Book Review: Saving Sons and Giving Hugs

DAP is not the latest techno gadget to distract our children during math class. It is far more pervasive than any mobile device you’ll find in kids’ backpacks. And it is one of the leading causes of youth violence today.

Disrupted attachment patterns (DAP) are generated when a young child’s attachment process to its caregiver is severed. As we all know, the first three years of life are particularly crucial for a child’s brain and personality development. Dr. Kathryn Seifert, author of How Children Become Violent: Keeping Your Kids out of Gangs, Terrorist Organizations and Cults, provides an in-depth look inside the criminal mind and how it got to be formed. With a background in psychotherapy and criminal justice, Dr. Seifert painstakingly guides the reader through assessment tools, case studies and overwhelming evidence that sustained unmet basic needs lead to criminal behavior more often than not.

It’s not the crying two-year-old that you should fear, she suggests. It’s the one that no longer cries because it does no good. Severe neglect, abuse and community violence are perfect fodder for sustaining the cycle of violence for yet another generation. Not surprisingly, severely neglected children have smaller brains than healthy children as the necessary nurturing to bring them into full form was lacking.

The most helpful chapter, from my perspective as a parent, was Chapter Three, "The Six Stages of Moral Development". It had the broadest takeaway for the parent reader looking to steer her children clear of juvenile delinquency and, worse, gang membership; birth to two years (attachment process); two to seven years old (learning right from wrong); seven to eleven years old (lengthening attention spans); eleven to eighteen years old (the importance of group membership and the Golden Rule); adulthood I (self- AND other-regarding behavior) and adulthood II (apparently, according to Seifert, only Gandhi and MLK reach this level of generativity).

The author touches on other cultures where youth violence is endemic to the pervasive poverty and lack of health care present in the country. Brazil, the Phillipines and China are all places the author has visited. Each had its share of distinct child neglect. Surprisingly, she spoke highly of South Africa, one nation whose children’s lives are riddled with trauma, yet a social network is in place to capture those kids more readily through informal community support. I was left wondering what the youth violence statistics are for the townships she visited.

One needn’t look far to see the extensive gaps in mental health care for today’s youth in the United States alone. Dr. Seifert’s thorough demonstration of what’s wrong dominates this book. She leaves less room for what is working. She dedicates the fewest number of pages to treatments and proven therapies. Perhaps the dilemma has not been scientifically dissected enough for the author or the hopelessness she saw in her years as a prison therapist have left her disempowered. The book is descriptive, thoroughly researched and, to the layman’s eyes, rather depressing. Dr. James Garbarino’s Lost Boys, Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them is a much more hopeful account of what we parents can do to offset external pressures. While Dr. Seifert points most sharply at caregiver guilt for extreme violence in children, Dr. Garbarino suggests 15% of aggressive male child behavior comes from violent television programs. He offers a broader picture and pragmatic advice for parents.

An additional book, The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander by Barbara Coloroso, is another brilliant look at school-age bullying behavior and how parents can strengthen their children’s resolve to step in when a friend falls prey to his classmate’s cruelty.

In general, I recommend reading How Children Become Violent if you have a propensity for psychoanalytics and an interest in severe criminal behavior such as murder and rape. It is a well-written book with astounding statistics and will make you seek out your children to give them an extra hug and a good word.

(As a side note, there are diligent folks, much like Dr. Seifert, who are working to handle children's aggression, especially in an educational setting, in Boston, MA. The Collaborative Problem-Solving Institute at the Department of Psychiatry at Mass General Hospital has launched a brilliant initiative entitled Think:Kids.

Think:Kids provides parents, teachers, mental health clinicians and staff – indeed, all adults – with a more accurate, compassionate, and productive view of children’s challenging behavior.

We understand that challenging behavior stems from a lack of thinking skills – in domains including flexibility, frustration tolerance, and problem solving -- rather than from passive or permissive parenting or poor motivation. In other words, challenging behavior is best understood and treated as a learning disability.

There are ways to love, guide and nurture children even at their most challenging. I'm comforted to know it doesn't have to get as far as the children in Dr. Seifert's case studies. Aren't you?