Nursery World - In my view: The roots of this violence

The problem of violence impacts on us all. It uses our taxes in imprisoning young people and paying for their wounded victims. It's like a virus, forcing children who are protected to become more aggressive in order to survive.

Are children who can shoot and stab without empathy or remorse really baffling? Violent acting out emerges from being terrorised as a child. There's a logic to it.

Kids Company works with exceptionally vulnerable children, many of whom would be dismissed as young offenders. Their life histories illustrate years of surviving abuse and precarious parenting. The child perceives civil society to have been absent when he was suffering behind closed doors. Child protection statistics bear witness - within one year some 500,000 referrals are made, of which only some 30,000 are put on the register.

Tormented children are initially victims. They absorb the blows and invest in hatred for revenge. Their smallness prohibits them from taking matters into their own hands. When they are physically more robust and capable of acquiring the tools to express their violence, they make a shift from victim to perpetrator. Feeling is not easily available because they have had to freeze their emotions into numbness in order to survive.

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