Conference on child violence parents and teachers for a culture of peace and nonviolence

The Juan Ramón Jiménez Institute of Buenos Aires, Argentina requests a psychological guidance on how and teachers about childhood violence.

The conference aims to provide information about infantil violence, parents, teachers and managers. The purpose of the MSIMA is to be able to convey key concepts that allow them to reflect on the subject. Child violence is part or consequence of social violence, so it concerns us all. We will begin by defining the terms and explaining possible causes of violence, to end up giving some guidelines on how to act in the face of the problem.

Keep reading this Psychology Line where we talk about a Conference on Child Violence: parents and teachers for a culture of peace and nonviolence

1. Actual society
2. Stress
3. Definition of violence
4. Types of violence
5. Conflict
6. Child violence
7. The development cycle
8. Signals of Infant Violence
9. Issues about childhood violence
10. New Conflict Conception
11. Comments from attendees

Actual society

To arrive at the features of today's society, we will review the characteristics of modernity. Modern man has faith in reason and in truth, which allows him to have an idea of ​​progress and freedom. Trust the development of science, so it is hopeful in a better life for everyone.

Today our society is categorized as postmodern.

A clear example that illustrates its characteristics is that a writer when writing a text is not governed by pre -established rules, and cannot be judged by means of a decisive judgment for the application of that text. The writer works without rules and to establish the rules of what will have been done.

Philosophically postmodern is the complaint and criticism of the enlightened reason.

Postmodernity traits:

-End of story: Jean Baudrillard postulates that "In the background, you can't even talk about the end of history, since it would not have time to achieve its own end"¹

-Epoca of nostalgia: The hope and security granted by modern features is longed for.

-Nihilism: Supreme values ​​lose validity. Denial of all belief, all religious, political and social principle.

-Paradigms crisis: scientific conceptions change.

-Pluralism.

-The liberation of rationalities and diversities.

-Hedonist ethics: doctrine that proclaims pleasure, as the supreme purpose of life. Ethics loses foundation: there is more aesthetics than ethics.

-It lacks truth.

-Communication ecstasy

-Suspicion thought: reacts to the assumptions of modernity and flourishes a pessimistic skepticism that doubts everything.

The current family and the ESUELA do not escape this reality. So in both there are crises of values ​​and authority and a tendency towards permissive education without clear limits. Postmodern thinking doubt "the belief in a stable structure of the being that governs the future and gives meaning to the knowledge and norms of behavior".²

Another outstanding feature of our current society is the speed with which events and the imperative need to enroll in them so as not to stop belonging or being of being or being.

We live hurried, tensioning and worried. Time is scarce and the events are so many. We receive a lot more stimulation than our grandparents but the time we have to make decisions is the same

For the above, the current family has its own characteristics at the social moment to which it belongs. We have little time left to spend with family, to dialogue, to reflect, to tell us that we love each other, to congratulate us for what was achieved, etc. Here each of you will know what to aim with respect to you and your family. Maybe this is considered problematic, but it is not in itself. The problem lies in quantity but in quality. In other words, the important thing is not how long we spend with our children and husbands, but how we spend it, as we experience those moments, and that records remain in us adults and in our children of them.

The high level of stimulation and our different roles to be developed, added to personality traits and the experiential history of each of us, lead us to the theme of stress.

Stress

Today we are permanently before different stimuli that we must interpret and to which we must act. Stress is the set of physiological reactions that prepare the agency for action. So they have already concluded that this "set of physiological reactions that prepare us to act", stress, is activated many times on the day of a person.

Our biology has not evolved to the rhythm of technological progress. The physiological responses that our body triggers today are the same as the primitive man triggered. But as they imagine, because they live it, the difference is in action. The primitive man could fight or flee to the attack of an animal. In us there are the same neuroendocrine-vegetative changes, but with an inhibition or sociabilization of the aggressive response. Visceral orán (cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, respiratory, etc. ) Terminal effectors of sympathetic activation, are accusing the impact of them, since an adequate motor discharge of the musculoskeletal system does not occur. This occurs when the demands of the psychosocial environment are excessive, intense or prolonged, overcoming the ability to resistance and adapt the organism, and leading to the distress or bad stress. It occurs when the inflection point of the human performance curve is reached, which is increasing first, then it is flattening and finally begins its descent. The form is inverted, and illustrates the way in which biological performance is optimized as activation grows, until it reaches a point that an excessive demand that leads to an excessive increase in the behavioral and biological response, it situation to the organism At the edge of adaptive failure. From this point, any additional stimulus, although small, can cause dysfunctions and diseases.

The graphic numbers are to exemplify the concepts

By observing the graph we can visualize how our biological activation varies at different levels of stress. Anxiety is normal, in the period of healthy tension, from the moment of fatigue, to the collapse we enter a distress, but from the exhaustion you reach the pathological anxiety from which anxiety disorders emerge.

Stress mechanisms are present from birth to death; So both adults and children suffer their unfavorable consequences.

This picture produces mood variations: irritability and moodiness, negative interpretations of events and therefore a greater probability of a violent trigger in behavior.

The current man under the influence of social tension and his anxiety to adapt to the environment is more likely to not be able to control his impulses, deriving aggression in violence.

The neurobiological bases of aggressiveness are found in the prefrontal cortex and in the amygdala of the brain. The brain areas that regulate aggressive behaviors are the same that regulate emotions. Our emotions depend on our thinking.

By restructuring thoughts we can find emotions inhibiting aggression.

Definition of violence

A violent situation is a terrible experience in which important interests are involved and where anxiety is preponderant. Violence is the fastest solution.

The violent definition of the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy says:

1-That is outside its natural state, situation or mode.

2-What work with impetus and strength.

3-It is done sharply with extraordinary impetus and intensity.

4-Support the genius taken and impetuous and that is easily carried out from anger.

5-That runs against the regular or out of reason and justice.

In the current social system there is a shared anxiety between parents, teachers and students. The fact that anxiety is probably the most common feeling today means that we must understand violence as the most common response to this, a defensive reaction. Initially it is a conservation instinct.

Anxiety invokes and develops behaviors whose purpose is security. While these behaviors respond to threatening stimuli that endanger physical integrity and our territory, it is aggression. If these same behaviors can be foreseen, they are controlled and there is a previous preparation for action, it is violence

Types of violence

Verbal violence:

-Verbalizations in the form of insults.

-verbalizations that indicate lack of respect for the rights of the other.

-verbalizations that indicate bad manners.

-Negative interjections: voice that expresses some deep feeling such as discomfort, anger, anger etc.

Physical violence:

-Gestures that indicate lack of respect for the rights of the other.

-Behaviors that indicate bad manners or lack of respect.

-Physical abuse.

From these types of violence, we must differentiate those addressed to another and the self -directed.

Of aggression to control or violence

"Biology makes us aggressive, but it is culture that makes us peaceful or violent".³

Violence occurs when we cannot put our feelings and emotions into words. It is the result of culture and education.

Conflict

Relationship of such type in which both parties seek to obtain objectives that can be or seem to some of the incompatible parties. The conflict can also be the result of divergent, misunderstanding or overendoned expectations.

The conflict is born from the struggle or to ensure the obtaining of incompatible objectives or interests, carries in itself a component of high emotion that can lead to aggressiveness when they fail to some extent, the mediating instruments with which it must be faced with the same. Before a tension of interest, a conflict appears, so far it is not problematic because everything depends on the procedures and strategies that are used to get out of it. If bellicose procedures are used, aggressive episodes will appear, which can violently pursue if one of the contributors does not play honestly and abuses their power, fighting to destroy or damage the opposite, not to solve the matter. That is violence, the dishonest, arrogant, and opportunistic use of power over the opposite.

The conflict is part of human life and therefore of institutions; It has an aggressive component, which when it does not have the right channels derives in violence.

Child violence

Today's child is born in a violent society.

There are three influences that maintain and determine this social state:

-The changing patterns of family and community life.

-the fact that society has refined violence as normal and acceptable.

-Easy access to weapons and drugs.

In the course of child development, aggression and violence tell us a lot about the stage in which the child is, of his emotions, his learning and his family and educational environments.

The development cycle

Long before his birth the future is already possesses the seal of his individuality. Every child was born with potential that is its own. Each child has an exclusive growth mode determined by these potentialities and environmental destiny.

There are, however, certain basic features and certain growth sequences that are typical to the human species.

The general development course is analogous for men and women; But women mature somewhat faster and earlier.

Seven stages are described in it:

1-Embryo (0 to 8 weeks)

2- Fetus stage (8-40 weeks)

3-infancy (from birth to two years)

4-Preschool Age (2-5 years)

5-Niñez (5-12 years)

6-Adolescence (12-20/24 years)

7-adult man

Every child is unique, but also a member of the human species; so there are growth series that are never or rarely omitted.

The structuring of behavior, the child's active system, is a living structure that is ingeniously through growth architecture. As the active system matures achieve the conciliation and balance of a multitude of opposites. But the process is so intricated that growth cannot follow a straight line. Zigzaguea, highlighting one or another opposite function, but finally coordinating and modulating both. Growth progress consolidates for periods of relative stability. There is a rhythmic trend towards balance. Evolutionary tendency tends to be repeated at ascending levels of organization, as if the development cycle discovered a spiral trajectory. It is a progressive spiral, but at one stage the child can present a notable resemblance to what was in an earlier stage.

Child violence

¿Why children choose to resolve their conflicts violently?

¿They choose it, or it is the only way they believe possible?

¿They choose it, or it is the only way they learned?

In some stages of its development the child is aggressive because it responds to psychological characteristics of that evolutionary moment and because it responds to stimuli (internal or external) that have triggered fighting behaviors.

If the child cannot reflect on his aggression, and there are no stable evolutionary moments where progress can be appreciated in the modulation of his behavior, the child is violent.

Signals of Infant Violence

-Intense anger.

-Fury attacks or licks.

-Extreme irritability.

-Extreme impulsivity.

-Frustrate easily.

-Self -support.

-Have few friends, and be rejected by children for their behavior.

-Extremely active and reckless-

-Difficulties in paying significant and repeated excessive attention and movements in different areas and at different times.

Issues about childhood violence

¿What should be done if the child demonstrates violent behavior?

If some of the parents or both and an educator is worried, the child should be submitted to a complete evaluation by a mental health professional an effective and timely psychological treatment guarantees a better quality of life to the child and his family.

The objectives of the treatment typically focus on: helping the child to learn how to control their anger, express their frustration and anger appropriately, assume responsibility for their actions and accept the consequences. In addition, family conflicts, school problems, and community issues should be treated.

¿Child violent behavior can be prevented?

Research studies show that most of the violent behavior can be reduced or prevented if the child's exposure is reduced or eliminated to violence at home, community and means of dissemination. It is evident that violence encourages violence

Violent behavior reduction strategies:

-In the Moments of evolutionary stability We must act, both parents and educators, so that through our example, social skills and values ​​education, the child learns to manage their conflicts without violence. It is important to build the behavior in good days, because there is a greater response on your part.

-Preventive methods: It is ideal to handle the explosive behavior between five and a half and six. Most violent irruptions come from daily events, which is possible to avoid. Prevention would consist of accessing the child's request, if possible; or to suggest the opposite of the desired behavior. Direct clashes of will between parents and children should be avoided, because they reject the tasks imposed. Before the pressure of an adult verbally challenges. Given the punishment, the result may be more violence.

-Another resource is to use the Magic, which consists of counting out loud until magically begins to behave well.

-If the child self -agrees or breaks things from the environment, it will be necessary to cut those behaviors. First, the distraction is proven, if it is not to avoid conducting it in this way by holding it from your arms, showing firmness without violence or verbal; and bathes or wets his face. Then it is important in some children, relax them, through caresses, soft music, with a cradle song. If it is possible for a few hours to sleep. Only after a few hours it is possible to invite him to reflect on what happened. If the child has made any destruction it is important to repair his damage, if possible. If he self -agreed, show him his hurts and teach him the importance of caring for his body.

-Hold it for your actions

-Reflection and dialogue, Planned strategies to avoid a nearby violent emergence.

-Establish clear limits, both in the family and in school, define what can be done and not, what is good and what is bad.

-Define what authority is, And who represents it at home and at school.

-Reflect to what the authority is.

-Coherence between parents, that one father does not disavow the other in the presence of the child.

-Concordance between home and school discipline.

We can choose how to behave, if we think before acting on how we are going to communicate and in the consequence of our actions.

Children must learn alternatives in conflict resolution.

New Conflict Conception

The conflict is inherent to the human being, And we should not associate it with violence.

A new way of conceiving it is to enter it as part of life for the differences of ideas that human beings have. See it as the possibility that men have to individualize, since from individualization man can have different ideas to another man. Thus understood it is possible to face it successfully, because we understand its cause and know that we can choose how to manage it.

Education in values

Each of us knows what things are important to ourselves; This is because we have a personal and own table of values, which is formed from three main sources:

1. What is in force in society in which one lives and that one sees as normal
2. it received through learning and education, both in educational institutions and in the family.
3. it discovered through personal experience

In that table it is not all equally important; Values ​​have a hierarchy. Some are higher, and are nailed in the deepest of the person, and others are lower and peripheral, they affect us less, because they are on the surface of personal life. According to our table of values, we distribute reality as we care more or less, and consequently we provide more or less attention to things when acting.

The interesting thing is to ask what are the values ​​for which each one is governed, what is their own table, and what hierarchy has.

Values ​​are previous criteria that guide our action. For them we choose the end of our behavior and choose the means to develop it.

During childhood we develop most of the values ​​that will accompany us throughout our lives, from there the importance of that as parents and educators we transmit from our example and reflection, the values ​​that allow reaching a world of peace.

In order to travel our life by choosing our behaviors and specifying our purposes, we must have an internal guide for why, for what and how to act.

Let's start reflecting with ourselves and with our children and students about some words that if we all internalize, there is no doubt that we will be happier:

• PEACE
• SOLIDARITY
• COOPERATION
• TOLERANCE
• Acceptance of diversity

Postmodern humanity urges, of new "ideal and common conceptions" and this new ethic must draw an ecumenical path that begins to establish peace. The elements of peace are harmony, freedom and justice.

We must build a culture of peace that summarizes the values ​​of an authentic humanism in which to harmonize the passion and reason of man.

Being parents and teachers is the possibility of forming values ​​in the child, to give him the indispensable tools with which he can develop as a new man who idealizes a new ethic in which new social features can be outlined.

Comments from attendees

"It would be good if we all achieve it, for the good of humanity"

Adela de Iglesias

"It would be interesting to make workshops or dramatizations where we can experience the situations to which we referred. There is an unrealized point, as parents react to these situations of violence in school, as we unwittingly cause reactions in our children, etc."

Esther Suarez

"What I most want is to be able to realize all the expectations raised, taking them into practice and thus helping my children and perhaps it is a way to help others too."

Beatriz Chavez

"A conference for all staff working at the institution would be very interesting, whether auxiliaries, teachers of the three levels, managers, etc. "How to control or avoid overflows"

Liliana e. Stefanini

EGB director

"It seemed very punctual and useful to grow more to knowledge and give the children, day by day better quality of life."

Miss Andrea

"While my children are not violent, everything heard strengthens me more on my scale of values ​​and it was very useful and I will surely be more prepared for future situations, whether personal or to help another. ¡Thank you!

Gimena D's mother. Delal

"I feel very gratified for having professionals like you. Thanks for your help."

Anny

"The conference allows me to reflect as adults (parents) behave with respect to boys, sometimes the daily emergencies, take us away from the really important, and in some way from the model that we would have to be for the boys."

Liliana López

"The conference seemed very good, it was very useful and with great integration of themes. He clarified doubts and gave me guidelines to improve the quality of life inside and outside school."

Carolina Bazán

"Power that we all manage to be that man of new ethics, both as parents and teachers. For María Paz Jasmine Frontini like all yours.

Ma. Paz Jasmine Frontini

"It's good to always learn about our children. Thank you"

Fernando Ferri

"I would like that after this informative conference, we can do something more participatory, to be able to express all those things that occurred to us now and maybe we could not consult them. I do not mean individual cases."

Adriana Barroso. Juan Cruz Ferri's mother

"It would be interesting to repeat this type of talk so that the potatoes can" learn "about each stage in the life of our children."

Flia. Hoinacki

"I would love to know how I teach him not to react violently to an act of a partner that" Lautaro considers violent "

Sandra votes. Lautaro reggina's mother

"I would be interested in being able to expand information and if it is possible to make conversations with the groups of Nilños within the school."

Liliana. Mom of Nicolás Barros

"I feel that I lack guidance in how to help digest the aggression or violence in society and that part of adults to children: assaults, boys' robberies, abuse. ¡Thank you!

Ma. Cristina Zulue

This article is merely informative, in psychology-online we have no power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to Conference on Child Violence: parents and teachers for a culture of peace and nonviolence, We recommend that you enter our category of emotional and behavioral disorders.

1 Baudrillard, Jean. The illusion of the end. The strike of events. Barcelona, ​​Anagrama, 1993. p.14

2 G. Vattimo, "metaphysics, violence and secularization" in the secularization of philosophy, hermeneutics and postmodernity, Gedisa, Barcelona, ​​1992, p.64

3Antón, Pedro: Violent behaviors do not have a biological origin but cultural "Medical Journal 23-4-01