Juvenile crime is getting out of control. Isn’t it time to get tough with young offenders?

Juvenile crime rate has been decreasing for the last four years, though there is still more than there was ten years ago. Violent crimes by young offenders are increasing, though the bulk of the increase consists of minor assaults. The vast majority of Canadian youth are law-abiding and non-violent. Most youth crime is caused by a small minority of repeat offenders.

What can we do cut down further on youth crime and violence?

The most effective way to decrease youth crime and violence is through effective prevention. Home visiting programs for mothers of newborns at risk for abusing their children, high quality early childhood care and education for children at high risk, and identification in kindergarten and school-based prevention of delinquency are all effective.

For those youth who make sure that their first offence is their last. Youth should be held accountable for their behaviour, but trying to punish or scare delinquents into good behaviour has three effects: it makes them angrier, more rebellious and more likely to break the law again.

The quality of children’s family environment during their first three years of life has a major and lasting effect on the development of their brains. By three years of age, “windows of opportunity” that control the development of those brain areas responsible for vocabulary (important for success in learning and problem-solving) and attachment (the major source of successful emotional and social development) close up.

Children who don’t receive the right kinds of developmental supports and stimulation before they close will have their development in these areas seriously undermined. Also, children who grow up in families with high rates of conflict, violence and abuse show characteristic changes in the “hard-wiring” of their brains. As a result of these changes, such children are likely to experience higher levels of anxiety, impulsivity, rage, and predisposition to violence.

Why don’t Children’s Aid Societies realize that children are always better off in their own families than when they remain in care?

Whenever a family’s ability to meet its children’s needs is severely impaired, it is always preferable, when possible, to help the parents improve their ability to parent successfully than to remove the children. However, some families are so neglectful and abusive - and so unable to improve their parenting ability - that not to remove their child-ren would mean exposing those children to inevitable neglect, abuse and predictable developmental damage.

Once a child is in the care of a Children’s Aid Society, that Society should give the highest priority to place that child as soon as possible in a family that is committed and capable of permanently meeting the child’s needs at least at an adequate level. Wherever possible, this will involve returning the child to a biological family whose capacity for parenting has been improved sufficiently. Some families, however, are incapable of change and remain unable to meet their children’s most basic needs. To return children to such a family - one that remains rejecting, neglectful and/or abusive - runs the risk of initiating the always damaging process of bouncing children in and out of care repeatedly. Such children are likely to end up in limbo, that is, alienated from - and suspicious of - any family, however devoted, that is trying to meet their needs.

To learn more about ways that children get trapped in limbo, about how being in limbo affects their development and behaviour, and to see what can be done to minimize unnecessary damage from being in limbo, send for
» Children in Limbo, a guide to keeping children out of limbo that was developed by the » Children in Limbo Task Force of the Sparrow Lake Alliance.

Who needs junior kindergarten?

Not all children need junior kindergarten. Some parents, either on their own or with the help of excellent child care, are able to help their children develop in time for kindergarten the knowledge, skills and attitudes that they will need for school success. But other parents are unable to prepare their children for school success, and many of these cannot afford the excellent child care that could, were it available, level the playing field by priming their children for success in Grade 1. For children who need the extra preparation, a well-designed year in junior kindergarten can do a great deal to help them develop the will and skills they will need by school entry if they are to hold their own with their more advantaged peers.

So, eliminating junior kindergarten is a false economy. Whatever the short term savings, we will probably end up paying more in the long run as we are forced to deal with the learning and behaviour problems of children whom we helped set up to begin school unprepared to learn.

Are poverty and disadvantage the same thing?

No, they are not. Many poor children are not disadvantaged, and many disadvan-taged children are not poor. As the National Longitudinal Survey on Children and Youth has shown, poor children who are well parented do as well or even better developmentally (except in vocabulary development) than poorly parented middle class or wealthy children.

Thus good parenting is a stronger influence on successful development than poverty is. But parents in poor families have many more stresses (financial insecurity; finding and keeping affordable housing; multiple moves; etc.) and many fewer diversions and escapes available to them than wealthier families. As a result, poor parents are more likely to feel chronically stressed, that they have little control over and hope for the future, and to experience higher rates of family conflict, instability, violence, and psychiatric disorders - than more affluent families. It is these psychological and social stresses, especially when combined - more than the poverty that contributes to them - that are most strongly associated with the higher level of disturbances found in children growing up in poverty.

Are there certain basic universal needs that are common to all children?

Children need love, stimulation and guidance throughout their lives, but what makes the first three years so important is that their environments during those first critical years have such a major influence on the development of their brains. We know, for example, that no matter how smart babies are, they still can’t crawl or talk or toilet train when they are just a few weeks old. Their nervous systems just aren’t developed enough to permit it. The cells in their nervous systems are all there when they are born, but they aren’t connected up yet to form pathways. In order for babies to gain control over their bodies - or their thoughts and their feelings - they first have to build up a whole network of connections joining those cells and then they have to prune out the cennections that aren’t needed. This pruning may continue right through adolescence, but most of the connections are laid down in the first three years of life. While this is happening, certain areas of the brain in turn become sensitized according to a schedule laid down genetic-ally. During each area’s most impressionable period , the cells in that area become extremely sensitive to environmental stimulation. They need just enough of the right kinds of stimulation, and not too much of the wrong kinds, to develop properly. And, in some cases, if proper development doesn’t occur within a genetically set period of time, the “window of opportunity” governing the development of that area may close and, if it does, the cells within that area lose their potential for forming connections and the area - and the functions that it controls - will have lost their chance for optimal development.

For example, the window of development for vocabulary development closes by about three years of age. That means that unless, during those first three years, an infant receives lots of stimulation - such as being surrounded by a family who respond when she gurgles or babbles, who talk to her, sing to her, read to her, teach her to find words for things (like colours, animals, foods, body parts, etc.), that infant is unlikely to ever achieve the same level of vocabulary she would have had she been richly stimulated during the critical period for language and vocabulary development. That will affect not only her vocabulary, but also her ability to understand language and to use it - for talking, reading, understanding, problem-solving, all important skills that are based on language - which are unlikely to develop to the same extent once the window of opportunity is closed.

Similarly, a baby’s window of opportunity for attachment - for developing absolute trust in his caregivers’ ability to accurately sense and reliably meet his needs - closes even earlier, about two years of age. For this reason, children whose caregivers consistently let them down are unlikely to develop the capacity for optimism and the belief in the trustworthiness of others that serves as the model for relating to others, not just in the family but in society. Lacking a source of basic trust, they are also deprived of the reassurance and confidence that they will need to deal with strangers and unfamiliar situations successfully, which will make it harder for them to move towards successful independence. True, if they are lucky enough to experience superb caregiving for long enough later in life - an opportunity which few unattached children receive or can take advantage of - they may be able over time to laboriously achieve a sense of trust and to generalize that into a capacity for successful relationships with others. But, in the meantime, the capacity for trust and for forming close relationships with other children and adults will have been lost. So will the learning that most children receive from such relationships.

For an example of how too much of the wrong kind of environmental stimulation can affect brain development, consider the sitution of the infant growing up in a family where conflict, violence and abuse are a fact of everyday life. Such a child, who can experience at any point an exposure to renewed violence, exists in a state of chronic arousal. Chronic arousal has the effect on the brain of causing overdevelopment in areas responsible for impulsivity, anxiety, rage, and for the predisposition for violence. If, in addition to the exposure to repeated violence, the child receives less than optimal exposure to stimulation - that is, if his early years are featured by chronic neglect as well as by repeated abuse.