WHY THE YOUNG KILL!

The article Why the Young Kill by Sharon Begley addresses an acute problem we face in our nation today. It’s not just a problem of city ghetto gang activity but one that might as easily occur in Small Town, USA, given the proper circumstances.

It is these circumstances Ms Begley addresses in this well-written article. I’d rather be wanted for murder than not wanted at all. That statement summarizes at least part of what the author was trying or portray. Bad parenting is certainly a problem of epidemic proportions and one that leads to the problem under discussion. Why do the young kill? Parenting styles certainly play a role in this problem: especially is this true of authoritarian parents and those parents who never give any support to their children whatsoever. These children are abused, neglected and/or left to raise themselves.

The author begins with child development by looking at that era (0-3) where there is such a huge potential for learning. Suppose during these formative years the child is exposed to either physical or psychological abuse? Dr. Bruce Perry is mentioned and has done tremendous work in this area (his courses are available on the Web).

This same child grows older and receives nothing but mental and verbal abuse among his peers and comes to feel completely ostracized by those same peers. A Child like that often ends up withdrawing into behavior that is only conducive to antisocial personality.

Then the child will perhaps go on to compound these early difficulties with the later withdrawal of the child into today’s pop culture, becoming even further ostracized from the mainstream. This can lead to misconceptions about death—the magical concept that when the hero dies the child expects to see him or her again. Many of the games these children get involved in deal in death and violence.

Perhaps not all young people who get into the Gothic culture will end up staying on the dark side but this article is more about their brains than nearly anything else, except perhaps parenting. The abusive parent raised the risk of his/her child resorting to violence. Why? A change takes place in the brain due to the constant abuse.

The constant exposure to abuse and violence can make the brain’s system of stress hormones unresponsive. It is compared to a keypad that has been pushed so often that it just stops working.

Finally, the child gets to the point nothing hurts anymore. He/she has lost the ability to feel and to react. The conscience is dead. Aggressive antisocial kids have no sense of feeling but they do retain a keen sense of the fact that all injustice is aimed at them.

Behavior is the result of a dialogue between your brain and your experiences. . .Although people are born with some biological givens, the brain has many blank pages. From the first moments of childhood, the brain acts as a historian recording our experiences in the language of neurochemistry (D. Neihoff).

There are so many important things in this article but I believe the discussion of the brain’s cingulated gyrus was quite interesting. When it becomes impaired, people get stuck on one thought. Compound this with the fact that the prefrontal cortex, which acts as the brain’s supervisor is sluggish in some murderers. If the young person has an impaired CG and his thoughts are violent, he gets stuck there. With no supervisor that can result in a major possibility for trouble.

Dr. David Grill is a Los Angeles based Clinical Director of “Treatment for Traumatic Life Experiences” He is a lecturer nationwide on the subject of childhood trauma. He got involved in child trauma studies as the result of suffering trauma himself as a child. In a recent seminar “Managing and Discharging Activation (in the Brain)” he brought up the question that has long been an issue in child trauma studies. I believe Dr. Perry would concur with him. So. . .I pose this question to you, faithful group of wonderful people that have shared so long with me, and faithfully, I might add: Can the Child’s brain tell the difference between physical trauma (child abuse with blows to the head, etc.) or psychological trauma (parental neglect, verbal abuse, etc.)? If it can’t, is there any difference in the trauma for the child? Or, if it can’t tell the difference, which can lead to greater maladjustment in the child?

Or, (how about another one—a little more practical): If a child is maladjusted, antisocial, ostracized from others his/her own age and that child threatens suicide in dramatic fashion (drawing a crowd or just your personal attention), how careful should you be in trying to negotiate with the child if you know that a person who is suicidal can also as easily be homicidal as well (it’s a fact)? Or, should you try negotiating at all? Why don’t you try some feedback?
I love you for staying with me. h

(See original article at www.tces.fcps.net/OLD/resources/Why_Do_Young_People_Kill.htm