Tricycle Rage

In his article, "Power Struggles: Early Experiences Matter," in Behavior - A Beginnings Workshop book, James Garbarino explains why it is so important that we help children with aggressive behavior in the early years:

"Research by psychologist Leonard Eron ["A Reason to Hope: A Psychosocial Perspective on Youth and Violence] documents that by age eight, patterns of aggressive behavior and belief are crystallizing, so much so that, without intervention, they tend to continue into adulthood.  When they began their studies in the 1960s, Eron and his colleagues asked eight-year-olds to identify the aggressive children in their classrooms.  'Who are the children in our class who hit people, who start fights, who kick people?' they asked.

"When they followed up on these children three decades later, they found that by and large, the children identified as aggressive at age eight became the adults who, at age 38, hit people in their families, got into fights in the community, and drove their cars aggressively.  By the way, this gives a developmental spin to the problem of road rage; it probably started as 'tricycle rage.'"

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