Children in Danger: Coping With The Consequences Of

Community ViolenceBy: 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 3rd & 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 Development

I

“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?TortureAbuseBuried AliveBurnedDrowned Shot M

alnutrition Expressionless Faces M

urdered Mother

RapeCarved with M

achetePsychologically Num

bAloneness80%

Child Death RateHopelessness

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.