Children in Danger: Coping With The Consequences Of Community Violence By: James Garbarino, Nancy...

Children in Danger: Coping With The Consequences Of

Community Violence

By: James Garbarino, Nancy Dubrow, Kathleen Kostelny, & Carol

Pardo

Cumulative Model of Childhood Risk Factors

Most children can cope with low levels of risk (1 or 2 risk factors)

The accumulation of risk factors jeopardizes development **Especially when there are no compensatory forces at work**

Average intelligence scores of children remain good until adding the 3 rd & 4th risk factors

Challenge: prevent the accumulation of risk factors

Working with children in urban war zones means committing to understanding & intervening in the social and psychological dynamics of danger

Developmental Approach

Recognizing child’s capacity for change and the social environment’s power to

produce change

Vygotsky: Social Development

• Development is a social process

• Child learns about the world & how it works through relationships with people

• Child needs responses that are emotionally validating & developmentally challenging

• Zone of Proximal development is the critical territory for interventions seeking to stimulate & support child’s development

• Fantasy & play are vital to a child’s development

The social environment a community provides will substantially determine

whether biological potential will bloom or wither, whether the biological underpinnings of cognitive development will

be fulfilled or denied by experience

Ecological View of DevelopmentI

“An ecological perspective highlights development as the interaction of an active, purposeful, and adaptive organism, on the one hand, with a set of social systems on the other” (p. 21).

Mozambique: How Much Can People Bear?

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utritio

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s M

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loneness

80

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hild

Death

Rate

Hop

ele

ssness

Results of the Brutality Associated with

Mozambique’s Undeclared War

• No limits to human cruelty

• Survivors cope by becoming psychologically numb

• Professionals charged to care for the children who manage to survive seek to protect themselves from drowning in the suffering surrounding them & become unwilling to express emotion sabotaging recovery training programs

• Boys, in particular, seek & plot revenge

• Post traumatic stress disorder & other long lasting psychological defects

Cambodia: Living Well is the Best Revenge

• Cambodian holocaust (1968-1999)

• Living well honors those who died & is the best revenge

• Stories fundamental to the process of coping with adversity

• Having survived death & destruction feel moral obligation to live well to make statement about the human spirit, what matters, & what one can do in the world

• Revenge is helping others, particularly children

• Bonding together in relationship to children so they can find resilience & recovery

• Spiritual aspect – Buddhist concepts & rituals

• Spiritual commitment to collective responsibility & the interconnection of lives

Israel & Palestine: The Dilemmas of Ideology

• Intifada (Arabic – throwing off) Resistance

• Ideology gives a sense of meaning to continue the struggle

• Israeli children (like American) regard politics as simple partisan conflicts, in which neither party offers dramatically ideological interpretation of events & situations

• Some Israelis & Palestinians have the courage to be open to the complexity & ambiguity of their conflict (forces against those who appreciate the complexity are often intimidating)

• Dehumanizing & extreme ideology flourishes in the absence of humanizing relationships in which social categories are personalized

• Forming relationships requires sympathy, connection, & dialogue

Chicago: Community

Deterioration & rise of Gang

Warfare• Steady increase of parents & children

living in poverty

• Escalation of teenage pregnancy, out-of-wedlock births, & female headed households

• Exodus of middle & working class creating an underclass isolated from mainstream norms of behavior

• Collapse of mainstream community institutions

• Unfavorable conditions transform poor neighborhoods into urban war zones

• Lack of legitimate opportunities, rage, violent models, lack of positive role models, emergence of powerful & lucrative drug economy = rapid community violence growth

• Increased adult participation in gang activity

• Children in public housing 2xs as likely to be exposed to violence

Developmental Issues Associated with Children’s Responses to Chronic Community Violence

Exposure

• Psychological Disorders (more exposure/more disorders manifest)

• Regressive Behaviors (thumb sucking, nervous habits…)

• Learned Helplessness

• Denial & Numbing (ignore reality)

• Intellectual Development/School Performance

• Concentration Difficulties

• Truncated Moral Development (especially boys)

• Pathological Adaptation to Violence

• Identification with Aggressor (feeding into the cycle of violence, joining a gang…)

• Depression

• Anxiety Disorders

• Aggressive Behavior

• False Tough Exterior (hides fears & self doubt)

• Low Self Esteem & Sense of Worth

• Inability of Caring Behavior & Building Relationships

• Constriction of Activities & Exploration Building Critical Thinking Capacities

• Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Age & Developmental Level Response Differences

Preschool Children: Exhibit Passive Reactions & Regressive Symptoms

• Decreased Verbalization• Clinging Behavior• Enuresis

School-Age Children: Exhibit More Aggression/Inhibition Symptoms

• Somatic Complaints• Cognitive distortions• Learning Difficulties• Premature Entrance into Adulthood• Premature Closure of Identity Formation

* Children exposed to trauma before age eleven are three times more likely to develop

psychiatric symptoms

Traumatic Events

1. Natural Disasters – floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanoes…

2. Accidental Man-Made Disasters - vehicle accidents, fires…

3. Intentional Man-Made Disasters – kidnapping, murder, war…

*Intentional man-made disasters are particularly harmful because the damages are more severe & longer lasting when the stressor is of human design

When a child has witnessed an event in which someone else is victimized or has a relationship to the primary victim the

child becomes a secondary victim (p. 69).

School – Based Intervention

• Supportive, educational, & preventive intervention

• Therapeutic & healing legitimate functions of institutions with primary “educational” focus

• Majority of “at-risk” children are developmentally normal & have the potential for success when schools are sensitive to them & their burdens

• Role of caring relationships with significant adults serves as the principal agent of change & source of support

Domains of Silence

Teachers must be trained to recognize & deal with issues surrounding “loaded” topics typically handled by clinically

trained professionals

• Sexuality

• Domestic & community violence

• Death (violent death)

• Child abuse

• Family disruption

• Incarceration

• Substance abuse

• Family disruption

Child’s Play

• Limiting, redirecting, & expanding parameters of play

• “Gun Play”

• “Funeral Play”

• “Shooting Up Play”

• Intense feelings & conflicts elicited by children’s play

• Freedom of expression found in playful activity & art provides an outlet for healing

• Teachers must be trained to understand, monitor, assure, & support student healing through play

• Teachers need guidance, support, supervision, & institutional support

Funding

• Authors show the community-based programs described in this study are economically feasible to efficiently serve children through publically funded programs

• Research confirms these programs work so why aren’t we implementing them 20 years later?

• In closing the authors express concerns about the “erosion of funding”

• “Children of the urban war zone cannot tolerate inferior programming. Risk accumulates…”

Garbarino, J., Dubrow, N., Kostelny, K., & Pardo, C. (1992). Children in danger: Coping with the consequences of community violence. San Francisco, California: Jossey-Bass Publishers.