and reach thousands of daily visitors
19 OCTOBER
No 1232
Violence in children's narration
I have in this article examined what children exposed to domestic violence communicate about violence in therapy group sessions focusing on this theme. The analysis revealed that the children of the data talked a great deal about violence. They used different ways to tell about different kinds of violence that they have been exposed to in several relationships. There may be huge qualitative differences in the violence a child is exposed to. Even though the child may have experienced violence in many relationships, the violence related with a specific relationship may be dominant for him or her as an experience.
All in all the methodological challenges experienced in this study argue that we need a holistic approach in studying children. Holistic approach means, first of all, that children are taken seriously as active informants for they have a great deal to tell about violence. Secondly, it means that research observes the versatility of children's narration and that it is sensitive to their scarce words. Thirdly, it is important to reflect how various corpuses of data are being collected and in what sort of contexts children are given a chance to generate knowledge about different things. The choice of research methods may substantially influence the picture that is being generated about children and childhood. For example, if a child is observed and heard in his or her natural setting, different things may become central than would in an interview outside of his or her familiar surroundings, even though the theme would be the same. Fourthly, this study suggests to examine the information generated by a child in relation to his or her experience world. This can be done by placing the talk into a context outside the speech situation. The idea behind contexting is the assumption that children's narrations have a specific experience background. Contexting seeks to create a framework to the things children narrate about. It is the researcher's task to decide on what level the contexting is done. It can be for example done in relation to a theoretical framework, institutional knowledge or information received from the child's parents. The risk with contexting is that meanings are being attached to a child's narration from outside, and this external knowledge may lead us to hear something other than what the child is actually saying.
The real, the possible and the imaginary violence become entangled with one another in the children's narrations. In this data, the share of imaginary violence is marked in the narrations of the four-year-old girls in particular. These four-year-olds talk about violence chiefly by means of puppet theatre performances. Jeff Hearn maintains that, besides the real incidents that have taken place in the past or in the present, violence includes the threat of violence. Violence may be entangled with many everyday things and be present in many different situations both as action and as talk (Hearn, 1998, pp. 15-17). A single experience of violence in a relationship may bring the shadow of possible violence into that relationship. The threat of violence will be present in the relationship thereafter, even if there never were any more incidents of violence. Children who have been exposed to violence in close relationships can become sensitive to perceiving violence in other interaction relationships. They can interpret various situations as having an air of violence. According to Fredriksson (1999), children who are sensitive to violence can experience threat in many social situations that other children consider neutral. Hence the sensitivisation to perceiving violence can happen simultaneously with the normalisation of violence. Therefore practitioners in social welfare and health care should never ignore messages that children give about any kind of experiences of violence.
In the context of social policy, the findings about the context-bound nature of children's violence reveal that a child who in one situation experiences that violence is wrong may in another situation feel that the use of violence is justified and sensible. It is important from the viewpoint of education and societal peace that the rules governing violence could be experienced by a child as congruent. It is also important that the adults working with children take a stand on what is right and what is wrong. Every child has a right to receive information about violence being morally unacceptable. The message that we are not allowed to hurt one another is vital in creating a safe environment in which to grow up.
INKERI ESKONEN
Eskonen, I. ((2005). Violence in children's narration. International Journal of Child and Family Welfare, 8, 1. pp. 41-42.
REFERENCES
Fredricksson, J. (1999). Lasten ja nuorten tilannetulkinnat ja kouluvakivallen vahentaminen. Psykologia, 34, pp. 45-52.
Hearn, J. (1998). The violences of men – How men talk about and how agencies respond to men's violence to women. London. Sage.
