Terrible Twos Who Stay Terrible

[Jazzy]

To understand the violent criminal, says Richard E. Tremblay, imagine a 2-year-old boy doing the things that make the terrible twos terrible — grabbing, kicking, pushing, punching, biting.

Now imagine him doing all this with the body and resources of an 18-year-old.

You have just pictured both a perfectly normal toddler and a typical violent criminal as Dr. Tremblay, a developmental psychologist at University College Dublin in Ireland, sees them — the toddler as a creature who reflexively uses physical aggression to get what he wants; the criminal as the rare person who has never learned to do otherwise.

In other words, dangerous criminals don’t turn violent. They just stay that way.

We start as toddlers. We learn through conditioning, as we heed requests not to hit others but to use our words. We learn self-control. Beginning in our third year, we learn social strategies like bargaining and charm. Perhaps most vital, we use a developing brain to read situations and choose among these learned tactics and strategies.

But what of the relative few who remain physically aggressive? If it’s possible to spot this cohort as early as kindergarten, why can’t we bend their arc downward? Here, says Dr. Tremblay, “the entire field is stumped.”

Full article

What are your thoughts on this?

 

[DrLeftover]

How many parents do you know who "never want to tell their child 'no'"?

 

[Jazzy]

^ You never met my dad. He had no problem with the word no.

 

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

My kid never went through the terrible two's. She has always been a sweet, well mannered kid. Hopefully she'll stay that way!

 

[Evil Eye]

I suppose this makes some sort of sense. But surely everyone gets told "no" (and complies) at some point?

"never want to tell their child 'no'"?

I motion that there's a difference between never wanting to do something and never doing something.