8 Years before the Shooting, Age 9 (Childhood)
At this, Aiden Carter is morally, physically and psychologically affected by the violent act of his father. According to studies, when parents apply the negative forms of discipline on their children like physical punishment, they change the children's behavior that they resolve the conflicts with violence. In this case, Aden Carter's father is furious and physically abuses the child and violently crashes his toys in addition to calling him a loser. The intervention, in this case, could have been for the father to call the child politely and ask him not to play with toys across the floor. The child would have heard him. Typically, children tend to forget. The father lacked an understanding of this fact.
The parents highly contribute to the early life experiences of children. They imitate the behavior of their parents. During the early years, children do not have a fully developed cognition to understand and interpret their experiences ( Kobayashi, Sales, Becker, Figueredo, & Kaplan, 1995) . As such they are vulnerable to violent treatments which has a negative long-term psychological impact. Carter’s father lacked the knowledge of child development that he did not respond appropriately to the behavior of the son. Instead, he reacted emotionally to him.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Age 17 Adolescent
Aiden Carter’s Action at Seventeen years of age was as a result of depression besides other factors that build up since his childhood like the influence of video games. He is also bullied in school by Rick and his friends; a situation that lowered his self-esteem due to embarrassment as other students looked and laughed at him as he collected his books from the hallway ( Marcus, 2007) . Anger and depression was a long-lived situation that Aiden faced for quite some time. He was angry while shooting the teacher and fellow students. The condition of violence is characterized by rapid heartbeats, rage and aggressive behavior ( Dodge et al., 1997) . As such, such persons will often display their anger by acting aggressively. They fantasize on hurting someone or themselves.
The intervention, in this case, would have been to take Aiden Carter to a mental health therapist who would have counseled Carter into accepting people and guiding him in doing the things he likes. Carter needed someone that he could talk to, but his colleagues and parents misunderstood his condition as anti-social behavior. Medication could also have worked for the situation.
Parent/Guardian Interventions
To start with, Aiden Carter's father does not understand the fact that Aiden at the age of 5 has not fully developed his cognition and that he cannot tell that the father is busy yet he wants them to play. At this age, a child is more playful and will wish to his peers to play, but Aiden Carter did not have a peer in the homestead who could have served as the company or a playmate. The father would have told him the right time when they can play instead of sending him off which made him look embarrassed.
Secondly, Aiden’s mother yells at him while he is playing a video game with soundtracks of lots of explosions and shootings. The mother does not want to solve the problem with Aiden until his father reaches home. Perhaps sending the boy away would not have solved the problem since he was already addicted to violent video games. The mother could have instead talked to him gently to reduce the volume and addressed their issues without involving the father.
References
Dodge, K. A., Lochman, J. E., Harnish, J. D., Bates, J. E., & Pettit, G. S. (1997). Reactive and proactive aggression in school children and psychiatrically impaired chronically assaultive youth. Journal of abnormal psychology , 106 (1), 37.
Kobayashi, J., Sales, B. D., Becker, J. V., Figueredo, A. J., & Kaplan, M. S. (1995). Perceived parental deviance, parent-child bonding, child abuse, and child sexual aggression. Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment , 7 (1), 25-44.
Marcus, R. F. (2007). Aggression and violence in adolescence. New York: Cambridge .
