Deviance and Violent Behaviors
Introduction
Deviance can be described as a behavior or an action that can violate the informal social norms and the formally enacted rules. The formal type of deviance is the criminal violation of formally enacted, e.g., theft, robbery, murder, assault, and rape. While the informal deviance, which violates the informal social norms, which have not been enacted into any law, includes things like loud belching, picking of one’s nose, and standing unnecessarily close to one another. On the other hand, violence is the use of physical force to damage, abuse, injure, or destroy something or someone. So when a child is in adolescent and continues to show violent and deviant behaviors, there might be implications which might even lead to criminal activities, and as a child continues to get into the stage of adolescent the more changes they experience (Cho et al., 2019)
The kind of parental monitoring was found to be one thing that could have led to the development of a child’s deviant and violent behavior; since the adolescent is still in the period of development, they are marked with the increase in antisocial and deviant behaviors. For some adolescent children, antisocial behaviors such as violence usually desist as they become a young adult. Simultaneously, to others, the continuity of violent and deviant behaviors during the adolescent and the as young adults in most cases pose a critical implication for sustained engagement in violent, delinquent, and criminal behaviors in adulthood. Parental monitoring is one of the practices in parenting that is greatly associated with a lower rate of violent and deviant behaviors. Through research, we have been able to find out that the monitoring of parents has been able to buffer various individual developmental outcomes such as violence (Cho et al., 2019). This paper will shed more light on deviance and violent behaviors on a child as it applies to his adolescent developmental behaviors.
An adolescent child developmental assessment on violent and deviance behavior
According to Grant et al., 2019, peer deviance and family violence were related to bullying perpetration. It was found that children who at an early age are exposed to behaviors that are said to be violent within their immediate members of the family may develop the process of learning and accepting behaviors like that as a method that is appropriate in dealing with any form of conflict or even in reaching a desirable goal. The peers’ relationship was found to play a very significant role in developing adolescent children, more so during their transition to middle school. Pellegrini and learning theory stated that individuals’ behavior would only change because they normally learn and observe in their established social context.
The study conducted it was found that students who had an elevated level of peer deviance and family violence at a given point of time we’re able to report a high bullying perpetration level. The explanation that was made from the research as to the role peer deviance has on bullying behavior was that an adolescent youth who lived in a house that had been characterized with family conflicts of high level and family relationship that was positively low was likely to receive parental monitoring that was inadequate and more likely to be associated with deviant peers (Grant et al., 2019). Fluctuation in exposure to violence within a peer context and the individual’s family were important for changes in the bullying behavior of an individual.
Ingram et al., 2020, in their paper exposure to violence in the family increased the likelihood of a person perpetrating any form of violent behavior in the future relationship they will have, and also the theory of problem behavior suggested that if one engages himself in problem behavior such as bullying may increase the likelihood of the same person engaging himself in another problem behavior such as substance abuse. The study examined how family violence exposure predicted one to be a member of bullying latent classes and sibling perpetration aggression. The youth who had reported violence in the family was likely to fall into sibling aggression (Ingram et al., 2020). The results indicated the deleterious kind of impact violence in the family had on a child’s development.
Merrin et al., 2019, in this article, we were able to see that a high rate of parental monitoring was found to be directly associated with the lower rates of violent and deviant behaviors and that the child disclosure was found by the author to be the strongest predictor of the deviant behaviors and other problem behaviors more than monitoring done by the parent. The period of transition between middle school to high schools was when the author found that youth started spending more of their time with their peers and lesser and lesser time with their parents, and it was the period that marked the increase between parent to child conflict. It was during this same period that the adolescent was engaged in risky and antisocial behaviors.
Due to these changes, the parent and the child began to spend less time together; the youths who were in adolescents were able to get an opportunity to interact with deviant peer groups. In turn, the deviant group would have the time to influence them into unwanted behaviors. Research conducted found out that most of the adolescent children who were engaged in high violent and deviant behaviors were found to spend most of their time not supervised with friends who also engaged in violent and deviant behaviors (Merrin et al., 2019). Parental monitoring was found to be a moderator that was significant in the association between adolescent deviance, peer deviance, and violent behaviors.
Espelage., 2014, the authors of the article found out that parent and children coercive exchange when at home in most cases end up having conflictual and abusive family dynamics that end up being linked with bullying; longitudinal findings have highlighted that indirect and direct family violence exposure is normally linked to the behavior of bullying. This is because children who witnessed many inter-parental violent behaviors were at a high risk of engaging themselves in bullying. This paper also indicated that from a study done, girls who were witnesses of their mother’s violence against their father or their father’s violence against their mother were more likely to bully other children than girls who were not exposed to such inter-parental disputes.
A consensus has been to growing, stating that the family’s violence is usually the training ground for the peer aggression that later leads to them being associated with risky behaviors. But despite such consensus, there has not been any clear indication that states that violence in the family is equally in association with fighting and bullying perpetration, sibling aggression has also been found to be a prevalent type of violence found in the family. Family violence is essential in understanding and determining the relation between bullying and fighting perpetration (Espelage et al., 2014). The study conducted in this article utilized social interaction learning theory so that they would be able to examine the association between bullying and fighting perpetration and family violence.
Wang et al., 2020, here the authors states that peers who are deviate usually become more influential during the adolescent stages of moralization and behavior socialization, the peer group during the adolescent stage are the main context that reinforces and shapes the behavior of individuals such as displaying aggressive behaviors and bullying according to the group theory of socialization. Young people who are still in adolescence and like affiliating themselves with deviant peers are the ones who end up bullying other people; the bullying behaviors of adolescents can be learned or even reinforced through imitation and observation of the deviant peers. Adolescent aggression was positively associated with deviant peers by some of the cross-sectional studies which had been conducted.
Based on different results from longitudinal studies high initial level of affiliation with deviant peers can help predict an increase in bullying perpetration and subsequent aggression; the article highlights that adolescents who like affiliating themselves with deviant peers are likely to end up developing high moral disengagement just as indicated by some longitudinal studies which supported the fact that moral disengagement significantly acts as a prediction to bullying perpetration of an adolescent, with at least two meta-analyses indicating that bullying perpetration is positively associated with moral disengagement (Wang et al., 2020). In most cases, the adolescent spent most of their time with their peers more than even their own parents, the deviant peers take the opportunity and become even more influential in adolescent moralization.
A study conducted found that the affiliation of deviant peers more influences moral disengagement, and it mediated the relationship between aggressive behaviors and deviant peer affiliation, which also led to an assumption that the same moral disengagement also mediated between bullying perpetration and affiliation of deviant peers. Moral identity was also found not to moderate between a direct relationship of adolescent bullying perpetration and deviant peers’ affiliation. Hanimoglu, 2018, has been said to have self-destructive or destructive characteristics, with its signs being self-identification and social exclusion. Deviant behaviors have been found to pose a real threat to individuals’ social and physical survival within a particular setting environment.
Teenagers involve themselves in deviant behaviors such as delinquent, antisocial, aggressiveness, wrongful doing, suicidal acts, and self-destruction, and acts like this may lead to personal development filled with an abnormality. Most of the causes of deviant behaviors are associated with the social environment, upbringing conditions, and physical development peculiarity. Delinquency, which normally comes from deviant behaviors in most cases, comes from the house; fear of punishment or protection usually encourages deviant behaviors, and it later turns to reflex-like stereotype (Hanımoğlu, 2018). The causes of delinquent and deviant behaviors come from lack of attention, lack of supervision, desire to eliminate parent or caregiver guardianship, comrade ill-treatment, or even vagrancy.
The children who are most cases involve themselves in abnormal behaviors mostly come from families where there is only one parent or one that is socially dysfunctional; therefore, children like those may need to be socially assisted so that their behaviors are coordinate and they don’t end up developing deviant behaviors. Sometimes slights comments or reproaches given by others concerning how a child is still in adolescence may provoke them to experience violent affections, leading to distortion of the behaviors, and they end up developing deviant behaviors. Also, ill-treatment from parents can negatively affect their children, and if they are unaware that they are ill-treating their child, they may worsen the situation at hand.
Treatment strategies
Rappaport & Thomas, 2004. This article tries to explore the determinants of violence and aggressiveness found in children who are in adolescence and then underlines the motivation behind it to be able to answer the unanswered questions. After knowing all those factors, it would determine the kind of intervention that would be relevant to them, such as psychosocial treatment, cognitive behavioral therapy, or psychopharmacological treatment. The research found that females in the adolescent stage and were antisocial were much more vulnerable to dysfunctional families and would later end up depicting aggressive behaviors more than their male counterparts; depression among girls was connected with the family disorder. On the other hand, boys who were found to bully others had a low level of anxiety and showed lower cortisol levels, contrary to those boys, they were aggressive; they showed high cortisol levels.
Peer influence was found to impact the adolescent’s violence and aggression; from the studies conducted, it has been found that the influence of peer deviant behaviors on aggression development is mostly found during the adolescent. From the studies, young people who associated themselves with highly disapproved antisocial behaviors appeared to reduce violent acts later in life likely. Family is another factor that impacts a child’s aggressive and violent behavior when a child is aggressive. The parent fails to intervene at an early stage to set reasonable behavior standards (Rappaport & Thomas, 2004). Instead, what that parent does is to respond by giving responses that are neutral or withdrawing inconsistently.
The child might learn that aggressive reactions to any parental request might lead to parental withdrawal or abdication. Hence he will use aggressive behavior to terminate effectively aversive parental request, therefore reinforcing the aggressive behavior. In addressing the treatment strategies of an adolescent child’s aggressive behavior, the following are some of the preventions or interventions used to address such issues. Cognitive-behavioral therapy seeks to change social cognitive distortion and deficit in adolescents and children who are aggressive. Its main focus is problem definition, generation of alternative solutions, consequence anticipation, and lastly, the introduction of behavioral prioritization and monitoring responses (Rappaport & Thomas, 2004).
Psychopharmacological intervention is a medication that is mostly considered for aggressively violent children. Only in careful diagnosis assessment context, multiple risk factors are reviewed, and complex formulation is generated. It is a method that is solely not recommended to manage violent and aggressive adolescents; in the psychosocial approach, assessment is carefully done of development stages of an adolescent or a child, after which the therapeutic approach is defined. The therapist will try promoting new developmental skills and encourages the adoption of new coping ways; as much as the therapist can use different techniques, the adolescent’s inordinate flexibility amount is demanded.
Proactive parental Intervention
For parents to ensure their children who are still in the developmental process don’t involve themselves in violent and deviant behaviors, parents are obliged to undergo a parental training program, a form of parental intervention. This type of program is based on the premise that parents’ practices highly contribute to the progression, genesis, and maintenance of internalizing and externalizing the problems. Parenting practices are said to be a variable that contributes to a child’s behavior pattern, in this training program will equip parents with relevant information on how to provide physical care and appropriate information about a child’s development and behavior.
Another concern that will be critically analyzed will be interacting with their children that is positive and non-disciplinary; they will be taught how to adequately strategize the promotion of parent-child interaction, e.g., following the child’s interest, demonstrating enthusiasm, and providing attention that is appropriate to a child. They will learn how to sensitively respond to a child’s psychological and emotional needs so that he or she can provide appropriate developmental, physical contact as well as affection (Cutrín et al., 2017). Communication will also be another important component during that process, where they will be trained on how to use communication skills, i.e., being an active listener so that they would be able to help their children express and identify their emotions.
The parental training intervention will focus largely on behavior management and disciplinary communication; this would help parents learn how clear give developmentally appropriate directions. They will know how to set rules and limits and state their child’s behavioral consequences and expectations, adequate discipline strategies will be taught, supervision and monitoring, the technique of punishment, and reinforcement that are specific will also be taught. Parents will be trained on how to teach their children to cooperate and share things, display good manners, and teach them to get along with their siblings and other adults. Behavioral parenting intervention will focus on a child’s academic and cognitive skills.
The therapeutic alliance will also be critical for a successful parent intervention training. The different group leaders will have will play a key role in that sector. A leader with positive behavior will help predict the kind of positive behavior change a parent will have towards his child. The level of praise a leader will showcase will impact the level of praise a parent will have when interacting with his child (Baek et al., 2019). Another program that a parent might get involved with as a way of proactive parental intervention includes a coping power program, a program done in a group setting. It was developed using contextual social-cognitive as a framework that is conceptual in identifying objective interventions.
Conclusion
From a different kind of research listed above, we can clearly see how deviant and violent behaviors of adolescent children’s development are mainly affected by the social background one experiences at home. Bullying has been seen as a factor that comes from deviant and violent behaviors and a child’s continued association with the wrong group of peers. Parents have a crucial role in making sure that children don’t develop deviant behaviors just because they didn’t take time to care about their well-being. From the longitudinal studies done and social learning theories, one factor that comes out very clearly is that adolescents who associate themselves with deviant peer groups may be influenced by bullying perpetration and behavior aggressiveness.
Violent behaviors from a child develop as a result of deviant behavior; therefore, we can say that they are directly related; adolescent is a very crucial age for a child, especially in terms of how his future behavior will turn out to be, and parents must be fully prepared in making sure that their children associate themselves with people who are well-behaved and don’t are evil-minded. The treatment strategies laid out are beneficial for a child to stop experiencing violent behaviors, especially cognitive behavioral therapy, which has proven to help many teenagers. The medical professionals must clearly understand the kind of problem the child is experiencing before he decides to draw any treatment plan for him. Lastly, parents must clearly take the initiative of going for parental intervention to learn how they can cope with their children who are involving themselves in deviant and violent behaviors. Parents must choose appropriate programs that will benefit them and, in turn, will benefit from how they interact with their children.
References
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