Add your own definitions of a spoilt child

12. Parents and teachers today are concerned about children’s growing aggressiveness, particularly visible in teenagers. Read the following passage to find out more about the problem.

An estimated 6-10 percent of all children develop serious emotional or personality problems at some point. These problems fall into two groups: those characterized by symptoms of extreme anxiety, withdrawal, and fearfulness, on the one hand, and by disobedience, aggression, and destruction of property on the other.

Sex-linked differences in aggression are evident from about two or three years of age, with boys being more aggressive than girls. Although young children sometimes fight and quarrel, usually over possessions, such behaviour is generally not a serious problem in the first three or four years of life. Aggressive behaviour can become a serious problem in older children, however, and by seven years of age a small proportion of boys display an extreme and consistent tendency to be aggressive with others. Children who are highly aggressive by the age of seven or eight tend to remain so later in life; these children are three times more likely to have police records as adults than are other children. By age 30 significantly more members of this group had been convicted of criminal behaviour, were aggressive with their spouses, and abused or severely punished their own children.

Although biological factors can play a role in producing extreme aggression, the role of the child's social environment is critical. Parents' use of extreme levels of physical punishment on the one hand, and their extreme permissiveness, on the other hand, can both lead to children's excessive aggressiveness. Each year about one million children in the United States are abused by their parents or other adults. The abuse of children is often part of a pattern of family violence that is transmitted from parent to child for generations. Children who were abused as infants tend to show much more resistant and agressive behaviour than do other children.

On March 24, 1998, two boys, aged 11 and 13, opened fire with rifles at a Jonesboro, Ark., middle school, killing four of their fellow students--all girls, aged 11 and 12--and one of their teachers. The Jonesboro tragedy was particularly shocking because the shooters were so young.

In February 1996 a 14-year-old boy shot and killed two students and a teacher in Moses Lake, Wash.

In October 1997 a Pearl, Miss., teenager stabbed his mother to death and then shot and killed two girls at his high school.

In December a 14-year-old in West Paducah, Ky., sprayed a high-school prayer meeting with gunfire, killing three girls.

In May 1998, just two months after the Jonesboro slayings, a 15-year-old killed two students and wounded 22 others at his Springfield, Ore., high school after having shot his parents to death at home; in September two teenagers in the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colo., gunned down four other teens and one adult.

Though experts were quick to point out that serious youth violence had actually declined somewhat in the United States during the past few years, these shootings were a confirmation of the deadly seriousness of the problem of youth homicide in the U.S. They were also a chilling suggestion that it could happen anywhere--in supposedly quiet towns in rural districts as well as on the streets of big cities.

According to statistical evidence, an American male aged 15-24 is 22 times as likely to die of homicide as a French or German youth, 34 times as likely as an English youth, and 94 times as likely as an Austrian. Only in some less-developed countries (including Colombia and Venezuela) or in parts of the former Soviet Union (including Russia and Estonia) are the risks of being murdered higher.

Psychologists and sociologists find it difficult to find a satisfactory explanation for youth extreme violence and crime. Among the factors which may contribute to the problem the following ones are usually mentioned: comparatively easy access to guns, insufficiency of the law system, social neglect and inequality, lack of adult guidance, extreme violence on TV and computer screens.

This is what Dr.Benjamin Spock wrote in conection with the problem of children’s agressiveness:

“Many evidences made me think that Americans have often been tolerant of harshness, lawlessness and violence, as well as of brutality on screen. Some children can only partly distinguish between dramas and reality. I believe that parents should flatly forbid programs that go in for violence. I also believe that parents should firmly stop children’s war-play or any other kind of play that degenerates into deliberate cruelty or meanness. One can’t be permissive about such things. To me it seems very clear that we should bring up the next generation with a greater respect for law and for other people’s rights”.

Discuss the ideas expressed in this passage. Do you think children’s and teenagers’ agressiveness is a topical problem in Ukraine? Can you prove your opinion? Do Ukrainian mass media highlight this problem?

In your opinion, are the factors leading to youth crime in Ukraine the same as in the USA?

What do you think about the proportion of biological – social factors in determining a child’s behaviour?

Comment on Dr. Benjamin Spock’s words. Do you agree that parents should not allow their children to play war and watch brutal scenes on TV?