Aggression is divided into two, the first of which can be defined as hostile aggression, that is, responding to another living creature with an uncontrollable impulse or exhibiting any kind of behavior that hurts or may hurt others, and we can also define it as the person's desire to knowingly and willingly oppress others. We can define instrumental aggression as harming others for a specific purpose. This type of aggression is a type that we often encounter in parent-child relationships where verbal inadequacy occurs. When we say aggression, we usually think of physical aggression, but for children, we can consider aggression in three dimensions; physical, verbal and communicative aggression. Physical and verbal aggression is more common in preschool children. In this article, I will discuss physical aggression. Children's physical aggressive behavior can take the form of kicking, slapping, punching, biting, and they can also attack physically through objects.
You may find yourself saying sentences such as "where did this child learn this?", "he would never do such things." You may find it while installing it. If I were to explain it briefly; There are different strategies in learning and we use behavioral strategies and we internalize behavior by imitating and observing. Although this way of learning is useful and a feature that distinguishes us from other living creatures, it has a negative effect on a child who is in the learning and imitation stage. Until a certain age, children copy behaviors as they are, including irrelevant/unproductive behaviors.
Albert Bandura argues that children's most important learning experiences occur by observing the behavior of others. Bandura defines this type of learning as learning through observation. Humans are social creatures, therefore they will never be alone, and therefore aggression is a phenomenon that will exist as long as humans live. He argued that aggression is learned from parents, friend groups and mass media. If we consider Bandura's Social Learning Theory; Rewarding a behavior when it is displayed increases the likelihood of the response being repeated later. We can say that the punished reactions will probably end and will not be repeated again.
Based on what we have written, we can say that;
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If a child is exposed to violence at home,
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If any family member is exposed to violence,
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If they see violent behavior from their peers at school, if children who cannot fully distinguish between fiction and reality due to their age see characters displaying violent behavior thanks to mass media (on television, in computer games). etc.), it may become normal for the child to imitate, copy and internalize these behaviors.
If I were to give an example of reinforcement behaviors;
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Laughing when the child hits,
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Allowing him to get everything he wants through aggression,
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Parent praising the behavior etc.
An alternative perspective is; While talking about the concepts of death and life instincts, Freud saw aggression as a derivative of the death instinct. He interpreted aggression as people transferring their destructive tendencies towards themselves to different objects. “People fight each other because the life instinct and the death instinct can neutralize each other.” At the same time, Freud argues that aggressive behavior may arise from the obsession of ages 0-1 (oral period) and ages 1-3 (anal period), that is, defense mechanisms will react to situations that prevent or threaten the person's satisfaction in these periods, and this will cause aggression.
Other Factors Affecting Aggressive Behaviors
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Children whose social and emotional development cannot be supported
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Children who cannot express emotions such as disappointment and anger
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Children with one or more siblings
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Lack of communication skills
If your child has problems, be able to overcome them and avoid bad consequences in the future. It is recommended to get professional support to prevent it from opening.
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