July 27, 1998

Children are increasingly turning aggressive as a result of family breakdowns and the impact of the media.

By Madhu Jain with Ramesh Vinayak

The world sits heavy on the frail shoulders of 10-year-old Rohan Ahuja. A curly mop frames his rather delicate features. There's a "Home Alone" cuteness about his face which is disturbingly calm in repose. But with the suddenness of a dust storm, those very delicate features turn into a snarl. He hurls abuses and hits out at anything before him: teachers and classmates at his public school in Delhi and anything inanimate at home. He sleeps with shards of glass under his pillow and a knife under his mattress.

There's nothing abnormal about Rohan -- his behaviour is still within the realm of the normal, albeit straining at its boundaries. It's just that he is an angry child, the rage knotted up like a coil in the pit of his stomach. An inner fury, unfocused, until his mother took him to child psychiatrist R.K. Singh at Delhi's Sucheta Kripalani Hospital. The child, it turns out, hates his father because he used to beat his wife. The mother's decision to move out and to remarry only reinforced this hatred and insecurity. His two wishes: to be a lawyer when he grows up so that he can send his father to jail and to join the underworld so that he can shoot him dead.

Rohan's anger may sound extreme. But he is, increasingly, not alone. A child's world has never been free from anger. Nor, to a limited extent, its external expression in acts of aggression. But never before has the aggression been so upfront and widespread as it is in the '90s. Nor the threshold for tolerance so low. Psychologists and teachers are anxious about the visible increase in the number of acts of violence by children today, whether it is directed at others or towards themselves: a silent, brooding child may well be hiding a tornado slowly building up within. There's more slamming of doors, tantrum-throwing, snatching of lunch boxes in school and hitting school mates and siblings -- hitting parents too.

At any age. The whole world of children -- from toddlers to teens -- can go off its axis with the tiniest of nudges. Like two-and-a-half-year-old Ramani Krishnan, who kicked the TV set when the electricity went off. Or five-year-old Gaurav Kapoor, who throws tantrums when out shopping, kicks and bites his mother: "I'll shoot you," he yells at her when she does not buy him what he wants.

It's more worrying when the tantrums continue into the teens. Prashant Reddy, a strapping, 14-year-old six-footer, beats up his grandmother at home, his teacher and even the librarian at school. With his father busy at work and his mother caught up in a social whirl, Reddy craves for attention. Frustrated, he recently broke the window of his father's electronics showroom.

What causes aggression? It can be biological or could be triggered by environmental factors. Like verbal or physical abuse of children by a parent, teacher, or peer and the exposure of children to violence. It's the way the world is going: increased consumerism, the breakdown of family, the unbearable pressure of competition and the impact of the media. Violence is coming out of the air as it were -- from the movies and cable television.

A growing number of cases on "social conduct disorder", as psychologists describe aggression, are being referred to therapists by schools. "There is a discernible change in the past five years. I see much lower frustration tolerance in children," says family therapist Bindu Prasad, who counsels schoolchildren in Delhi. "Everybody wants their turn first, even in kindergarten."

There has also been a significant increase in the number of parents who are unable to cope with the aggression of their children and are now seeking professional help. Earlier, it was all in the family, usually the extended one with its inbuilt shock absorbers and safety valves. Today, the tolerance level of parents has also slipped below the danger mark. Says child psychologist Divya Singhal, consultant at the Vidyasagar Institute of Health and Neurosciences (VIMHANS) in Delhi: "Many parents bring in their children because they say they cause tension and they can't handle it." Therapist Akash Dharmaj recalls a number of her clients who leave their children with relatives or friends when they can't cope with them.

Children are coming in on their own too. Itisheri Bhatti, counsellor at Delhi Public School, R.K. Puram, says children are beginning to realise themselves that something is wrong. "For days, they don't talk to anybody and withdraw into themselves which is another form of aggression," she says.

Like charity, belligerence too begins at home. "There is a link between aggression and family violence," says Singh. "There are many alcoholic fathers who beat their children or wives."

Studies confirm this. A Panjab University study on 200 school-going children between the age of six and eight reveals that as many as 80 per cent of the antagonistic children admitted their parents were either aggressive or violent towards each other.

Parents and other family members are the models for their children. The parents' rage is visited upon their children. "Don't shout at me papa," yells eight-year-old Sunit Prasad, "I am not mummy." Dharini Roy, 14, once flew into a rage after her mother gently rebuked her for not clearing up. She pulled her mother's hair so hard that a clump of hair came out. Her father constantly berates his wife, making her paranoid.

Parents don't even have to come to blows or exchange angry words for children to pick up the signals, warns child psychologist Bhanumati Sharma of Lady Irwin College, Delhi. "Parents think they can contain the squabbles in the bedroom, but kids pick up the vibrations," says Sharma. "They think they're worldy-wise fighting in English but children know what's happening."

What goes on between their parents and grandparents is not lost on them either. When a child sees his father browbeating his own father into signing away rights over property or business, he realises that aggression is a short cut to getting what he wants. Aruna Broota of the Department of Psychology, Delhi University, recounts cases in which middle-aged men have actually beaten their parents to force them into submission.In the past, discipline used to keep anger internalised, in check. And a clear hierarchy ensured discipline in children. Today, there's democracy and each is for himself. "Parental control and moral authority has eroded considerably," observes Dr Rajiv Gupta, a consulting psychiatrist at Ludhiana, "so kids manipulate their parents through belligerence." Hence all those ads targeted at the emerging little decision-makers.

Today there's less parenting and more pampering. "Earlier, there was less pressure on parents to talk and explain things ," he says, adding, "Children now are becoming inquisitive and parents need to give them more time." It becomes worse when progressive parents want to be "friends" with their children but suddenly revert to being parents when they find their authority is in question.

Societal pressures are also responsible for the growing number of angry little men and women. And children from different classes apparently react differently. "Aggression among children from a poor socio-economic background is a means for survival," says Savita Malhotra, child psychiatrist, Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh.

A 1997 study of 3,000 school-going children in Ludhiana by Deepak Nanda of the Dayanand Medical College's psychiatry department found that aggression was more prevalent among public school-going students and girls from more economically deprived families where they have to perforce keep their feelings bottled up.

How does it all begin? Parents caught up in their own rat races paint a picture of the world outside the hearth as a jungle where you have to survive, often ruthlessly. "Many parents are telling their children to hit back in what is a tacit endorsement of violence as something desirable," says Vasantha R. Patri from the Department of Psychology, Lady Sri Ram College, Delhi. "And they are," she adds, "confusing aggression with assertion."

Tell a child to turn the other cheek, and the answer, as Anita Ghai, consultant at Delhi's Jesus and Mary College and a family therapist once got from a child was: "Yes, what if somebody hits me in the eye, do you think I should turn the other eye?" Good question. The import of newspaper reports in May of the school teacher who threw a wooden duster at a student in a Delhi school, damaging the child's eye, would not be lost on other children.

Being aggressive now means never having to say you're sorry. It means being smart. However, when the world views of two generations are at a tangent, there's bound to be a clash -- and hostility. Delhi clinical psychologist Jivjyot Kaur says one reason for increased aggression in children is the "gap of communication and expectations between them and their parents". This in turn is because of "the exposure of children to the electronic media as well as the opportunities the world gives to them which their parents never had".

This clash is all the more explosive when children who belong to more modest, middle-class backgrounds are in upmarket schools: they are made to feel inferior by their peers from affluent backgrounds. Self-esteem takes a dive and the child takes it out by shouting at home, or breaking things.

Susheel Ramchandani, 14, hits his mother and would also like to beat up his father, a Delhi University professor, were he not afraid of him. But what is making Susheel fume is the "simple living" lectures he gets from his idealist parents. He'd rather go to school in a car and wear designer T-shirts, like his friends.

To a large extent, TV is the main villain of the piece. Professor Sudhish Pauchauri, who has done a study on TV and society in Delhi for the University Grants Commission (UGC), describes the small screen as "a violent behaviour model". "Children are passive consumers and are mesmerised by ad jingles: they must have what they want at any cost ," he says.

Many of the ads aimed at children show that muscle and bluster get you what you want: if you want Babul bubble gum, the quickest way is to brandish a gun. If you want another kid's toffee, just snatch it. Even the Weekender ad has a young boy reaching for a gun. Cartoons and computer games have an inordinate amount of violence and children soon get desensitised to the violence. "Children acquire new ways of harming not previously in their response styles," says Shekhar Seshadri, additional professor in the department of psychiatry at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore. "Repeated viewing not only weakens restraint but also peoples' sensitivity to suffering."

There's also an overload effect of the small screen, which is becoming a babysitter for parents. Explains Broota: "There is so much information influx. Children can't assimilate, nor can they balance it with emotional development."

And then there's the alchemy of food: what you eat could change what you are. As nutritionist Sushma Sharma of Lady Irwin College explains, there is a "connection between the consumption of ready-to-eat foods like noodles and fizzy drinks and a change in behavioural characteristics". A recent study of dietary habits of middle-class school children in Nepal revealed that those who were eating such foods over three times a week suffer from attention deficit and hyperactivity. "Hyperactive children become quarrelsome," says Sharma.

The root of the problem, concur psychologists, is insecurity and low self-esteem. After sessions with both children and parents, it turns out that what most children seek is affection and self-assurance. Like angry Harsh Panjwani, four-and-a-half, who used to clench his teeth and hit his mother. Four sessions revealed he was doing this because he was insecure: his father had left his mother while she was expecting him.

How do you tackle a child's aggression? There are no easy solutions. Panjwani's mother realised that what he needed was a little demonstrative love. Other parents with young children realise that the faddish practice of "controlled crying", letting a young child cry alone in a separate room, will actually do him more harm. "The soothability factor increases if a parent responds sooner," says Bhanumati Sharma. "You should not allow them to whimper and wait because aggression breeds aggression."

Most therapists advise parents to listen carefully to what their children are saying and what they are not. Letting them talk always helps. "If the child develops good language capabilities, he is less likely to be aggressive," says Singh. Story-telling is one way to enable children to voice what they feel. Seshadri says the answer to the problem lies in schools. "A nine-point World Health Organisation programme," he adds, "covers teaching skills in decision-making, problem solving, critical thinking, effective communication, interpersonal skills, self-awareness, empathy and coping with emotions and stress."

India is far from the killer kids who traumatised the US with inexplicable outbursts of fatal rage earlier this year. The problem is not so much of budding psychopaths as that of ordinary children next door under pressure. There is a silent bomb ticking here. There are many Rohans. And to begin with, one could lighten their burden by just giving them a careful hearing.

Some names have been changed to protect identities.

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