March 23, 2022

11:03

Malu Dacio – Cenarium Magazine

MANAUS – When a 13 year old boy executes his mother, his younger brother of only 7 years old and attempts against his own father’s life, as happened last Saturday, 19, a series of questionings come into vogue. It turns out that the motivational motive is even more questionable. According to the Civil Police, he said he committed the crimes because he had been forbidden to use his cell phone to play with friends and practice games. 

CENARIUM MAGAZINE sought out experts and questioned beyond the event: what leads a young person to develop such an attitude? Alessandra Pereira, psychologist and specialist in cognitive behavioral therapy explains that much of the behavior of today’s youth is the result of a deficient educational process and that many parents have difficulties in keeping up with generational changes.

“We live in a technological society, old educational formulas, used in the last century, to deal with the current generations simply don’t work. Fear-based education prevents dialogue and care from being the keynotes of an autonomous and healthy education. Violence always appears as an alternative when parents don’t know how to deal with situations, imposing punishment, fear and control on their children as educational strategies”, explains the specialist.

The psychologist defines that dialog takes work, just as educating also requires time and openness. “Parents don’t know how to talk or talk. Many, when they try to start a conversation with their children they give a monologue, lecture, or demand obedience, as if the family environment were a barracks and the relations between parents and children were hierarchical”, she pointed out.

The task of dialoguing and educating is not easy: “We are living a break in the models learned until the end of the 20th century, and if parents want to learn how to deal with new generations, they need to open up to discuss the education of children and young people in the 21st century”, said Alessandra.

Transfer of responsibilities

The psychologist does not believe that access to games is the problem. The biggest issue, according to the specialist, is the lack of parental supervision in the education of their children. She says that in adolescence, very few parents care what their children do, as long as they don’t give them the famous “work”.

According to Alessandra, the schools that have adolescents as their public are almost unanimous in saying that the parents of adolescents rarely show up at school meetings. When asked if this ‘blame thrown’ on technology could be a transfer of responsibility from the one who should have the responsibility, she sums up.

“I don’t think about blame, but I believe that society, along with the family, in their role as caregivers, are the ones most responsible for the social ‘illnesses’ experienced by children, young people, and even adults. Society also has its share in this, and it’s not little,” she pointed out.

Violence among children and adolescents, unfortunately, are not isolated cases. Data from the Brazilian Public Safety Forum released at the end of 2021 show that between 2019 and 2021 the total number of crimes with victims between 0 and 17 years of age was 129,844 thousand records. The complete study is available at the end of the publication.

24,761 of these records of violence against children and adolescents occurred in the 1st semester of 2021.
Brazil registered at least 136.8 cases of violence against children and adolescents per day in the first semester of 2021.

The purpose of the study is to promote an unprecedented look at the context of violence against children, through the compilation of data from police reports. The crimes considered here are: maltreatment (art. 136 of the Penal Code and art. 232 of the Child and Adolescent Statute), intentional bodily harm in the context of domestic violence (art. 129, §9 of the Penal Code), sexual exploitation (art. 218-B of the Penal Code and art. 244-A of the ECA), rape (including rape of the vulnerable) and intentional violent deaths, intentional homicides, femicides, robbery, bodily harm followed by death and deaths resulting from
police intervention).

Guns in the home

Gilson Gil, sociologist and professor at the Federal University of Amazonas (Ufam), defines that dealing with the issue of weapons in the family environment is very complicated. He says that military personnel receive training and are taught how to behave with firearms, but the same does not happen with other people in their respective families.

“The presence of the gun is a complicated thing. There are arguments in favor of carrying it in the home, but there are also examples like this that indicate the dangerousness of this act. The father can be trained, but the family members cannot. This makes it so that, together with a scenario of conflict and disintegration, the possession of a weapon ends up being a point of disturbance and threat, and not of security”, says the sociologist.

The professor also believes that the use of cell phones, especially, among young people, has become an obsession. “It is part of their identity being stimulated by the media, by their families, and this happens all the time. It is high time for people to reflect on the real role of this instrument,” the expert admonished.

“Young people are without normative limits. It is difficult for families to set these limits. Certain values such as family, study or work, seem to mean little to some groups and generations,” the expert concluded.

See complete study: