Child Offenders: Reasons must be probed

[zaheer.sahito]

(Dawn, 20th Nov,2011)
THIS is apropos of a news item, ‘Minor girl molested, murdered’ (Nov 12). The news of the girl, 7, having been murdered after molestation is immensely shocking. More shocking is the fact that the minor was stoned to death by her own cousin who is just 16. The boy is bound to remain behind bars as a punishment for a certain period if proved guilty by the court concerned but the wretched, helpless mother of the deceased would not have her back again.

The other side of this deplorable story is that the offender is also a minor in the eyes of the law and the social factors which caused him to commit such a heinous crime at a young age would, as usual, probably be neglected by both the government and society at large. They need to be analysed in a broader spectrum to devise a sustainable strategy at the family level to check imbalances in children’s personality and to contain offensive tendencies in them.

The undeniable fact is that we neither concentrate nor do we check the circumstances and conditions that promote anger, lust, appetite and aggressiveness in our youngsters.

We can control the developing personalities of our children by following some of the steps. For instance, the action movies with real-looking fight and scenes of brutal killings and bombardment affect mental development of our children. We should reduce time allowed to our children for watching movies.

Playing beastly computer games with murderous tasks of slitting people and bullying them may produce in children elements of overwhelming stubbornness leading them to behave violently. Consequently, they may also lose interest in conforming to social norms.

Such games ought to be substituted immediately with healthy games raising sense of competitiveness such as motorcar racing, cricket or tennis and beautiful home-building. Also stress needs to be laid on playing physical games and sports rather than computer games.

Any written material containing offensive ideas and bringing forth aggressive thoughts should be ceased to exist at home.

The societal and familial controls of the personality of our children usually do not find room in our daily family discussions,
thus the aftermath of such negligence is always unwanted personality traits that grow in them silently on the dormant side.At the later stage of puberty all those abnormally developed traits come out dominant in the personality of our children. Then the situation becomes out of control as we cannot resocialise them no matter how strict measures we intend to take.

Yelling, hateful scolding, continuous upbraiding and domestic quarrels should strictly be held back, for they can vitiate children’s growth. Conversely, polite behaviour of the parents with each other and to their children always proves helpful in bringing them up well-mannered.

We should not forget that it is not the children who do anything wrong by themselves; indeed it is we who, one way or the other, are responsible for what wrong they do.

SAHITO ZAHEER
Sukkur