Violence is part of the normal development of a child. Every child shows forms of aggressive behavior from time to time precisely because this is part of human development. In addition to normal development, aggression can also have another origin that leads to the deviant development of aggressive behavior. The distinction between ‘normal’ aggression and problematic aggression is difficult to make. In practice, this can only be determined at an individual level.
Causes of aggressive behavior of various kinds
There are various factors that can cause a person to develop problems in terms of aggression. The same factors may lead to nothing in another person. The further development of aggression therefore depends on the character of the person. But besides personality, other things also play an important role.
Various factors are discussed in the literature. We divide the factors into 5 categories: the child factors, personality traits, home situation, contact with peers and other factors.
Child factors
By child factors we mean the factors that one already possesses as a child. These factors are innate and therefore assigned to ‘nature’. By nature we mean everything that we received at the beginning of our lives, with which we were born. We have no control over this, it’s just a fact. They are not or hardly influenced by external factors. Examples of this are genes, gender and ethnicity.
Personality traits
As a second group we have the personality traits; the character. This is the result of a combination of ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’ ; innate and learned. If we translate nurture literally we get ‘nutrition’. Our character is therefore the result of our nature, but it is also the result of the nutrition that we were taught by our parents and later our broader environment; school, friends, … Temparament and problem behavior are clear examples of this.
Home-situation
The home situation of children and young people is also not unimportant. Social behavior on the part of the parents is necessary, but not always present within the family. As a result, children often adopt anti-social behavior and often get into trouble. They have nothing to say to their parents, parents show little or no interest in their child,…
Contact with peers
Together with the home situation, contact with peers provides social factors that can lead to the problem of deviant development of aggression. Rejection by friends and anti-social behavior of friends can have serious consequences. The children do not feel understood, do not feel at home anywhere, do not belong, … These young people are often unable to express themselves in a normal way, which puts them at greater risk of expressing aggression.
We must also keep in mind that children who are not accepted by their parents, friends, society are crying out for attention. Like everyone else, but because they cannot and do not provide this in a reasonable way, they have to look for another solution. For example, violence or aggression sometimes offers them the solution to obtain that attention, albeit negative attention. We should notice that negative attention is much more likely to be acted upon, because it can be dangerous.
We must try to give young people confidence back so that they start looking for positive attention.
Other factors
As a final group we have other factors such as media influence. The media tends to quickly portray young people in a negative light. Every day there are articles in the newspaper about young people who argue at parties, are drunk, stab each other with a knife, …
These quotes by the media do have an influence on the youth. The media gives so much weight to the negative facts of young people and emphasizes them fiercely, so that young people sometimes accept this as the truth and follow in the footsteps of criminals. They get the feeling that they are only doing bad. Why then should they still try to do good?
We can therefore partly see the media as the culprit and as a foundation for unstable young people who then fall into the trap of media-crazed reporters. my view on