A Revolutionary Guide to Reducing Aggression between Children

Aggression is a learned behavior

This is the official position of the American Psychological Association, and guides the mainstream thinking in the field of education as well.

The underlying belief is that human beings are blank slates, born without instincts, and that we do only what we are conditioned to do.

On this assumption, psychologists and educators are trying to figure out how to stop children from experiencing or witnessing aggression so that they can grow up to be aggression-free adolescents and adults.

Since aggressiveness is not a natural trait of the human species, aggressive children are seen as pathological. This aggressive trait is normal only for animals, and people who possess it require therapy or medication to make them normal.

Additionally, we tend to blame adults -- usually their parents -- for having taught the kids this negative, inhuman behavior.

Aggression is a normal, genetically programmed behavior.

Aggression is here to stay. It has been a part of life for the billions of years that our genetic program has been developing, and there is no evidence that human beings have suddenly, mysteriously, become the only animal on the planet that is born without genetic programming for aggression.

If aggression were a learned behavior, we wouldn’t have to spend so much time and effort into teaching children not to be aggressive.

When children display aggression, we should understand that they are expressing genetically programmed behavior patterns.

Rather than being judgmental towards aggressive children and their parents, we need to learn how to understand aggression and deal with it – our own and others’ – in a manner that is conducive to civilized living.

We should have zero-tolerance for physical and verbal aggression.

The “zero-tolerance” movement has gained tremendous momentum due to Columbine and the other school massacres.

The belief is that aggression exists because we tolerate it.

If we would only refuse to tolerate aggression, it will go away and we will end up with a peaceful society.

If aggression is not tolerated, then bullying will disappear and there will be no victims seeking vengeance.

Intolerance of aggression causes aggression to escalate.

Fights develop when one person cannot tolerate the aggressive acts of another person, and then tries to use his own power to stop the aggressor.

The Columbine killers and all the other students who committed massacres did so because they had zero-tolerance for the verbal aggression of their peers. Had they known how to tolerate aggression, the aggression would have fizzled out, and they and their victims would still be alive today.

A policy of “zero-tolerance for aggression” is a logical absurdity, because it ultimately requires readiness to use aggression to stop aggressors.

Most sports involve physical aggression and cause injuries. Does a zero-tolerance policy require the banning of sports? And do we ban humor, since it consists of verbal and/or physical aggression?

Abuse and neglect are at the core of all psychological difficulties.

It is believed that for a person to grow up emotionally healthy and complete, he must avoid experiencing any type of abuse or neglect.

By providing children with nothing but supportive and positive childhood experiences, and by meeting their needs as quickly and completely as possible, they will grow up to be emotionally resilient, optimistic, and competent to deal with all the challenges that life will throw at them.

In accordance with this thinking, the predominant movement in psychotherapy in the past couple of decades has been to uncover the sources of abuse and neglect that the patient experienced in his childhood. By uncovering past abuse and neglect, the patient becomes free to live a normal life.

Experiencing difficulty and pain is essential for emotional growth.

All truly resilient people have had experience with harsh life situations and learned how to overcome them.

If we actually succeeded in raising children who never experience any abuse and neglect, they would grow up to be emotional marshmallows, frustrated when they don’t get what they want, and unable to handle people being mean or inconsiderate towards them.

Therapy that’s primarily concerned with delving into sources of abuse and neglect can make a person’s life worse by increasing his anger towards the people who have been close to him and by legitimizing feelings of self-pity for being treated badly.

To develop emotional resilience, children need to be exposed to aggression and learn to deal with it effectively. (In civilization, learning to deal with aggression requires learning to control one’s anger. An excellent source for this is the INSTRUCTIONS for teasing victims in this website).

Children should be disciplined for hitting and name-calling.

Hitting and name-calling are aggressive behaviors and children should be taught not to do them.

Children need to be reprimanded or punished whenever they hit or call names.

Children should be disciplined for hurting others.

Hitting and name-calling are normal childhood activities that kids often do to each other, and they do not necessarily injure anyone.

If there was no injury, there was no crime, and no one needs to be punished.

When adults are willing to punish children for name-calling and hitting even when no one is hurt, it becomes a cinch for children to sucker adults into serving as heavy artillery in their petty squabbles.

The rule that should guide us is not “hitting and name-calling are not allowed,” but rather, “hurting is not allowed.” Only when there has been real damage should one consider if disciplinary action is in order.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words hurt my soul.

This variation of the age-old slogan has become the new way of thinking, especially after Columbine.

Since it has become obvious that the children who are killing children are victims of teasing, it is no longer correct that “words can never harm me.” In fact, words can hurt so badly that victims have been driven to commit mass murder as revenge.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never harm me.

This slogan was never intended as a statement of fact, since it is obvious that children often feel hurt by words. It is meant to be a remedy to being hurt by words. The jingle provides children with the secret weapon for easily defeating those who taunt them.

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never harm me” is a wonderful encapsulation of the fundamental difference between verbal and physical aggression. When a baseball bat hits me over the head, my attitude towards the bat is irrelevant – no matter what I think about the bat, it’s going to hurt me. Words are another matter. The damage they do is entirely dependent upon my attitude towards them. They can only hurt me if I let them. If you insult me and I get hurt, it is not really you who hurt me. I hurt myself! So why should you get punished?

Children need to be taught how to get along.

Social relations are very complex activities that children can only be expected to learn if we teach them how to do it.

The fact that they fight so many times a day is proof that they need us to stop their fights and show them how to get along peacefully.

Children learn how to get along all by themselves.

Human beings are social creatures and can only survive by caring for each other. Our ancestors have been doing it for millions of years, and it has become part of our genetic programming.

Mother Nature guides us towards good relations by making us feel pleasure when we get along and misery when we don’t.

Modern civilization is governed by millions of man-made rules that essentially require us to control our natural, inborn instincts. Many of these rules contradict one another, and can cause mental confusion and emotional suffering. Children, being younger than adults, have had fewer years to be conditioned and confused by civilization, which is why they are so obviously better at getting along than adults are. Throw a random bunch of young kids together, and they will play energetically for hours with little or no real aggression.

Children will be found constantly quarrelling only when there is an adult hovering over them, trying to keep the peace and teaching them how to get along.

Adults need to judge the disputes between children.

Children are too young, inexperienced, and irresponsible to resolve their own conflicts fairly and peacefully.

Because of this lack of ability, they end up fighting so much, and depend upon us to stop them.

To learn fairness and justice, children need to come to us. By judging their disputes, we demonstrate how to tell right from wrong and how to solve problems peacefully.

Furthermore, older children have an unfair advantage over younger ones. We need to “level the playing field” by helping the weaker ones so that the stronger ones will be prevented from abusing them.

We should instruct children, “If you have a problem with each other, don’t try to handle it on your own -- come to me [the parent or teacher] for help.”

Hopefully, the wisdom we pass on to our children will make them competent to hold court with our grandchildren.

Adults should never judge between children.

When we rush in to judge our children’s disputes, we are actually preventing them from solving their problems on their own.

The moment we enter the scene to restore peace, they turn into screaming prosecuting attorneys against each other and become distinctly less peaceful.

But even worse, whenever we judge between two people, one of them -- the loser -- ends up hating not only the winner, but us as well.

"Leveling the playing field" does not lead to peace. It causes battles to go on indefinitely because there is never a winner and loser.

Instructing children to come to adults for help rather than deal with disputes on their own is absolutely the worst thing we can do. It turns them into informers against one another, guaranteeing that they will be hate-filled enemies.

Adults should refuse to get involved in children’s disputes, and send them to work it out with each other instead.

Playfighting must be forbidden.

All forms of violence, even in play, can lead to violence in real life, and therefore should not be tolerated.

Though playfighting may start out as fun, it always ends up turning into a real fight.

If children are permitted to playfight, they learn that violence is acceptable, they get practice in its use, and they grow up to be violent adults.

Furthermore, playfighting is a dangerous activity. If we didn’t stop it, it would lead to frequent hospitalization.

Playfighting is a wonderful activity for both children and adults.

Playfighting is not really fighting. It is playing.

Children, both human and animal, are genetically programmed to playfight in order to prepare them for their adult roles as warriors as hunters.

Playfighting is such great fun because Mother Nature rewards all biologically essential activities with pleasure, and playfighting is essential for survival. The fact that civilized adults are not supposed to fight does not change the genetic programming of our children, and playfighting still gives them pleasure.

Playfighting in childhood does not lead to violence in adulthood. Real violence is painful, and all animals are biologically programmed to avoid pain. That’s why, as adults, we try to avoid unnecessary violence. We are glad to live in a society that forbids violence, and happily obey the rules against it.

Having fun together makes people like each other better. Because playfighting is so much fun, it increases the love between children. Playfighting is also an excellent way for adults to bond with their children, as our ancestors have been doing for hundreds of millions of years.

Playfighting is not as dangerous as it seems. When people playfight, they are trying not to hurt each other. Sports, which are actually sublimated forms of playfighting, result in far more injuries than playfighting. Therefore, anyone who wants to forbid playfighting for safety reasons should certainly forbid sports.

The only reason playfighting turns into a real fight is that an adult gets involved. When a child in a playfight feels pain, he gives a scream, and his partner pauses until he feels better. But when an adult hears the scream and comes along to determine who the guilty party is, they both try to put the blame on the other, and that’s when they really want to kill each other!

Violence in entertainment and games leads to a violent society.

Children should not be allowed to watch violence on TV or play with toys or games that involve aggression and violence. This will make them grow up to be aggressive and violent adults.

Violence in entertainment desensitizes children to bloodshed.

The increasing violence in entertainment is a reflection of the growing epidemic of violence in the country.

The violence in entertainment is also a major cause of the violence epidemic in society.

Violence in entertainment makes people more aware of the horror of violence.

The neighborhood crime rate does not suddenly jump up after the crowd exits from a violent movie. In fact, when people see explicit violence on the screen, it makes them more aware of how horrible it is. The graphic violence in a film like Saving Private Ryan is more likely to make people anti-war than pro-war. After seeing a horrible rape scene, a young man is more likely to be considerate towards his girlfriend.

Violent entertainment does not desensitize children to bloodshed in real life. In all the news-clips of school massacres, did you ever see students walking around indifferent to the bloodshed? Of course not! Despite the fact that virtually all our children have seen immeasurable violence on the screen, they become hysterical when they see real people shot. Had they become desensitized to bloodshed, we wouldn’t need to import busloads of crisis counselors whenever tragedy strikes a school!

Violence in entertainment only desensitizes children to violence in entertainment. Our children are at least as horrified by real-life bloodshed as their pre-TV ancestors.

There is no epidemic of violence in the country. One act of violence plastered on a hundred million TV screens still amounts to one act of violence. Despite the acts of violence that bombard us on the news, violence in the U.S. is declining. Statistically, citizens of modern democracies are living in the safest environment in the history of the planet.

Social commentators who want to prove that society is becoming more violent usually do it by counting the violent incidents on TV. But the truth is the reverse – the more violence there is in real life, the less violence there is in entertainment. Only people who live in peace tend to enjoy violence in entertainment. People who live with real violence seek entertainment that takes their minds away from violence.

Only highly disturbed individuals will be stirred to action by violent entertainment. More murderers have attested to receiving their inspiration from the Bible – an extremely violence-filled book -- than from any other source, yet few people are seriously calling for a ban of the Bible.

If the media were to present more pleasant images, and the newspapers were full of good news, society would be better and individuals would be happier.

Society is in such terrible condition because of the negativity and aggression that are constantly conveyed in the media and newspapers.

These negative impressions fill people’s minds with unhappiness and pessimism.

People would be happier if we were presented with positive images in entertainment and if our newspapers were full of good news instead of bad news.

If the media were to present more pleasant images and the newspapers were full of good news, we would be bored and miserable.

The media are not stupid. They spend billions of dollars to learn exactly what the public wants and to provide it better than their competitors. If people really wanted pleasant stories, that’s what they would get. You could be sure that the media moguls would gladly replace comedy and violence with religious and inspirational shows if that were what people really enjoyed.

If newspapers were full of “good” news, readers would become miserable. They would be wondering, “Why is life so unfair? When is it going to be my turn to win the lottery, instead of all those other shmoes?” “Bad” news makes us feel grateful that it is “them” and not “us” who are suffering.