What Psychologists Say About Children Who Have Aggressive Tendencies

When talking about the subject of children with aggressive tendencies, both psychologists and sociologists discuss the theory of social learning. Thus, aggressive behaviors would not be innate but would be learned socially by observing this type of behavior around, memorizing it by repetition, and adopting this behavioral model.

Through socialization, the child forms certain patterns from which he takes over types of behavior. The mechanism of social learning includes either directly or indirectly the rewarding of aggressive behavior (for example, the child sees that if he behaves aggressively with a colleague, he does what he is asked to do - a pattern that he may have noticed in his parents). Children imitate their parents, older siblings, colleagues, even the characters of their favorite series.

Children with aggressive tendencies live in a deficient or indifferent family environment: lack of child supervision or, on the contrary, too harsh discipline, lack of affection and non-involvement of parents, lack of family education, stressful family problems (alcohol abuse, illness, poverty) and Last but not least, the family offers violent patterns in the family, all these factors develop the child's predisposition to adopt violent behaviors.

Children with aggressive tendencies usually face relationships with parents lacking affection and involvement, they do not enjoy emotional security in the family. The parental effect is especially important in the child's development.

Lack of communication of emotions, affection, and empathy lead to the development of an introverted personality, which will be difficult to integrate into social life and will communicate poorly with others. Communication skills with others are learned in the family, and if here the child encounters a negative model of communication through authority or a model of non-communication, he will take it in his external relations.

It has been observed that, often, children with aggressive tendencies become especially violent in the school environment. This is also due to the presence of opportunities for violence: the presence of easy victims - younger or weaker children, but also due to poor student-teacher relationships.

Authoritarian, severe teachers who do not communicate properly with students, often use sanctions, ridicule, and make fun of their students, can provoke aggressive behavior in some students who have not previously shown direct aggression. This is because the student-teacher relationship is important, especially in the early years of school when children have very few teachers (one teacher and one or two foreign language teachers).

The child is impressed by the teacher's status, admires him, initially considers him a role model, and wants to make a good impression in turn. But if this person the child admired uses a dictatorial behavioral model, it makes fun of him, sometimes even offends him (many teachers adopt - without intending to harm - nicknames for their students, nicknames that can seriously affect confidence in the child will suffer two effects: first, his self-confidence will be affected, and second, he will try to compensate for the lack of self-confidence by imitating the authoritarian model of the teacher by adopting aggressive behaviors in his relationship. with the weakest.

Children with aggressive tendencies are also influenced by the media. Patterns of aggressive behavior displayed in problematic media are often learned and picked up by children.

Both the television and the print media want to present sensational news: the more violence, the better it sells. And many movies show aggressive patterns of behavior: the classic model of the hero who adopts violent behavior to save and conquer the woman he wants.

Given that today children spend at least three hours in front of the TV, it should come as no surprise that these models are easily internalized and put into practice, especially since a child's personality is extremely fragile and influential.

The famous frustration-stress-aggression equation cannot be omitted. Children with aggressive tendencies, therefore, face various sources of frustration, frustration either from family relationships - indifferent or too harsh parents, aggressive siblings, or from difficult living conditions and socio-economic status of the family - failure to meet essential food needs. shelter according to expectations, clothes, other necessities, relationships within the school environment - authoritarian, harsh and ironic teachers, older colleagues who abruptly and a generally negative school environment, or from other relationships - with friends, the opposite sex ( children who are rejected by people of the same age face frustration, which causes stress, which leads to the development of aggressive tendencies).

Thus, children with aggressive tendencies have noticed and learned this pattern of behavior around them (whether in the family, at school, or on television), and to move from learning the pattern to putting it into practice, only the source of stress is missing. Once frustration and stress are present, the child directs his reactions to others, expressing his anger and blaming others for his problem.