Why Children Kill. Help with a Research Paper.

[VeggieTeen92]

I'm doing a Research Paper on why children grow up to kill. Can anyone help me with finding good articles? Please and Thank you. I have articles from Psychologytoday.com and articles on children & videogame violence but I need more so any sites and/or articles can be useful to me, please send links. Thank you again. 

[Nivleonus]

Bearing videogame violence in mind before a certain age the dimensions of reality are somewhat scewed so a child can learn such violence from videogames... This can also be taken into consideration when looking at film violence relating to children.

Anyway there are quite a few other things that can cause people to grow up into killers I would suggest that the you were to look into affects of abuse (physical, sexual, even verbal) these things can make a child become angry with everything and because of this by being essentially angry with the person who abused them in the first place they might take this anger out on someone else.

Another thing you can look at is other trauma that the child has undergone... if a child has witnessed his father beating on his mother than he may well reciprocate the actions towards others and in doing so working out the trauma of that first experience... however this can then lead the child to being traumatised (ironically) by the fact that it has then reciprocated the violence which can then lead the child to do more violence because of the original release of pain. Of course in situations like this the child may in fact be facing it's father whenever he/she becomes violent towards another...

So key points:
Child abuse relating to violent tendancies
Other Child trauma leading to violent tendancies

I'm sorry I can't really provide any good articles, only suggestions as to other things you might look into. I hope this at least gives you some sort of ideas

[VeggieTeen92]

Thank you very much. I'm checking those out now.

[Nivleonus]

There is also the idea that a person's upbringing may be key to them acting a certain way in later life... if a kid is around a lot of violent people it may well make them violent, much in the same way as watching to many violent films or playing to many violent games can programme certain behaviours into the individual in question. It has been suggested that most behaviour a child learns comes from parental guidance rather than peer intrusion... in other words they learn from the parent rather than the people around them. You know what they say 'Like Father, Like Son'.

I'll think a little bit and if I come up with anything else that may be of use I can add that as well...

If this is a research paper do you need to hand it in at some point? and if so when... just so I know when to stop posting, of course if it is just a personal research paper than it wont have a hand in date but still.......

Also slightly off topic why is your Avatar of 3 moons?

[VeggieTeen92]

My teacher has not told me the due date but I will let you know.

The three moons mean Wiccan Karma. "What you put out you get back threefold"

[TheAgeofReason]

Agreed. You would want to look at risk and protective factors. As Nivleonus is saying, child abuse and trauma are definitely related to a child growing up to be a violent criminal. You would also want to look at longitudinal studies looking at childrenwith Conduct Disorder and Oppositional Definat Disorder (esp. considering the high correlation between CD and Antisocial Personality Disorder). Also, as I said above, looking at correlational studies that examine environmental risk factors such as early onset substance abuse, violence in the home (not necessarily only violence that targets the child), low SES, poverty, peer groups, gang membership, and so on. Also, some studies have looked at neurotransmitters and they play a role in violent crimes: might want to look at low resting heart-rate and norepinephrine. Hope this helps. 

[VeggieTeen92]

I handed in my research paper, it needs more work because I only got a C. Sadly I think my mind wanders too much.

[hortonpilot]

It is an interesting subject.

Forensic forums must be about?

There are sociopathic children about who become adults.


Horton