This presentation was about the findings of a five-year federally funded project based at the Centre of Excellence for Early Childhood Development as part of a child health initiative based in Ottawa.

The aim was to take an integrated view of health issues relating to 0-5 year olds, and their mandate was to disseminate the most recent scientific information to health professionals, service providers, policy and decision makers. Finally the project was to make a synthesis in plain language and post it on their website, taking account of social, emotional and growth issues of children.

The starting point had been to look at how importantly childhood aggression was perceived by the population. 1,500 adults were polled between June 18th and 23rd in 2002. The objective was to assess the perceptions concerning youth violence. It emerged that 15-17 year olds were perceived to exhibit most physical aggression, with 8-11 year olds in second place.

However, it was also thought that physical aggression increases with age and that adolescents are the most aggressive. Therefore those sampled thought the target of intervention should be the adolescent population. This led to proposals that if money was to be spent on the problem, it would be first on 12 17 year olds and then on 5- 11 year olds.

Interestingly, a longitudinal study showed that 40% of 2 to 5 year olds exhibited hitting, kicking and biting and that those between 36 to 50 months had the highest levels of such direct physical aggression.

However another study revealed that :

- Children can show angry reactions as early as two months old.
- Pre-school aggression peaks at between 2 and 3 years of age.
- Boys are more likely to be aggressive than girls.
- Aggression decreases after the age of four. It normally ends on school entry, but there can be an indirect peak between 4 and 7 years of age, predominantly among boys.

Because it has been established that humans have to learn not to be aggressive, this normal pattern of development becomes maladaptive in children who do not learn to modify their behaviours appropriately.

Such maladaptive levels of a-typical aggression in children have been defined as demonstrated by :

- any kind of excess
- high frequency of incidents
- expulsion from kindergarten.

The researchers looked into these questions :

- If physical aggression is learned from family, models, peers and the neighbourhood, when does this learning start ?
- Does the frequency of witnessing aggressive behaviour have an influence?
- Is there significance in the different arrest rate for violent crimes between men and women ?
- When and how can physical violence be prevented ?

The following risk factors were also identified :

Personal Familial Societal Obstetric complications
Genetic The quality of parental practices Peer influences Parents, especially mother, abusing alcohol, coke, methadone, or tobacco
Temperament Incidents of abuse Violent neighbourhood Nutritional deficiencies in pregnancy and the early years
Patterns of family violence School failure Birth complications
Low educational standards Ethnic minority factors Minor physical anomalies
Low income
Low level of social support
Parental mental ill-health
High levels of stress
Is it simply a question of inherited genetics, or modelling or both ? A history of delinquency All of these risk factors are cumulative

 

There is growing concern that aggression is escalating at a younger age and also that negative behaviour is a major factor in childhood mental health problems.

There is also concern that there is a link between early childhood aggression as a predictor of delinquency and drug abuse in adolescence as well as disruptive behaviour and depression among school children.

It was explained that :

- In the process of Social Learning children replicate anti-social behaviour from their parents, by imitation, modelling and reinforcement.
- Inadequate social control leads to weak self-control.
- Weak emotional attachment to parents leads to weak internalisation of pro-social norms.
- Positive attachment with primary care givers in the early years is vital in changing possible outcomes for children.
- However, socio-economic status has a major impact on health. By the age of 32 many people from lower status groups are experiencing major illnesses.

It has been observed that children whose behaviour has not been regulated by school age often undergo a transition after entry, when they become engaged in the learning process and begin forming positive relationships with their peers and teachers.

Those who remain aggressive and impulsive after school entry have been identified by their mothers, care givers and teachers as showing inability to control aggression, difficulty in modulating their emotions and difficulty in developing empathy. Because they lack the competence to alter their behaviours, they can develop into school drop-outs.

A positive initiative to deal with some of these problems includes :

- the development of a diagnostic tool for 2 to 4 year olds
- early identification of problems
- addressing the multiple risk factors
- targeting children, parents and teachers.

Based on this work, it has been found that the single most effective intervention is a Parent Training Programme, which involves teaching parental skills, positive practices and child focused interventions.