Mr Bauer, why do children react aggressively?

Mr Bauer, how do you define aggression?

Aggression is behaviour that is aimed at saying or doing something to another person that they experience as confrontational, unpleasant or painful.

Is a certain potential for aggression innate?

Aggression is an innate behavioural programme that can be called up. The ability to be aggressive when necessary is essential for survival. But from a neurobiological point of view, there is no so-called aggression drive, i.e. no biologically anchored desire for physical or psychological violence. Aggression and fear are siblings - they utilise very similar neuronal systems in the brain. Nobody would speak of a «fear drive» - i.e. a need for fear - just because almost all people experience fear time and again.

But if it is abhorrent to healthy people to inflict suffering on others, is every criminal a psychopath? And does every child who fights have a mental health problem?

No. The fact that there is no aggression instinct does not mean that healthy people do not show aggression. However, an instinct of aggression as Sigmund Freud imagined it would mean that it is part of the normal programme of needs of completely normal people to inflict evil on others from time to time - without any reason - or to wage war from time to time. This assumption is wrong. Every aggression has reasons ...

When do children behave aggressively?

Whenever someone else gets in the way. For example, a 3-year-old who has a sibling who now takes all the attention away. Or when scarce resources are shared out, for example when a cake is shared out or when not everyone can have the same attractive toy. If one child is then pushed or hit by another, cycles of aggression quickly develop. The same thing happens between states that cannot find a way out of conflicts.

Aggression is triggered by tapping into the neurobiological pain threshold. What exactly is that?

The surest and most reliable trigger for aggression is the infliction of physical pain. This does not even require another person. Look at the anger that rises up in people when someone - through no fault of their own - has jammed their finger in a door really badly! However, the pain centres of the brain are not only activated when we are physically hurt, but also when we are socially rejected, marginalised or treated unfairly. This is also when our pain threshold is reached. Exactly where this is, however, is very individual.

Everyone has to learn that feeling aggressive feelings and behaving aggressively are two steps.

If aggression is always a reaction to something, does that mean that perpetrators are or were always also victims?

Yes, but that doesn't excuse anything. Humans have not only inherited an apparatus of aggression from evolution, but also a forehead brain that enables them to observe themselves and slow themselves down when social coexistence requires it. This ability, which we learn through education, was our evolutionary ticket to success. Without education, the forebrain cannot function. Education is therefore not a counter-biological invention, but is part of the biological destiny of humans. Humans must learn that feeling aggressive emotions and behaving aggressively are two steps.

Why is aggression important?

It is indispensable for signalling and regulating disruptions in the social field. Why do I realise that I have been treated unfairly or disrespectfully? Not because I sit down and rationalise it, but because anger or rage arises in me in the first instance. Only in a second step do we then start to reflect.

Why do we react aggressively not only to physical pain, but also to social exclusion and humiliation?

Evolution is to blame. Both physical attacks and exclusion from the community are potentially dangerous. Our ancestors were in mortal danger even when the latter happened.

What role do media, shooting games, films and toy weapons play?

Children learn most from what they see, they learn from models. Violent games and other activities where children can observe and experience that violence is worthwhile have a devastating educational impact.

What other conditions favour child aggression?

Good interpersonal relationships raise the pain threshold.People who feel that they are in good hands with their family or friends are less likely to be provoked by others in everyday life. Being well connected with other people activates the release of messenger substances that dampen the aggression apparatus. Conversely, the feeling of being excluded favours aggression - even in children.

How do you explain «parent battering», i.e. the child's aggression towards its parents, from a neurobiological perspective?

This happens above all in cases where parents and children have not been able to develop a reliable bond, where parents were too stressed or too preoccupied with themselves. Or where children have experienced violence from their parents.

Men commit more violent offences than women. Are boys more aggressive
than girls?

When aggression arises in boys, they direct the violence more outwards. Girls tend to be more aggressive towards themselves and become depressed or hurt themselves. But that doesn't mean that all boys are like that and all girls are like that. Boys tend to be more openly aggressive when they are angry, whereas girls prefer to use so-called relational violence, which means, for example, that they talk badly about the person they are angry with.

Read more:

• The aggressive child
  Aggression has many faces and many causes. Frustration and provocation are the cornerstones of the great anger in the stomach. Why is aggression important? How should parents and teachers react when children shout, threaten or hit?

• "When someone provokes me, I lose control," says 16-year-old Phillipp. Why he wants to get a grip on this now.

• Aggressive children, what is normal?
  Tantrums, shouting, hitting their little brother or sister - anyone who brings up children will be familiar with these outbursts. But what happens when the aggression becomes extreme?

• Do war toys make children aggressive?
  An insecure mum seeks advice from Jesper Juul: should parents intervene when children «shoot» each other with plastic guns and pretend to slit other children's throats?

• How to practise bearing frustration
  Many children react to disappointment and defeat with anger and aggression. How parents and teachers can help a child to improve their frustration tolerance and better control their needs and desires .

• Can parents prevent their child from committing offences? The well-known juvenile lawyer Hansueli Gürber talks about loving but consistent parenting.

• Why do children threaten their parents and what can they do?