Lesson for teachers

Teachers need to deal with aggression by becoming more aware of disruptive behaviours and managing them at an early stage, says Simmi Waraich

WHY does a 14 year old boy kill a classfellow? Story has it so far that the boy bullied the assassins. Another newspaper reported that the boy who pulled the trigger had "Bad boy" or "Ziddi boy" written all over his books. So was the child an aggressive stubborn child who as a result of his behaviour received harsh criticism from parents / teachers? Where does the "bad boy" self projection come from? Usually one finds in such cases that such words carelessly used by caregivers are imbibed by teenagers leading to low self-esteem and a simmering anger underneath which maybe masked by a careless demeanour on the surface.

Twenty years back, children were exposed to a few harmless cartoons on television and mostly played outdoor games with other children. Nowadays there are more single and two-child families in urban areas with a lot of exposure to television programmes with violence.

Often with both parents working, supervision of children is not what it should be. In our culture, monitoring what children watch on TV or the computer games they play is not that common. Studies have shown that children who watch more than two hours of TV every day are more irritable than those who are involved in other activities. Yet children are often allowed to watch programmes on television uncensored.

Monitoring gives the opportunity to the parent to discuss the content of televison programmes with the child. The parent can give his point of view and also ask the child’s opinion. For children, the virtual world is often real. Since their cognitive abilities are not developed fully, they tend to take things at face value. If they are watching violent cartoons, they will tend to react in the same way in real life as the characters do in the cartoons. Aggression rarely arises out of the blue. If there is a pre-existing history of cruelty towards animals or small children and other activities like stealing, lying, fire setting etc, the child may have a conduct disorder. Upto 25-30 per cent of children with conduct disorder may develop antisocial personality disorder when they grow up.

Parents need to often learn and enforce consistency and limit-setting. Rules at home help the child as does talking to them about school rules and why they are important. Knowing who their friends are, talking to them about violence in movies, in school etc. all go towards building a more confident youngster. Adequate physical activity helps to sublimate a child’s aggression into socially acceptable forms. Making a child responsible for his actions by teaching him to apologise when in the wrong, without undue harshness is important. Our ego uses defense mechanisms to protect itself from the anxiety that may be caused by our actions. We can "selectively forget" anxiety-producing feelings and "repress" them from our conscious awareness. We can "rationalise" that our questionable behavior is acceptable and find reasons to prove it to ourselves and others. Most of the time defense mechanisms are normal patterns of behavior that we all use on a regular basis. Once we find a particular defense to be successful in reducing anxiety, we begin to use it in other situations that threaten our self image.

Over time, the energy it takes to keep repressing the threatening material into our unconscious minds becomes like a volcano, a potentially explosive force that can erupt, causing "mental breakdowns" or unusually violent behaviours. A previously quiet child may thus have bottled up feelings of inadequacy and repressed anger only for it to burst one day in an act of violence.

Children who are aggressive may lack the social skills to communicate and often get punished. This can worsen feelings of resentment. Teachers and parents need to work in collaboration and use more positive reinforcement for positive behaviour and enhance their social skills.

Communication between parents and children can come about only when the parental attitude is non-judgemental and open to hearing about that is going on in the child’s life and giving it importance. Children’s problems should not be belittled but paid attention to. Alternatives should be discussed with them.

Teachers who are aware of changes in student’s moods and who are non judgemental but at the same time who model good self control over frustration themselves are good at picking up anxiety in kids. Students need to be taught problem solving and conflict resolution skills at times by modelling or role enactment. Primary prevention is more effective.

In secondary prevention, collaboration with the teacher and school counsellor should be there.

The taboo regarding the child going to the school counsellor needs to go. The child may learn how to deal better with his emotions with regular visits to the school counselor. Such visits should be encouraged by parents. It adds up to their child becoming a more complete and sensitive human being. Just as teachers are trained for fire drills, they should also be taught specific techniques for dealing with student aggression.

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