Adolescent Violence Prevention Page

by Peter Stringham MD

Chapters

Theory and Teenager who Can Handle Himself Well

How to Solve Conflicts without Violence

Bullying, Peers, Gangs, Personal Safety and Dating Violence

Guns, Drugs, Alcohol, and Self Injury

What to do after a fight. Respect anger and feeling enjoyment.

Guns

A loaded hand gun in the home exposes children to enormous risk from accidental death, suicide and murder by friends and family. Guns are designed to damage or kill living things with very little physical effort. Normal teenagers act experimentally and will try things out just to see how they are. Parents cannot completely predict their children’s friends or classmates attitudes and actions about guns. Many teenagers experience wide mood swings, have not learned how to fully control their tempers and sometimes think about suicide. The best overall approach to teenagers and guns is to assume that unsupervised adolescents and access to loaded guns are a potentially dangerous mixture. In a recent study 20% of teenagers had handled a gun (not a bee bee gun) without their parents permission or knowledge.

The safest home is one without a gun. If guns are in the home they should be unloaded and locked up with the ammunition locked up separately. Hunting rifles and hand guns should be stored similarly. If target practice is an important family sport, consider storing guns at a shooting range. If home safety is a big concern , get locks, get an alarm system or get a dog.

  See How Your State Compares to other States and to the United States!!

Table is for States, Abolute Number of Murders, Rate per 100,000 of population and a ranking: 0-5 murders/100,000 = "Good"; 5.1-10/100,000 =Fair; 10.1-15/100,000 = Poor; 15.1 + = Very poor Male and Female rates are combined. 1997 Murder Rates for Various States

Relatives and friends homes should have the same safety rules.

A parent might telephone a neighbor:

 "My daughter wants to spend the evening with your daughter. They are such good friends and really enjoy each other’s company. I want you to have my telephone number in case you need to reach me. There is another question I hope you won’t mind answering. It’s about guns. My daughter has not grown up around guns, and I have told her to always leave any place where there are any loaded, unlocked guns around. But she is a teenager, and naturally very curious.  So before she goes anywhere I ask parents if they have guns and if they are unloaded and locked up."

What to do if a teenager carries a weapon.

"I Have heard that some teenagers carry weapons to make them feel safer. Do you think that kid is any safer? If a kid began to carry a knife or gun do you think he would tell his best friends? Do you think that pretty soon everyone would know he was carrying a weapon? What if he had a disagreement with another kid and that kid thought the disagreement might end in a fight? Do you think that other person might come to the fight with a weapon? So is that kid safer?

"What would happen if a kid shot or stabbed another person. What are the consequences for him? What about prison? Will that kid feel guilt?

"As you know I don’t want you fighting with anyone. Part of the reason is that sometimes the person you fight with might have a weapon. If you know how to get out of a fight with anyone, you won’t be afraid of anyone. You won’t care if he’s armed with an automatic weapon. You aren’t going to fight with him."

For some murder rates in other countries  read on
.
Murder Rates/100,000 for Various Countries 1997-2000
 

  Media

  It is proven that watching violent media in childhood produces more violence in children and adults. A study in upper New York State showed heavy television violence exposure in the third grade accurately predicted violent criminal behavior in those same people by the time they were 30. Fortunately most people who watch media violence do not become violent.

Professional wrestling is probably bad for children, because it shows young boys a parody of the worst part of being a man.  It shows man bullying each other, insulting each other, and fighting dirty.  Young children don't understand that this is pretend.  Is there anyone who wants their child to insult and bully their opponents, and fight dirty?  These might be good skills to have when you are in prison, but I doubt it.  Unfortunately, there are lots of public figures who really act as obnoxious as professional wrestlers, who are pretending.

Many television, video game and movie heroes, choose violence as the first choice when solving a conflict. The world of media is filled with impossibly evil people with whom one could never make a compromise. Also unlike the real world, in the world of television and movies heroes’ use  of violence is almost always successful. Gun violence by heroes is always successful. Violent injuries to heroes are of minor consequence. Furthermore violence is frequently humorous. Violence towards women is frequently seen as normal and a necessary action to gain a woman’s love or attention.  Regular viewing of severe violence numbs the audience.

The marines use video games to condition soldiers to kill without hesitation.  These games are the same as those in video arcades, and in stores.  It probably is reasonable to have human beings not want to kill each other, and to pause before they can kill each other.  Why would we want to condition the majority of teenagers to kill without hesitation?

Teenagers and parents should ask themselves what is the value of having teenagers learn to desensitize themselves to killing?

Many people think that human brains are predetermined to pay attention to violence. A few schools teach media literacy -- how to analyze an hour of television the same way you analyze a novel. These programs point out the pressures to produce an audience and they show how violence, sex, UFO’s, babies and animals all capture our attention. Human beings also like action and things that are odd and new. Producers know that and do not portray healthy life. They portray odd life. Even the news chooses images that will get our attention and leaves out images that might be more important but don’t get our attention as easily. Television, movie, and music producers know that violence is a simple attention getter and they want the audience to keep watching or listening to their products and the advertisements that go with them.

Teenagers want their own cultural world, that is different from their parents’. When it comes to teenage culture, parents don’t have to listen or see everything that adolescents hear or see, but they should see and hear enough of their television and music to know what they are exposed to.

At home I recommend that parents not allow television in a child’s bedroom where parents cannot know what they are watching. Don’t use television as a baby sitter. A teenager is much better off in a supervised youth group after school than home watching the emotion dysfunction of soap operas that pass for normal, the violence of simulated "true shows", or the frequent meltdown of sanity and basic civility on talk shows.

On the positive side parents can explain how their values differ from those of the media and use the bad examples of the media to teach non violent assertive behavior.

Teenagers are pretty much finished with television and don't spend much time watching it so the following advice is designed for parents or teachers talking to young children. Remember advice is only helpful if it is given within a caring relationship.

 "Have you ever noticed how this television show has about the same number of violent episodes in it each week? (you can count them and prove it to yourselves) I think they make all this fighting because the producers know we will keep watching it and then stay tuned for the advertisements. Even though I partly enjoy this show as an escape, it kind of makes me mad that the hero never has opponents with whom he can reason and solve problems nonviolently. In the real world, if people use violence to get what they want or to protect themselves from bullies, they turn themselves into bullies.

" Most working people deal with all kinds of people on their jobs and never fight. Many policemen have never fired their guns or even drawn their guns while on the job. You don’t have to be either a victim or a bully "

"I see you’re watching one of these talk shows. It bothers me that they portray all this weirdness on television. While it is interesting, you have to know that the producers pick the very oddest possible situations from the entire population of the country to show, so that you will catch the ads. They never show great people who solve their problems sensibly, because that is too ordinary and people would stop watching."

"It bothers me that some of the guests on the talk shows blame everyone else for their problems and never take any responsibility for their own actions. Life is not a matter of good luck and bad luck. Everyone is born with some advantages and some disadvantages. The person has to think hard to overcome his disadvantages and learn how to be a decent person who treats other people and himself well."

"You know that man who volunteers at the youth group? His wife is sick. He was trained for a much better job, but he works at a poorer paying job so that he has time to take care of his wife and family. He rarely complains and always has a good word for everyone. That is my idea of heroic behavior. As my daughter (or son) I hope you will grow up like that."

"That movie star is really great looking, but her personal life seems quite strange. She’s been married three times already. She blames all of her troubles on her growing up without a father. You know our neighbor next door? She grew up without a father. She works a full time job, volunteers once a month at the shelter, and always seems calm and friendly. That is my idea of a person to admire. I hope you will have some of those qualities."

 So does watching violent television hurt you?  I assume most of you are over 12 or 13. Your attitudes are already pretty much formed, so Xena: Warrior Princess is probably not going to affect you one way or the other.  It can only potentially hurt a kid when he or she is 3 to 11 and forming attitudes about how to handle the world. Playing killing video games and watching nothing but action movies can desensitize you to violence.  Depending on where you are in your psychological development watching other media such as sadistic pornography can also potentially hurt you.

Drugs and Alcohol

  Certain drugs are known to increase violence.  Alcohol is known to decrease inhibitions and some people think that drinking alcohol gives them permission to fight. For other people alcohol makes them think poorly so that they cannot communicate well and allow themselves to either start or get pulled into a fight. Half of all murder victims in one study had alcohol in their blood.

Angel dust and anabolic steroids have violence as common side effects. Cocaine and crystal meth cloud judgment and are associated with violence. Furthermore if someone is in the drug trade, he is exposed to an violent subculture, but the major risk for most teenagers  is from drinking alcohol. You can talk to even an older teenager. Talking about problems with drinking for young adults and teenagers can protect them from its problems before a child has problem drinking.

Parents might ask

 "At this party will there be drinking? Why is that? Even if there are adults around I am afraid that it could get out of hand. First of all who would let their teenagers drink anyway? What would you do if you were offered a drink? I don’t like the idea of your drinking. Your judgment is decreased even after one drink, and you may not be able to handle any trouble well...If there is drinking could you call me and I’ll pick you up. If you hear that the party will have drinking don't even go."

Self Violence

  A disturbing form of violence is a child hurting himself. It can range from odd body piercing to cutting of wrists to suicide., Children who are hurting themselves repeatedly need professional evaluation. This is not normal. It is usually a human being's plea for counseling to find the cause of his depression or anxiety.

Please Note again: Many of these sections involve talking to young people. These words are only useful if you have a caring relationship with the person you are talking to.

If you don't have a caring relationship, you can come across as someone rudely telling a teenager how to live his life.

 "I want to talk to you about hurting yourself. You are young and need your body for at least the next 60 or 70 years. Some kids hurt their bodies as an odd way to make themselves feel better. Some doctors think that chemicals called endorpnhbins get released when the body is hurt. Endorphins take away anxiety. So some people hurt themselves as a way of handling their anxiety or frustration. That is why you might have heard about kids cutting their wrists a lot of times. That is really serious and that kid should get professional counseling right away.

"I don’t want you to do anything that you will regret later. So piercing your ear is all right with me, but I don’t want you to pierce anything else.

"I don’t want any part of your body hurt, so that’s why I don’t want you to get into smoking, alcohol, other drugs, reckless driving or teenage sex. I also don’t want you to damage your hearing with extremely loud music. If you get into any trouble with any of this stuff, let me know, and I will help you. If I weren’t around who else could you talk to?

"If you ever feel like you want to hurt yourself, or if you just feel very depressed and can’t get out of it, tell me, or tell a trusted adult who can really help you. I can always call and find someone who will help you."

If you are a teenage counselor, be sure that you have a reliable adult who can refer on any friend who is very depressed and says that they might hurt himself or herself. Get the number of a suicide prevention hot line. For example in the Boston area the Samaritans--for Teens only # is 800-252-8336