as a developmental model, begun in early childhood and continuing through to adolescent or pre adolescent acting out. With the ever-lower age of those committing violent acts, the time has come to examine violent tendencies and thinking in small children not just adolescents and adults. Much as crisis intervention practice has recognized the importance of crisis prevention, identification of crisis prone individuals and crisis producing situations, those wishing to deal with youth violence must look at precursors to the violence.

Society has identified that child abuse, child neglect, victimization and other trauma produces violence in children. These situations are more understood that the subtle patterns of the good kid who acts out. Columbine will be remembered as a landmark not only because of the tragedy but because Columbine was precisely the type of place where youth violence should not have happened. Affluence, abundance, psychologists on site, teachers who cared, and a first class school did not prevent the type of massacre which might have been expected of an inner city school lacking in resources.

As a child therapist I have often identified children with attitudes and behaviors which point toward violence. Many times I am making these observations in children younger than eight years of age and have watched many of these children mature into adolescents and adults with the same destructive thinking and behavior patterns that I observed in early years. Certainly there are intervention points where this thinking might be changed but lacking some concrete efforts to promote change the developmental path towards violence appears to progress. Liken to crisis,this predisposition becomes the vulnerable state which when triggered by the precipitating event erupts into violence.

Early Childhood Characteristic Predisposing the Individual to Violence

Cognitive: language development, awareness problems

Affective: lack of empathy, inability to identify with feelings of others.

Behavior: inflexibility. belief in only one solution, low tolerance for frustration

Social: lacking or disruptive sibling or peer relationships, victimization

Pre School and Primary Grade Children Characteristics Predisposing Violence

Cognitive: Failure to develop concrete, language based problem solving skills, failure to acquire a basic understanding of universal behavior rules, belief physical solutions are acceptable substitutes for language solutions, belief that separate rules apply to self

Affective: failures to learn appropriate emotional expression Behavioral: failure to inhibit motor responses

Social: disruptive interactive play

8 to 12 year olds Characteristics

Cognitive: failure of logical problem solving, failure of perceptual flexibility

Affective: failures of impulse control, we/they thinking

Behavior: failure to develop cognitive mediated behavior skills

Social: outsider concept, failure to attach to appropriate models, belief that acceptance must be based on exceptional acts outside the conventional rules.