Date: Sun 13-Nov-2005


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Viewpoints: Bad boy!

Sunday, November 13, 2005



Bad boy!

Tactics to control adult male violence extend to an 8-year-old

The writer, of Panama City, is a clinical psychologist.

By Damon LaBarbera

The News Herald recently reported on a student, age 8, who was arrested by the
police for repeatedly kicking his teacher at St. Andrew School. The mother was
also interviewed, revealing that the youngster had been aggressive before and
that she had been at her wits end attempting to find help for him. Does
arresting an 8-year-old boy represent “excessive force”? Yes, if we consider
that St. Andrew is intended to manage problematic youngsters, and there should
be means to restrain unruly children. It is quite common, for example, in an
inpatient setting for staff members to subdue and de-escalate an aggressive
child and then after some time return the child to the therapy environment. A
use their heads as battering rams to break through locked doors can be safely
quieted.

Perhaps the staff at St. Andrew made the best call they could at the time.
Nonetheless, a call to the police is a system failure and would have uncertain
effects on a child. It might be experienced as humiliating, or as a failure,
or conversely, even a wonderful form of attention.

Importantly, though, arrest is a form of control, not therapy, and suggests a
dearth of therapeutic options used or available at the time. And because of
the public nature of an arrest, the child’s confidential treatment history has
been spilled into the press. The incident at St. Andrew School typifies a
broader trend. Schools are increasingly referring students to the legal and
juvenile justice system rather than managing them internally. A reason for
this may be reduced funding for school and community mental health services.
Some say that the focus on test scores now prompts teachers to rid their
classes of disruptive students who might foul test scores. Too, aggression is
less tolerated after Columbine. And EEEE goal is to restrain the child in a
way that does not, through excessive attention or theatrics, inadvertently
reinforce the child’s misbehavior. Thus children who kick, bite, start fires,
throw chairs or finally, having a student arrested may, oddly enough, open the
door for mental health services in some communities.

The children most likely to be affected are boys, since boys are more likely
to aggress, as was the case at St. Andrews. Though most of the horseplay and
roughhousing of boys is harmless, some will aggress excessively.

Boys are diagnosed more with those disorders where aggression is a central or
associated feature, such as attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD),
conduct disorder, and pervasive developmental disorder. Most aggression
subsides with treatment or time. When resources for managing disorders
involving aggression dwindle, it will be boys who disproportionately suffer.

The scientific consensus seems to be that biological and constitutional
factors account for boys’ higher aggression. But environment plays a role, and
environment has worsened lately in certain respects.

Studies show that boys are more likely than girls to manifest aggression after
parental divorce. Divorce also can reduce a boy’s contact with a father, which
has long been known to increase likelihood of aggression. As divorce has
shattered the nuclear family, so has the other main environment of boys become
strained. In particular, school has become a tougher environment for boys.

The efforts of the last 15 years to enhance the educational experience of
girls has worked for girls but left boys in the dust. As ever, boys are
leaders but leaders on almost every negative academic statistic — higher rates
of dropout, referral to special education, learning disability, successful
suicide rate, and expulsion.

The problem is most easily seen with African Americans boys — high on negative
statistics regarding academic success while black females are largely
responsible for the touted advance of African Americans into academe and the
professions.

Other social trends might have played a role in the St. Andrews incident.
Reliance has been placed, the last three decades, on law enforcement to manage
primarily male-against-female aggression in such domains as domestic violence,
sexual assault, sexual predation and harassment. This paradigm of controlling
adult male violence has unfortunately been mapped out to other areas,
including, as in the situation at St. Andrews, managing kicking 8-year-olds.

Current books show unclear thinking about boys. There seems to be a desire to
raise docile, cooperative boys who do not have the baleful aggressivity of
their fathers. “Raise boys as girls,” says a prominent feminist writer, while
a new book, Raising Boys without Men argues that fathers are at best
superfluous in raising sons, and that ideal parents are a lesbian couple, or a
competent “maverick mom.” But most psychologists believe that boys raised
without father aggress more. Our prisons are filled with boys raised without
fathers.

Thinking may change, since highbrow female writers are distancing themselves
from anything that resembles strident ‘70s feminist, as au courant as platform
shoes. For example, middlebrow Harper’s Bazaar and Parents magazines give
Raising Boys without Men positive reviews, while Atlantic excoriated it. But
this does not change the fact that conceptions of childrearing and of boys are
being driven by intellectual fashion.

In any case, the incident at St. Andrews tells us that there are problems in
the way our schools are managing our boys. It is incumbent to examine these
incidents, particularly when they provide a window onto the panorama of
injustices that have human consequences for particular children.

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