Perilous Play

An increasingly violent environment is taking its toll on children By Lamia Hassan Last December, the state-run Channel 1 reported a horrifying incident. A mother of two children, a five-year-old boy and a one-year-old girl, in Luxor was caught off guard when her son came running to her innocent surprise on his face with a question: He was playing with his sister, doing to her what his mom did to the chicken, when the girl suddenly stopped responding. Baffled, the boy wanted to know why his sister was so quiet. The reason? After watching his mother slit the throats of chickens in the kitchen, the five-year-old found a knife and decided to do the same with his baby sister; he had slaughtered her in what he probably believed was just a game.Violence is no child’s game, but it seems that children are becoming increasingly violent. Take a stroll one day and just observe people’s behavior, especially the children, coming out of school in rowdy hordes or playing in public gardens or walking with their parents. It is easy to see the tension and perhaps even aggression in their behavior. Whether this behavior is inspired by school, family, media or a combination of everything, parents and analysts fear the repercussions. When I used to cook at my house, I was really careful to keep my children away from the kitchen and not let them see me using knives, because they could automatically use it when I am not around, says Rania El-Etreby, mother of a seven-year-old daughter and ten-year-old son. They might not be doing it intentionally, but it is part of their curiosity and [desire] to explore things that they don’t know about. You could debate whether the mother in Luxor was wrong to let her children watch while she was slaughtering animals, but the kitchen isn’t the only place where children could witness death. And the more they see, the more they think it is okay to imitate. Watching violence causes something called disinhibition to occur in the child’s brain, says Hesham Rami, professor of psychiatry at the faculty of medicine in Ain Shams University. He notes that while people are instinctively repulsed by blood and violence, with the repetition of violence, the pain people [feel while] watching it diminishes, and they become less sensitive or feel less guilty about it. Bad for the Brain Local parents are quick to blame the media for their children’s increasing levels of violence and tension, pointing to the internet, video games, movies, TV shows and even cartoons  think Cow and Chicken, Samurai Jack and Ed, Edd n Eddie. In a world where every time you turn around, a new technology tool surfaces, it seems almost impossible to control what children and young adults have access to.Take video and online games, for example. Two of the most popular games children here play are Call of Duty (COD) and Grand Theft Auto (GTA). Both games are extremely violent. In COD, for instance, the player uses military weapons to kill the enemy, with blood splattering when the player scores a hit. In GTA, the player is a gangster who has to steal cars and perform violent crimes. I observed my son while he was playing GTA one day, and as I started asking questions I was shocked to find out that the game exposed him to information about all the different kinds of drugs, and it involves paying to get services from women. [This is aside from] the fact that the game itself is very violent, says El-Etreby. While Egypt has no formal content-rating system, games legally imported from the US or Europe are marked with symbols ranking the game’s suitability by age. El-Etreby says that now that she is a parent, she views cartoons with a cautious eye not just new ones, but the classics she grew up with. There were always articles hinting that Tom and Jerry should not be shown to children because it promotes violence, she says, but when I was young I always thought of the cartoon as funny. [Now] my children try to imitate the characters in a violent way. Rami says research and studies have proved that watching violence on television or in movies affects children, as they start to imitate what they see.This is what we call modeling, as they take the people they see on the screen as models, he explains, which is highly dangerous especially when they feel that there is glorification or reward for violence. Farida Khalil, a former school teacher, feels that social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have a considerable influence on children, although she believes that the culture and the parents could counterbalance it if they try. This is my experience from a private school, where parents spoil their children and give them all what they want, Khalil says. I wouldn’t know about the poor children from other neighborhoods. Many parents today might not be fully aware of the dangers of some of the technology tools their children quite impressionable in their young age have unlimited access to. Now at a really young age, you find that every child has a Facebook account and a mobile phone, which spoils the kids,says El-Etreby. I had to delete my son’s Facebook account after I saw him once in a chat room swearing at a girl [...] who, as it turns out, was actually the one who started swearing at him. Now it is no longer the boys who are the only ones that are [verbally] violent, but the girls as well, and each of them does it in his or her own way.Lessons at Home The media is not the sole culprit in promoting violent behavior, however. In El-Etreby’s opinion, children are a mirror of their parents. A large part of children’s behavior is a reflection of how their parents behave at home; if the parents are aggressive, the children may very well copy their behavior. Living in a house where parents are fighting most of the time, the child is brought up with the idea that fighting is the solution to problems and that this is how he or she should deal with and respond to society. Even growing up in a house where the father is always talking in a loud voice can lead a child to believe that being loud gets you what you want in life and make people obey you, says El-Etreby. While physically or verbally abusive households put children at risk of becoming violent, it is not the sole reason children manifest unfavorable behavior. Parents and developmental experts also point to the changing nature of parenting. Many people interviewed felt that parents could no longer spare enough time for nurturing and bonding with their children. When they do have time, parents are stressed out due to their hectic lifestyle and long working hours and are not calm when dealing with their kids. In many cases, children are left to be raised by live-in nannies or maids who might not pay too much attention to negative behavior, much less are trained to deal with it. El-Etreby believes that when she was young, it was more common to see violence among children who come from less privileged backgrounds, and people felt their behavior was justified by their poor living conditions. Today, violence is a problem among children from all economic classes. Rami says that the changing family structure has adversely affected children as well. In the past, children were more connected to extended family, but today they focus more on immediate family. Combine that with the current economic conditions, and it is a recipe for destruction. Parents come back from work exhausted, so they tend to spend less time with their children [and don’t] even try to instill any intimate emotions in them,says Rami. As a result, the children try to prove themselves by screaming or doing any violent acts to grab their parents attention. Amal Zaghloul, a mother of an 18-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl, says that the family is no longer as patient as before, which contributes to more violence. The stress put on parents is transferred to the children, she says. The beating of children and the constant fighting and domestic violence highly affects the children’s behavior.When a child lives with parents who show little respect to one another and are always bickering, the child becomes insecure and does the same when playing or constantly resists his or her parents. The fact that the parents now are less tolerant, the ever-growing stress that is surrounding the environment the kids are brought up in [and] the large number of means spoiling kids all result in making them more violent, says Mae Khalil, mother of a two-year-old daughter. Culture and society also play a very important role in shaping the children. Our society now does not have the same values we had before, says Rami. Comparing Egypt 20 or 30 years earlier, he said, Everything was different. People had different beliefs and values that they no longer have today. In addition to the fact that the country was less crowded and there was more space and better conditions for everyone to live as compared today. One very notable manifestation of this is the use of foul language and swear words on the street. One time when I went to pick up my son from the club, I saw one of the kids there swearing at him, using a word that I am not even familiar with. When I went to the club’s security guards to complain, they said that they are sickened by the words they hear from the children but cannot do much about it, says El-Etreby. You now see children everywhere cursing and catcalling, which was not really part of how our society used to be. Changing the Tide While it seems hard at this point to change the behavior of violent children, there are ways to monitor the amount of violence children are exposed to early on.Rami says if parents control the number of hours children spend playing games or watching television, they can minimize a significant cause of this violent behavior. When they see their children watching something violent, the psychiatrist continues, they should sit with them and try to explain that there are other good ways for them to get what they want. Parents should also try to control their behavior in front of their children, he adds. [Parents] cannot tell [their children] not to shout while they are shouting or cannot tell them not to beat anyone while they see them doing this. Parents aren’t the only ones playing an important role, society and schools factor in too. In terms of education, El-Etreby says that schools should hire proper teachers who know how to deal with children; a knowledge of development psychology should be a must in the hiring criteria. Teachers and the school system should be designed to promote non-violence, says Rami. Even with the government, it is not right to have soldiers and officers beat people, because when children see this, it will make them become more violent. Controlling these factors will gradually make children less violent.