Not many weeks or months go by without news of some exhibition of bizarre violence by a teenager or an even younger child. I could scarce believe it when some third grade kids in Waycross, Georgia (90 miles or so from here) were apparently plotting to kill their teacher. What the hell is going on?
In times past, responsibility for rearing our children was a joint effort between parents, schools and religious institutions. Now, parents are turning more and more of this responsibility over to the schools. This is not necessarily because the parents don’t want to fulfill their responsibilities. Some take it seriously, others do not. But, parents are under attack, as well. Many are working two or more jobs, have less time at home with their kids and are just too tired to give their kids the attention and guidance the need.
However, violence is not the result of working parents. Violence has become an acceptable form of conflict resolution for our kids, rich and poor, with working parents and stay-at-home moms? Why?
Clint Van Zandt is a former FBI profiler and hostage negotiator with some serious thoughts about violence among our children. I am not sure Clint has any insight the rest of us don’t have. Nor does he have the answer to solve all of the problems that harm our kids. But, as someone engaged in conflict resolution and who regularly faces the wrong type of anger management, I think Clint provokes us to think about how we raise our kids.
Our kids have learned anger and violence. They have learned it as a result of what they are exposed to in video games and movies. This isn’t to blame everything on videos and movies because many kids see the same movies and play the same games and don’t resort to violence. The difference may be in those families where the lessons of violence are counterbalanced with healthy examples of conflict resolution and anger management. A family that learns to live together, that respects the rights of other family members, where kids learn to be part of a larger team with larger goals than just the individual, may be a family where a child’s frustration and growing pains is dealt with constructively.
Clint stresses the importance of family, particularly the responsibility of fathers to set a good example for kids, in providing outlets and guidance for the pressures that kids have to deal with.
He also expresses his amazement with parents who try to defend and justify angry and violent responses by their children. Excusing or justifying acts of violence or misguided anger, particularly when performed by pre-teens, is ridiculous, but the truth is that more and more parents think their kid is always right. Their child is angry because he is mistreated. His reaction is just relieving frustration. These kind of rationalizations about our kids do nothing to deal with the anger, only protect and promote it. And then the day comes when the anger results in the commission of a crime.
And that is a totally different road.
In another vein, Clint, who was a victim of a sexual predator as a child, has put together a DVD on how to protect your child from sexual predators. It’s FREE!
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