What Parents Can Do to Help Prevent Youth Violence

Give your children consistent love and attention. Every child needs a strong, loving, relationship with a parent or other adult to feel safe and secure and to develop a sense of trust.

Communicate openly with your children, and encourage them to talk about all aspects of their lives: school, social activities, and their interests and concerns. Listen respectfully and solicit their opinions. Then, if a problem or crisis arises, they will be more likely to come to you.
Set clear standards for your children's behavior, and be consistent about rules and discipline. Involve your children in the setting of rules whenever possible, and discuss the reasons for rules with them. Make sure they understand what you expect and the consequences for disobedience, and then enforce rules consistently.

Make sure your children are supervised. Insist on knowing where your children are at all times and who their friends are. Try to get to know their friends' parents and your children's teachers. Encourage your children to participate in supervised after-school activities such as sports teams, tutoring programs, or organized recreation.

Promote peaceful resolutions to conflict by being a good role model. Deal with conflict at home calmly, considerately and quickly and manage your anger without violence. Talk with your children about handling disagreements, and help your children learn how to examine and find non-aggressive solutions to problems.

Talk with your children about the consequences of drug and weapon use, gang participation, and violence. Explain in detail how getting involved with these can result in injury, jail, even death. Also, make sure that all weapons are kept out of the reach of children.

Limit your children's exposure to violence in the media. Monitor the programs your children watch, the music they listen to, and the video games they play. Take time to watch television programs with your children and discuss any violence with them. Is the violence realistic? What would be the real-life consequences of such violence?

Try to limit your children's exposure to violence in the home or community. Work toward making your home a safe, nonviolent place, and always discourage violent behavior or hostile, aggressive arguments between family members. If the people in your home physically or verbally hurt and abuse each other, get help from a psychologist or counselor in your community. If your children are exposed to violence in the street, at school, or at home, they may need help in dealing with these frightening experiences. A psychologist, a counselor at school, or a member of the clergy, are among those who can help them cope with their feelings.

Take the initiative to make your school and community safer.

• Join up with other parents, through school and neighborhood associations, religious organizations, civic groups, and youth activity groups.
• Talk together about your concerns about youth in the community, including issues related to alcohol, drugs, and violence, and share your common parenting concerns.
• Support the development and implementation of school and community plans to address the needs of youth.

Parent Participation Helps Prevent Violence

When we are committed and involved in our children's lives, we can teach them, by example and discussion, how to avoid violent situations.

Although we are not present during school time, parents a key players in promoting school safety. When parents take an interest in school work, participate in school events, teach their children how to manager anger, or talk with their children about rules at school and home, they are helping to provide their children with alternatives to violence.

Youth gangs are responsible for much of the serious violence in the United States. In schools and neighborhoods where they are active, they create a climate of fear and increase the amount of violence and criminal behavior. Parents can take action to prevent their children from participating in gangs.

After school and other community programs not only give our children safety and supervision when we're not there; they also help them develop their skills and abilities. Finding good after school and other community programs for our children is worth the effort. Many resources are also available online to assist parents interested in starting their own programs to prevent youth involvement in violence, drug use or other delinquent behaviors.

Youth Violence Warning Signs

By Marcus Mottley, Ph.D.

Since the violent tragedy that occurred on Monday, I have had a lot of requests for information on what parents can do about school violence.

Today's article will feature some warning signs that parents and other adults should look for:

Youth Violence Warning Signs
Researchers have identified a number of warning signs that suggest that a child may be at risk for violent behavior. The presence of one or more of the following increases the risk of violent or dangerous behavior:

• past violent or aggressive behavior (including uncontrollable angry outbursts)
  access to weapons
• bringing a weapon to school
• past suicide attempts or threats
• family history of violent behavior or suicide attempts
• blaming others and/or unwilling to accept responsibility for one's own actions
• recent experience of humiliation, shame, loss, or rejection
• bullying or intimidating peers or younger children
• a pattern or history of making threats to harm others or self
• being a victim of abuse or neglect (physical, sexual, or emotional)
• witnessing abuse or violence in the home
• themes of death or depression repeatedly evident in conversation, written expressions, reading selections, or artwork
• preoccupation with themes and acts of violence in TV shows, movies, music, magazines, comics, books, video games, and Internet sites
• mental illness, such as depression, mania, psychosis, or bipolar disorder
• use of alcohol or illicit drugs
• disciplinary problems at school or in the community (delinquent behavior)
• past destruction of property or vandalism
• cruelty to animals
• firesetting behavior
• poor peer relationships and/or social isolation
• involvement with cults or gangs.
• little or no supervision or support from parents or other caring adult

The above warning signs do not stand in isolation. Generally, one event is not enough to warrant any serious concern. the greater the number of these warning signs present, the greater the risk. It is important to realize, however, that many children exhibit these warning signs and never resort to violence. Even so, these signs can be a cue that something is wrong, and the individual needs help.

Parents, teachers, coaches, social workers, and clinicians should look for patterns of on-going behavior involving multiple warning signs.

Family Therapy as Prevention

WebMd Health News reports that when kids or teens face conduct disorders, substance abuse or other problems, family therapy may help.

In family therapy, one or both parents attend therapy with the troubled child. Other kids in the family don’ have to attend.

Researcher Allan Josephson, MD says there is “abundant evidence” that family therapy can often make a big difference in six areas: conduct disorders, substance abuse, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and understanding attention problems.

Conduct disorders are serious violations of age-appropriate behavior that often involve physical aggression, property destruction, and truancy, says Josephson. He continues that “There’s no question that in this spectrum of family influence, conduct disorders clearly need family intervention and it's one of the more successful things when it's consistently applied,”

“It's very difficult to set limits without a child feeling secure,” says Josephson. “Most clinicians that work very intensively with these problems will have a situation where a parent says, “Fix the kid,”. The kid says, ‘Well, why should I come in on time? Why should I stop using drugs? He or she has never done a damn thing for me.’” Josephson notes that he has had that quoted to him directly.

When the parent signs on for family therapy, that’s a strong signal to the child, he notes. “The parent demonstrates their commitment to the child and the kid finally thinks, ‘Maybe I should go along with this,’” says Josephson.

According to Josephson and others, engaging parents in the treatment process and reducing the toxicity of the negative family environment can contribute to better treatment engagement, retention, compliance, effectiveness, and maintenance of goals.


Drug Prevention or Treatment

Family therapy helps kids quit using drugs, stay in drug treatment, and avoid related problems like truancy, says Josephson, citing “at least 12-14 well-designed studies.”

Parents who strongly show disapproval of illegal drug use also helps. He notes. “This is what these public information announcements in the last few years of parents as the ‘antidrug’ are about,” says Josephson.

I would go much further than Josephson. Parents who show a strong disapproval of any drug use are those that send a strong ‘anti-drug’ message to children. If a parent is sitting on the couch every night drinking a six pack of beer and watching TV – what kind of message is that sending? And can that parent then turn around and demand that their kids don’t drink? Parents must portray drug and alcohol use as dangerous for everyone and particularly life threatening for children.

Family therapy involves both parents and the individual child. Parents must be committed and demonstrate that commitment by full involvement in the therapeutic intervention. Family therapy can also serve as a strong therapeutic prevention initiative for children who are already demonstrating interest in anti-social activities or who have started to exhibit negative behaviors.

Family therapy in this context has not only a therapeutic goal, but an educative one as well. Therapists educate both parents and children about the impact of drug and alcohol use and how to deal with the individual, family and social climates and conditions which may lead to drug and alcohol use.

If you or your family is interested in family therapy as an intervention, find an experienced clinician who is both treatment and prevention oriented.