Aggressive Children Are In Fact Extremely Spoiled Children

We’re creating a completely narcissistic system: the goal is to have power. But it doesn’t matter how you acquire that power!

Whether it’s just more visible or really on the rise, the fact is that violence between classmates is very much present. But beware! Not everything can be lumped into the “school abuse” box.

Not everything can be reduced to violence. You can’t talk about violence if someone hurts someone by accident. For something to be violence, it must first meet several criteria.

It must be an aggressive act, inflicting injury or even intimidation. It must be intentional, conscious and repeated over a relatively long period of time.

Otherwise, if it happens once or twice, we could say that every child has suffered violence and been exposed to violence.

This violence can be physical – pulling, pushing, hitting, even using weapons… But it can also be, and often is, verbal violence. This should not be underestimated, if someone is constantly threatened, if someone is constantly ridiculed, if someone says nasty things to them…

It’s very hard to bear!

Is it more destructive than physical violence?

Very often, physical and verbal violence are combined. There is also a particular form of violence. I’d say it’s social violence, which is used more by girls.

You don’t even have to insult. You just isolate someone, boycott them.

For example, one classmate can say to another:

Don’t hang out with her. If you stay her friend, I won’t be yours!

It’s very scary.

Children, especially at the age of puberty and adolescence, care about their peers. Parents aren’t that important anymore. Imagine the effects of this isolation, when you’re rejected or even ridiculed.

Finally, today, digital violence is very characteristic, through social networks. You have pronounced social violence aimed at taking advantage of someone.

It’s slander, it’s ugly stories being told…

The evidence remains

Unlike somewhere within four walls, a person is publicly humiliated here, and you can do it 24 hours a day. This is becoming an increasingly serious problem, bearing in mind the creation of fake profiles.

Perpetrators, in fact, now have many more “tools” at their disposal to perpetrate violence.

So, when it comes to digital violence, the perpetrator can hide, remain anonymous, because it’s stupid to present himself under his own name. This is a particularly serious problem in the fight against this type of violence.

The fundamental question everyone asks when it comes to violence is where are the causes?

There’s no doubt that the family is one of the main generators of violence. More precisely, the family is one of the transmitting agents of socialization.

Research shows that a large number of violent children come from families that are either destroyed or incomplete, or from certain marginal social strata…

Very often, but not always, these perpetrators have been victims of violence. Secondly, it’s easy to explain that someone who has been subjected to violence for years has learned that it’s a means to an end.

He transmits and uses this pattern of behavior on weaker people, whom he can now abuse. Another stereotype is that the child always comes from a family with a very strict, authoritarian upbringing…

And it can be just the opposite, because you have a lot of violent children who are essentially spoiled, who have never been set any limits and feel they can do whatever they want.

They know their rights very well, because now children’s rights are the focus of attention, but of course they don’t know responsibility.

Even if parents are with them, and they usually are…

Overprotected and spoiled children

How do we get there?

For example, a teacher warns or punishes them, parents come to argue about how they punish their children… And then these children feel protected.

It’s also pretty typical of modern times.

Children simply don’t know limits, they don’t have built-in brakes, they don’t have built-in rules. They’re used to being privileged and being able to do what they want.

The family is important, but it would be unfair to blame the family for everything. After all, we have to remember that the family is essentially more of a transmitter, but that society and culture are the real generators of violence and perverse values.

They are responsible for it, and then of course the family transmits it all. And speaking of transmitters, it’s the media that have great power.

Of course, it’s no longer traditional media, because today’s children don’t read newspapers.

Today, the Internet and television are much more powerful.

Children can see so much violence on the Internet, on television, in games, on cell phones…

Even if there’s no violence at all in the family, they encounter so much violence in the virtual world that their sensitivity simply diminishes.

The tolerance threshold for violence has been raised very high. Research shows that a child up to the age of 12 sees almost 10,000 murders and around 100,000 acts of violence.

Violence in the movies

Violence can also be shown in the movies. You’ve got great movies that have violence. What’s important is that the violence is not affirmative, but that its negative consequences are shown.

Which is rarely the case!

If a child doesn’t see this and sees that violence pays off, that the bully becomes a hero, that he or she manages to get rich or afford luxuries in life, they become a hero of sorts.

And then they admire him. And if that bully ends up badly, it still changes things. We know that children learn by model, that they have role models and that they imitate them.

Now, when you look at how their idols live… It’s not the value system they should be following. These are not the universal values for someone to succeed.

Reality as a monstrous experience

It’s like a kind of monstrous experience.

If you encourage quarrels, intolerance, envy and gossip, then you create an opposite value system. And that’s where the worst get the reward.

And kids love it. It is, after all, what their parents watch, and kids see that something “interesting” is going on.

And parents don’t explain to their kids what they’re watching.

The system feeds violence

Now you have a whole system that feeds violence, feeds the values of success at all costs. Be greedy, be dishonest or, as they say, be resourceful.

But to what extent is the school capable of reacting?

You have research in which questions about violence are asked in the same school to students, teachers, school management, the principal, the secretary, professional services…

These are questions about the number of times someone has been a victim of violence, or even how often someone has been a bully… Thanks to the answers, you get very uneven results.

The most realistic are the students. Teachers and professional services are already trying to reduce this, because it doesn’t sit well with them that there is violence.

If you were to look at the results, you’d have examples that in the same school, according to student responses, there’s 40 percent physical violence, whereas according to the principal, it’s maybe 5 or 10 percent.

Secondly, it’s always about simply recording violent children and simply punishing them, as if that solves the problem. Yet research shows that punishment is an extreme measure, a necessary evil.

Mental poisoning

The solution is something completely different, to change the value system, to create a different atmosphere in the school. The school, of course, is not isolated from society.

So things have to change in society too. But you see, when the Minister of Culture tries to limit reality TV or violence on TV, he gets lynched.

Secondly, isn’t the most important thing to think about a normal, healthy society, not whether someone is going to line their pockets?

Punishment as a last resort

Why is punishment bad?

By punishing a child, you often send the message, “I’m powerful, I can punish you, I have power and you’ll behave as I say”.

In fact, what a child who resorts to violence does is just that. Punishment is the last resort. Before doing so, you can talk to the children, find out why the child is so full of anger and hatred…

To teach the child that he can achieve his goals non-violently, that it’s perfectly normal and healthy to disagree, to have entered into conflict, but that this conflict can be resolved.

And it can be resolved through dialogue, so that children learn to compromise.

In society as a whole, in fact, you have this pattern of behavior – one must defeat the other, the other must crush the other, the other must disappear…

And that’s what encourages this violent way of achieving the goal, instead of showing an alternative. Punishment shows no alternative. It doesn’t affect opinions or attitudes.

Punishment only forbids certain behaviors. And the child understands it this way – when someone sees me, I’m not allowed to do it.

The child then inhibits behavior, but doesn’t change attitudes. And as soon as there’s an opportunity, he’ll repeat the same thing and it’ll be even worse, because he’s even angrier, because he’s been punished.

And the role of the school is complex here…

Extremely high standards are imposed on schools. Yet its primary function is education. We demand that children acquire a good, thorough education, but also that they can continue to apply it.

At the same time, the school is an educational institution, it has to educate children, set up an anti-violence program… And as we know, education is a bit forgotten, when you look at the budget.

So, the fact that we say we need health, education, culture…

It shows up better in the budget. The people who work in education are really poorly paid.

What’s more, they’re losing their reputation, and it’s strange that they haven’t lost it completely. Parents are also damaging their reputations, because they will always stand by their children, whether they are guilty or not.

This is bad, of course, because the children then have great support. Their job has been completely devalued and now they have to deal with these things too.

And, of course, some teachers will back down and say, “I didn’t go to school for this. I was educated to teach them physics and math, they have parents to raise them.”

Of course, that’s not entirely true, but from their point of view, when they know how much work is valued, what their reputation looks like, we can understand.

So, parents, school and society must work hand in hand to solve the problem of school violence.