Unfolding the reasons behind a rape by a four year old.

A four-and-a-half-year-old boy has been booked for raping a classmate inside the classroom as well as the washroom of a prominent private school in west Delhi on Friday, police said.
The girl, who is of the same age, told her mother that the boy used his finger and a sharpened pencil to assault her sexually.
The assault caused wounds in the child’s private parts, her mother said.
Though they registered a case of rape under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act was registered, police were unsure how to proceed with the prosecution because of the suspect’s age.
 The Indian Penal Code (IPC) provides children below seven years of age certain protections against prosecutions..
In her statement to police, the girl’s mother said the child complained of pain in her lower abdomen after returning from school on Friday. The girl kept complaining sporadically, but the mother ignored it thinking it was “one of her tantrums”.
The girl began crying that night and told her mother about the alleged assault. She told her mother that a boy from her class unbuttoned her pants in the classroom and used his finger to assault her.
“She tried pushing him, but could not get away as other children had left and there was no staff around,” the mother stated in the first information report (FIR).
In the FIR, the child’s mother stated that she complained to the schoolteacher through a text message that night. She informed the school again on Saturday, but the authorities allegedly did not cooperate with her and instead asked her to give a written complaint on Monday.
Since her daughter’s pain did not subside, she rushed her to a hospital where she was treated as well as a medico-legal case made. A police case was then registered.
The mother alleged that there was no class teacher or even an ayah, or help, in either the classroom or washroom at the time of the assault.
She said her daughter’s delayed exit from the classroom, as she saw in CCTV footage, corroborated the sexual assault allegation.
Is it possible that a 4 year old child can have this kind of mind set? If not which most agree then why did he do this horrendous act?
 Children at this age have their prefrontal lobe which are not developed completely so there is no regulation to their impulses. Hence any little curiosity or stimulation make the replica the things they see or hear.
Second possibility is that since their brains are highly neuroplastic (means curious and want to try new things).The neurons in our mind tend to replicate what is present in the opposite others mind. Exposure to Visual stimulation such as pornography or intimacy in adults can lead to the child replicating the same.
Another possibility is present of an adult doing this act which is the matter of investigation.
What needs to be done as Parents?
• Limiting To Exposure
Parents should be highly cautious in getting intimate in front of children. Adequate care must be taken to keep the children away from exposure to adult contents.
• Early exploration
As children learn to walk and talk, they also begin to learn about their bodies. Open the door to sex education by teaching your child the proper names for his or her sex organs, perhaps during bath time.
If your child points to a body part, simply tell him or her what it is. This is also a good time to talk about which parts of the body are private.
When your child asks questions about his or her body — or yours — don't giggle, laugh or get embarrassed. Take the questions at face value, and offer direct, age-appropriate responses. If your child wants to know more, he or she will ask.
• Curiosity about others
By age 3 or 4, children often realize that boys and girls have different genitals. As natural curiosity kicks in, you may find your child playing "doctor" or examining another child's sex organs.
Such exploration is far removed from adult sexual activity, and it's harmless when only young children are involved. As a family matter, however, you may want to set limits on such exploration.
• Everyday moments are key
Sex education isn't a single tell-all discussion. Instead, take advantage of everyday opportunities to discuss sex.
If there's a pregnancy in the family, for example, tell your child that babies grow in a special place inside the mother. If your child wants more details on how the baby got there or how the baby will be born, provide those details.
Consider these examples:
• How do babies get inside a mommy's tummy? You might say, "A mom and a dad make a baby by holding each other in a special way."
• How are babies born? For some kids, it might be enough to say, "Doctors and nurses help babies who are ready to be born." If your child wants more details, you might say, "Usually a mom pushes the baby out of her vagina."
• Why doesn't everyone have a penis? Try a simple explanation, such as, "Boys' bodies and girls' bodies are made differently."
• Why do you have hair down there? Simplicity often works here, too. You might say, "Our bodies change as we get older." If your child wants more details, add, "Boys grow hair near their penises, and girls grow hair near their vaginas."
• As your child matures and asks more-detailed questions, you can provide more-detailed responses. Answer specific questions using correct terminology.
• Even if you're uncomfortable, forge ahead. Remember, you're setting the stage for open, honest discussions in the years to come.
Proper care must be taken to monitor the kids in schools so such events may be prevented in the future.
To label the child as a criminal at this tender age seems unfair but in the eyes of law a crime has been committed. The only way forwards is proper education and counselling of both parents and kids must be done to prevent such events in the future.

The untold story of the Murderer in Ryan International school

We have been reading a lot about the gruesome murder of seven-year-old Pradhyuman’s body was found in the washroom of a Ryan International School branch in Gurugram. The botched up investigations by the state police seems further increase the insecurities amongst the parents. Is my child safe in school? To add to the mystery the CBI has come up with another theory of a 16 year old student doing the gruesome act. The fact that a 16 year old child can actually commit a crime of this magnitude in a top international school is not palatable for quite a few parents. What must be the child’s psychological state and was it an act of impulsivity or a prolonged effect of some psychological trauma? What will be the effect on the juveniles mind if this turns out to be a botched up investigation like Aarushi’s murder case? My aim to write the article basically tries to dig deeper into the mind of the juvenile who has been arrested by CBI and finds out the reasons why the child acted in a horrific way. The contributing factors while lead to a criminal mindset and what parents can do about it?

Let’s try to first recap a few points about the case so far.

·       Pradyuman had been dropped outside his school in the morning just before start of school hours and in a matter of 15 minutes, he was found to be lying in a pool of blood, dead.

·       The police arrested a bus conductor as the murder accused even before the passage of a whole day.

·       The Gurugram Police Commissioner boasted that the case will be cracked in 1-2 days.

·       The arrested bus conductor first confessed to committing the murder then retracted the statement, saying the police coerced it out of him.

·       The investigation was handed over to the CBI which after several weeks detained a school student as accused.

·       The CBI has asked for the 16-year-old boy's custody in order to find out if any other people were involved in the crime, and to also unearth the sequence of events leading to Pradyuman Thakur's death, and to "unearth the conspiracy, if any".

·       The CBI has asserted that after inspecting the crime scene, the CCTV footage, movement of students near the crime scene and questioning people in the school, it has identified and apprehended the accused.

·       The CBI's findings in the case came as an embarassement to the state police as the CBI said that a Class XI student who allegedly wanted a parent-teacher meeting and examinations to be postponed had been apprehended in connection with the killing of seven-year-old Pradyuman in Gurugram's Ryan International School.

·       As it has often been seen, wide media coverage and public outcry put investigating agencies under extra pressure.

·       In many cases, failure in proper preliminary investigation, or incomplete/delayed collection of forensic evidence lead to botched up investigations that ultimately make it more difficult for the victim to get justice.

If the crime was committed by the 16 year old boy

The motive of the murder was postponing the parent teachers meeting and examination. It may sound very trivial to most of us but it would be really important to know what led the juvenile of 16 years to actually do the gruesome act. So let’s assume that the juvenile committed the crime. So let’s try to understand his mind

1.     What were the changes in the brain that must have taken place? We all know that “amygdala” a part of the brain which deals with firing emotions develops by the age of 2 and the prefrontal (neobrain) develops by the age of 20 years and for some it may be later. This we label it as maturity. The prefrontal lobe works as a regulator to control emotions like anger, sadness or impulses. In short, kids are without any regulation till the lobe develops completely. Here the role of parents and educator comes into play. Most of the schools do not have curriculum or take active interventions in India into helping the child deal with these raging emotions. So the primary responsibility of helping the child with socioemotional problems lies on the shoulders of the parents. If both parents are working the child is left at the mercy of the caretakers. This creates this dysregulation.A study done in United States where MRI of criminals were done and it was found that most of them had a very thin layer of prefrontal lobe with an enlarged hypertrophied amygdala. Hence when provoke they were unable to regulate their impulsive behavior. Hence, lack of regulation in kid lead to such catastrophe.

2.     The motive was the postponement of examinations. If it hold true, then the children today are highly stressed by the expectations of parents as well as educators to excel in their academics. A study by me where we measured the blood cortisol of school going kids on a normal  day without any examination. We were shocked to see that the average levels of cortisol (207) were actually on the higher side close to the upper limit (210).You can imagine what must be the state of the child when they appear for their examinations. Again lack of regulation will make the child take these drastic steps as it is evident by shootouts in the United States.

3.     The role of gaming and gadgets have further deregulated the children.The ease of availability and addiction of technology  in today’s kids is for everyone to see. At a very tender the age the child learns to shoot someone in a game by a click on the mobile. Violence in cartoons like Chota Bheem are seen by kids of the 6 and 7 years. Since the prefrontal lobe is not developed, the difference between good and bad is not understood by them. Hence we are seeing a rise in violence and aggressiveness among kids. Surprisingly parents themselves want them to be addicted to television initially but later on regret. Social media like Facebook and whatsapp have contributed to isolating a child and interfering in the basic skills of communication. Games like Blue whale have taken undue significance due to poor development of socioemotional skills in the learning phase of teenagers. Typing an emoji saves the body a lot of trouble of making facial expressions but eventually creates plutonic and shallow relationships. You type a wrong emoji and the meaning changes.

4.     Lack of effective programs and interventions in schools focusing on socioemotional behavior and helping children to deal with stress.

5.     Time spend by parents with students has markedly reduced. With the hectic schedules and competitions in today’s world, parents are not giving enough quality time to their children.They themselves are too much involved their own world, the child misses the guidance and compassion of the parents. With a deregulated and agitated system the child is bound to react impulsively. I am not defending the juvenile who committed the crime but simply believe that he is not solely responsible.

What if the Juvenile has not committed the crime?

The marks on the child’s mind where the whole country is gunning for his life are going to be damaging and permanent. The amygdala which is deregulated will fire and lead to the added frustration and anger. This will have an extremely negative impact on his mind which may lead  him to become a hard core criminal or commit suicide depending on the value system. All we can pray that the CBI at least in this case has not goofed up in naming him as the murderer. It may end up destroying the future of a young life.

Way forward

Parents and educators need to take combined responsibility in developing the socioemotional behavior of the children.Teaching them to deal with their impulsiveness.

Some of the tips which may be useful for parents

Talk to your children .Parents need to speak to their children without judging them and advising them. Make them your friend and listen to their problems controlling the urge to advise them if not necessary.

Limiting gadget times. Parents need to fix the gadget times for both themselves and their children. By forcing them to switch of the gadget and parents still using them might not work. Children learn from their parent’s behavior and mimic them.

Giving positive feedback: One of the most depressing thing for a child is to get a negative comment from the parents. Parents are their world especially for young kids. Every negative comment creates disinterest in their studies or activities and widens the gap of understanding between them.

Giving them space. Every child is special and each one has a unique quality and skill. By judging and analyzing them solely on their marks and ignoring their other talents, we destroy their self-confidence and make them more aggressive. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses is done by all parents but very few have the heart to ignore their weakness and help them work on their strengths. There would be only doctors and engineers in the world and no painters or sportsman if academics was the yardstick to success.

For educator and school authorities: Effort should be made by introducing programs to develop the socioemotional behavior of the kids .Active interventions at the right age will prevent the murder of kids like Pradyuman and spoil the future of teenager who murdered him . There are many Pradyumans and teenager who are roaming around with an unregulated mind who need active intervention. My vision is that socioemotional interventions like mindfulness based cognitive therapy will be made compulsory in school curriculum which seems to the need of the hour and save many Pradyumans and the teenage boy.

Whats the science behind loosing an argument and why some people love arguing?

You’re in a tense conversation with a friend trying to defend your position on a political leader and his policies and start to feel yourself losing ground. Your voice gets louder. You talk over one of your colleagues and correct his point of view. He pushes back, so you go into overdrive to convince everyone you’re right. It feels like an out of body experience — and in many ways it is. In terms of its neurochemistry, your brain has been hijacked.

It is a common scenario especially with high voltage political campaigns around the world. However this can happen even in a simple conversation between couples regarding the child’s future which can convert into an ugly argument.

 By definition an argument is a series of statements typically used to persuade someone of something or to present reasons for accepting a conclusion. So what goes in our brain that makes us lose the argument and the other win inspite of us knowing more relevant facts but we simply can’t win the argument. The fact that everyone believes that they are right is well known but the reason  some people win the argument has to do with changes in the brain which the other ones don’t have.

Corpus Callosum

We all know that there are two parts of the brain, the right and the left hemisphere. These hemisphere are joined by fibrous tract known as the corpus callosum .The thickness of the corpus callosum determines the cross connection between two sides of the brain. Any conversation requires the valid points to be remembered from the hippocampus (memory storage part of the brain) and the impulse is transferred to the thinking brain (Left parietal and frontal  lobe) and then to the right counterpart to form a meaningful sentence and finally to the speech center. This sounds very complicated but you can actually imagine the brain overworks when we get into an argument and hence we feel exhausted by the end of it.

 So people having thickened corpus callosum fibers tend to hasten this process and are able to come up with valid points supporting their point of view. Also they will end up remembering and speaking the right thing at the right time. Women surprisingly by birth have a thicker corpus callosum and the saying that you can never win a conversation with a woman holds true.

Stress

The other reason is stress and persons behavior which make him prone to get worked up. In situations of high stress, fear or distrust, the hormone and neurotransmitter cortisol floods the brain. Executive functions that help us with advanced thought processes like strategy, trust building, and compassion shut down. And the amygdala, our emotional and reactive brain, takes over.

The body makes a chemical choice about how best to protect itself — in this case from the shame and loss of power associated with being wrong — and as a result is unable to regulate its emotions or handle the gaps between expectations and reality. So we default to one of four responses: fight (keep arguing the point), flight (revert to, and hide behind, group consensus), freeze (disengage from the argument by shutting up) or appease (make nice with your adversary by simply agreeing with him).This another reason why we end up losing the argument.

The moment we shift from logical reasoning to emotional implosion we start losing the argument. This is the area where we can work upon and can be highly effective. Going further I will try to explain why some people end up in arguing on a regular basis.

The stress created in an argument prevents the honest and productive sharing of information and opinion. But, I can tell you that the fight response is by far the most damaging to any relationships. It is also, unfortunately, the most common. That’s partly due to another neurochemical process. 

When you argue and win your brain floods with different hormones: adrenaline and dopamine, which makes you feel good, dominant, even invincible. It’s a feeling any of us would want to replicate. So the next time we’re in a tense situation, we fight again. We get addicted to being right. So what goes on in our mind that we start losing the conversation and hence these series of cascade of neurochemicals flooding our mind.

Luckily, there’s another hormone that can feel just as good as adrenaline: oxytocin. It’s activated by human connection and it opens up the networks in our executive brain, or prefrontal cortex, further increasing our ability to trust and open ourselves to sharing. Your goal as a leader should be to spur the production of oxytocin in yourself and others, while avoiding (at least in the context of communication) those spikes of cortisol and adrenaline.

Here are a few exercises for you to do at work to help addiction to being right:

 Deciding Rules of engagement. If you’re heading into a conversation that could be a little difficult, start by outlining rules of engagement. For example, you might agree to give people extra time to explain their ideas and to listen without judgment. These practices will counteract the tendency to fall into harmful conversational patterns. Afterwards, consider see how you and the person  did and seek to do even better next time.

Empathetic listening. In one-on-one conversations, make a conscious effort to speak less and listen more. The more you learn about other peoples’ perspectives, the more likely you are to feel empathy for them. And when you do that for others, they’ll want to do it for you, creating a virtuous circle.

Speak one at a time. In situations when you know one person is likely to dominate a group, create an opportunity for everyone to speak. Ask all parties to identify who in the room has important information, perspectives, or ideas to share. List them and the areas they should speak about on a flip chart and use that as your agenda, opening the floor to different speakers, asking open-ended questions and taking notes.

 Arguments are a way of life. We live, we love, we argue, we make up. Sometimes though, arguments cause breakage - of relationships, families and people.The more we can understand about how we argue, the more deliberate we can be in responding to conflict in such a way as to preserve the relationship.

Why Decision Making becomes decision fatigue -whats the science dude?

Take a moment to count the decisions you have made since morning. Most likely, you’ve chosen what clothes  to wear, what to have for breakfast, which route to take to work. Once at work, you took stock of pressing demands and made some decisions about which tasks to tackle first.

 If you’re a manager, you might have had to schedule and attend meetings, possibly negotiate with team members on a proposal, counsel administrative staff, prepare reports or presentations, and pitch an idea.

All before lunch...........

Additionally, because of escalating pressures and deadlines, you might have felt called upon to do the thinking for some of the people you work with, something you find both necessary and frustrating at the same time. 

When you notice that some team members respond without enthusiasm, you grow resentful. Intellectually, you know it’s important for employees to have ownership in the decisions that are being made so they will be more likely to carry them out.

But the deadline is looming, there’s no time, and it’s your job on the line.

If any of this sounds like something you experience in home with your kids or at work , it’s quite possible you’re suffering from decision fatigue.

 Neuroscience explains why we suffer this fatigue and points to what we can do to guard against it.

This happen because of the part of the brain called Prefrontal Lobe. Although it is supposed to be the newest and the most effective part of the brain, it has its own shortcomings.

 The prefrontal cortex is like the ‘goldilocks’ of the brain, because it needs to have everything just right or it doesn’t function well. This most evolved part of the brain allows people to plan ahead, make complex decisions, organize and inhibit unhelpful responses.

Amygdala  an almond shaped organ in the brain responsible for emotions and evoking the stress response(flight ,fright and freeze).Under stress, however, the prefrontal cortex can malfunction—as chemicals are unleashed, cells are prevented from communicating properly, and we find we are less able to regulate both our thoughts and our behavior.

Another area of importance is the anterior cingulate cortex(ACC). Research has found that cells in this area are active when people widen or narrow their attention — say, when they filter out distractions to concentrate on a difficult task, like listening for a voice in a noisy room.

Threats v Rewards

The primary goal of the brain is to minimize threat and maximize reward, which has implications for decision-making and problem-solving. 

When an individual or team experiences levels of threat, we know this impact on the capacity to think clearly and make good decisions. The threat response is mentally taxing and deadly to the productivity of a person or an organisation. It also impairs analytic thinking and creative insight.

On the other hand, we know that reward states are positive and support creativity and engagement, allowing people to make better assessments of risk.  Remember, however, that the brain likes everything to be just right. Too much reward can impact negatively on decision-making as our arousal increases beyond the point of optimal performance.

Think back to one of those days where you are performing a number of tasks at a high level. You might be in meetings all day having to concentrate. You might be in a training course or learning a new skill. Or you might be driving to an unfamiliar destination along a busy freeway.  All of these experiences take a large toll on your prefrontal cortex, which has limited capacity to work on ‘high alert’ during any given day. The more you use it for highly complex cognitive processing, the more quickly the ‘power’ within your brain drains.

Creative decision making usually requires both analysis and sudden out-of-the-box insight.

You may really end up toggling between the two, but I think that they are truly different brain states.At least, that is what brain-imaging studies are beginning to show. At first, such studies did little more than confirm that the process was happening as expected: brain areas that register reward spiked in activity when people came up with a solution, for instance.

Some of the suggested methods for improved decision making are

Reduce your stress levels

  High levels of stress create a lot of noise in the brain and inhibit our ability to have and hear creative insights.  Insights are the result of a very small number of distantly associated brain cells talking to each other.  To compare, deciding what to eat for breakfast involves millions of brain cells having a conversation with each other.  An insight only involves a few thousands of neurons talking to each other.  This is why we have them when our brains are quiet and activity level is low.  

 To illustrate, imagine you are hosting a party and a guest knocks at your front door, the music is blasting and you are out on your back deck enjoying conversation with other guests.  You will probably not hear the person knocking at your front door because the noise level is too high to hear the knock.  To be able to hear it, you would need to turn down the music.  It is a similar situation in our brains in that when anxiety levels go up, so does the noise level, making it very challenging to hear quiet signals coming to us from our non-conscious in the form of creative ideas.  The key is to keep yourself and others around you in a positive mood where anxiety and noise levels are low. 

Reboot your mind set 

An impasse is a block  or a dead lock in the thought process which does not seem to have a resolution.To overcome an impasse we have to experience a shift in perspective – a break in our mental set.  It is our natural tendency to project interpretations on to situations based on our past experiences.  Unfortunately, this hinders our ability to see a different perspective.  To illustrate this, let’s practice right now.

Say for instance you take A route for work every day .Imagine that you are  considering route B for tomorrow, write down the reasons you come up for taking up route A and not route B .Inspite of the valid reasons take route B the next day of course taking in consideration you do not get late for work. When you reach your office note down how many of the reasons were really valid and did you experience any anxiety or fear while taking route B. One of the biggest obstacles to breaking a mental set is analytic thinking, also known as rational thinking. Focusing on the problem and putting effort into finding the solution does not create the mental state conducive to having an insight. 

 Engaging in analysis with our rational brain constrains our ability to creatively solve an insight problem by further cementing a particular perspective or mental set and thus leading to hap hazard decisions.  This often disrupts the ability to see different perspectives. 

 Consider the discovery of the sticky note.  The glue that didn’t stick so well and seemed to have no value at all was considered a problem until someone broke their mental set and realized that a glue that didn’t stick that well could actually be a good thing.
Reconsider  

Sometimes if we want to experience creative solutions, we have to reconsider so that we can see the bigger picture.  A metaphor to illustrate this is seeing the forest instead of focusing on the trees.  Studies show that people are more able to make better decisions if they visualize or imagine themselves in the future solving their problem.   This promotes a form of reconsidering which results in the production of creative ideas. 

At this point we have strong circumstantial evidence that this resting state predicts how you make decisions later on and that it may in fact vary by individual. 

So if you try to make a decision after seeing a comedy movie the probability that the results will be favorable compared after seeing a horror or  an intense movie.

The punch line is that a good joke can move the brain toward just this kind of state.