I had to put in my two cents about a recent video that was posted. A 9 year old boy was put in a room with toddlers at a day care in Vicksburg, MS. When the supervising staff member wasn’t paying attention, the boy proceeded to hit, choke, or kick various toddlers in the room. During an interview with the parent of the 9 year old, she stated that he was a good boy, he didn’t ‘fight babies’. It immediately made me think of a commercial that’s come on lately about mom suffering from “denial”.
What the mom HAS to realize, especially since it was caught on video, is that her son DOES “fight babies”. Only there’s no fight to be considered. He very simply was beating up on toddlers who cannot fight back. It’s a situation that has to be rectified and quickly. I don’t know if she’s watched the security tape or not ( I suspect she has not). If she had, she would see that there is no trigger for the boy’s actions. The toddlers were not yelling, screaming, crying, or otherwise doing ANYTHING to this boy. Yet, the boy reacts to those children in a very violent manner.
Without having the bigger picture, we can’t say why the child did what he did. From the National Institute of Mental Health, children react to trauma in various ways. The child could easily have experienced some form of trauma that is now affecting the way he behaves. It could be abuse in the home, whether as a “game” from older siblings or adults or as an intentional act. It could be violence on TV that has caused an unbalance in the way he relates to others. He could actually have a medical problem, like bipolar disorder, that causes odd behaviors. There is no quick and simple explanation.
Just as there is no quick or simple answer to the why, there is certainly no quick solution. I would certainly make that parent take the child to both a medical doctor and a psychologist to have him thoroughly evaluated. Whether it’s a physical cause, like bipolar, or a mental cause, such as trauma, you have to slowly eliminate possibilities. I would make the family seek counseling together to make sure the family itself is stable. I would also make sure that child never returns to the day care situation.
I won’t address the day care side in this article. There are enough issues there that I’m sure can be addressed by those better suited. I would reconsider sending my children to this day care, though. I certainly wouldn’t want to expose my children to the situations those toddlers were exposed to.
