05/07/99

How Can We Prevent Student Violence

Q: Ever since the horrible shootings and deaths in Littleton, Colorado, I've been wondering what we might do in CT communities and throughout the US to remember the children who died by learning from what happened to them. What can we do to prevent similar eruptions of student violence in the future?

A: The following calls to preventive action come from several Connecticut citizens. Discuss these ideas with the young people you know and act on some of them together. Their participation is key for preventive measures to succeed. Ideas are presented in random order.

• Conversations. Talk with young people, not just to them but with them. Adults so often lecture to the young, rather than engaging them in conversation and showing genuine interest in their thoughts and opinions. Children who have developed rapport with several adults in their lives are more likely to seek help or advice from adults when unhappy or worried about something. Children who feel connected and important to others are far less likely to withdraw and become socially isolated than children without those connections. An isolated, alienated child often feels angry, unloved and unlovable; hostility and blind hatred can arise from such feelings.

• Community forums. Encourage community leaders to bring parents, students, clergy, counselors, teachers, law makers, school administrators, senior citizens and others together to discuss community conditions that may be contributing to student/youth unhappiness or hostility. Getting people together to solve problems often leads to imaginative solutions and a sense of community ownership of the problems as well as their solutions. Youth violence can occur anywhere, no community is immune to it.

• Reduce raw depictions of violence in the media. If consumers demand less media violence, producers will oblige them. There is so much violence in movies and video games that kids and adults gradually grow immune to its impact or even think it‚s ok. It chills me to sit next to kids who watch blood and gore in a movie and say, "Cool."

• Decrease access to guns. Legislate for mandatory registration and background checks for the purchase of any weapon, anywhere, be it in a store, at a gun show, on the Internet or owner-to-owner in a private sale. We‚re obligated to register every car; so, too, should we be obligated to register every gun. Ban the sale of automatic/rapid-fire weapons to the public.

• Establish Internet regulations and protocols. This is a tough one to manage, because it smacks of censorship, but parents need help here. They aren‚t as savvy as their children are on computers and can‚t watch them every minute. Parents need ways of protecting their children from pornography, exploitation and bomb recipes online.

• Challenge the age-old rule of the streets: Nobody likes a squealer. Discussions at home and at school, from preschool on up, are needed to help children identify circumstances that call for disclosure and outside help.

• Teach by example. Adults who curse, explode, spank, destroy property, drink to excess and act out their anger and other strong emotions in destructive ways teach these behaviors to their children, no matter how often they caution them not to act that way. The seeds of violence are often sown at home. Adults who learn how to handle their own emotions in constructive ways, teach their children, by example, to do the same.

• Know where your children are and get to know their friends. Young people, teens and young adults included, need supervision and accountability. In other words, they need rules and specific limits with an understanding of the consequences for breaking the rules or overstepping the limits.

• Appeal to local, state and national leaders for support. We need family-friendly policies in our communities. Stay abreast of pending legislation and contact your government representatives to express your opinions (for or against). We also need leaders at all levels who represent and live by the values and principals we want our children to emulate. Educate yourself about candidates before casting your votes.

• Be an active participant in your child's life. That includes attendance at school conferences, parent nights, special events, homework assistance, outings with your children and their friends and lots of conversation to process experiences. Children need just as much help and support processing their emotions as their ideas.

LINKS:

An Overview of Strategies to Reduce School Violence
Prevention Yellow Pages: "An ounce of prevention"

Please send questions or comments to bbruno@snet.net.