Read this article published in Le Cercle Psy .

Physical, verbal and psychological violence… Many children lapse into violence unexpected for their age, disarming the adults who care for them. How can we explain this phenomenon?

Hugo, aged 9, in the midst of an emotional storm, just put his two little hands around his teacher’s neck and squeezed with all his might. The next day, the story would fill the columns of the regional dailies. Whether visible or invisible, violence strikes children and leaves their educators powerless. What’s going on in little Hugo’s head? An accumulation of stress, tension and frustration, which he suddenly unloads. « This act is driven by the over-activation of his emotional brain and the under-activation of his frontal brain. As a result, they lose control of their emotions, » explains Catherine Gueguen, pediatrician at the Institut Hospitalier Franco-Britannique and author of For a happy childhood. Rethinking education in the light of the latest discoveries about the brain (Robert Laffont, 2014). Caught up in a multiple symptomatology, many of these children may even fall under the famous diagnosis of « Conduct Disorder « , first cited in the DSM-II in 1968.

Managing their emotions

One of the major factors is rooted in a small frontal part of our brain located just above our eyes, known as the COF or Orbito-Frontal Cortex. Catherine Gueguen lifts the veil on this brain structure: « The COF plays an essential role in our ability to be affectionate, empathetic, to develop our moral sense, but also to regulate our emotions ». Its maturation is therefore invaluable to human adaptation to society and to the quality of the bonds we forge with our fellow human beings. Allan Schore (1) and his team have shown that when a child’s environment was warm, supportive and empathetic, his COF matured more. Conversely, the more a child’s environment was mistreated, the more it slowed down the maturation of this fundamental part of the brain (2). Martin H. Teicher (3) has shown that verbal humiliation alters essential parts of the child’s prefrontal cortex, and can lead to aggression, psychiatric, dissociative, identity and personality disorders (4). In line with this research, Catherine Gueguen sees the violence of these children as a symptom of our society: « Emotional abuse is widespread not only in the home, but also in places where children are cared for ». TheAmerican Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry points out that the stress of single parenthood, divorce and unemployment can lead to violence.

Care or punishment?

According to the Inserm report on conduct disorders in children and adolescents, « Some have defended the importance of a psychological approach to the phenomenon, while others have relied on morality. In fact, the treatment methods proposed have always oscillated between care and punishment » (5). Our society tends to think that any child who commits a violent act must be punished, in order to integrate the notion of the forbidden. However, as recent neuroscience research has shown, punishment tends to have the opposite effect. For their part, psychiatrists are rightly reluctant to prescribe drug treatments that will paralyze the child’s thinking, without eliminating the origin of their actions. As a result, many of these « unmanageable » children are referred to specialized institutions and units. However, the latter can feel just as powerless: « We receive dangerous children, some of whom have put fourteen or fifteen institutions and child psychiatry departments to shame, and whom no one can accommodate any longer, » says Maurice, head of child psychiatry at the CHU in Saint-Étienne, and former associate professor of psychology at Lyon 2 University, in his book Do we want barbaric children? Preventing and treating extreme violence (Dunod, 2008).

Supporting the family

Catherine Gueguen recommends focusing on the family: « Resilience is always possible, as long as the people around you evolve. The adults around the child need to understand this. It’s not a question of promoting lax education, but of remaining firm and benevolent ». Using non-violent communication (NVC) as a therapeutic tool, Catherine Gueguen aims to help parents identify their own emotions. «  When adults change, children change too. Children’s brains are more malleable and plastic than adults’. Indeed, Sarah Whittle (6) showed that mothers who supported their teenage children increased the maturation of their famous COF (the research involved 188 teenagers (7). « The Anglo-Saxons and Nordic countries are already feeding off this work. In 1979, Sweden passed a law against humiliating children ». Since the majority of violence takes place on school premises, the French Ministry of Education also has its work cut out for it: it declares that it is taking action on the school climate and «  paying attention to the quality of human relations in the school, to the quality of organization and living spaces ». She advocates positive pedagogy, co-education with families, partnership practices with the entire educational community, and quality of life at school. In 2005, Inserm proposed early screening of children at risk of developing conduct disorders, a delicate initiative that was denounced as stigmatizing, and provoked an outcry from the community of health professionals (8). –