By William S. Pollack, Ph.D.

"What teenagers need most to survive the tribulations of adolescence is knowing that they have meaningful connections, not only with their peers, but also with their parents and other family members."

While school shootings are a genuinely rare occurrence, they have come to represent something that we take to be a growing insidious decay at the heart of our society. No academic statistics cited to date have served to quell ours fears of an emotional and mortal epidemic. Perhaps, then, the shedding of new psychological light where the heat - indeed the flames - of our social concerns lie may lead us toward new, more healthy solutions.

Kip Kinkel

In May 1998, 15-years-old Kip Kinkel shot his father and mother to death and the next day opened fire on classmates in Springfield, Oregon, murdering two and injuring 25. For all intents and purposes, he appeared to be a boy from a solid, middle-class family who grew up in a good community. Yet, in retrospect, there were aspects of Kinkel's story even those most intimately involved in his life didn't appear to know.

Many close to him never noticed any warning signs that might have indicated potentially self-destructive and violent - or murderous - behavior. But there was a quiet terror and ordinary way in which Kip lost his way and those who cared about him lost touch with his eventually lethal pain. Small, easily unnoticed wounds shaped Kip's interior world: He was the awkward child in a family that prized athletic prowess; a boy with a learning disorder in a family of academic achievers whose self-esteem was plummeting. Kip's parents struggled with his overtly growing signs of violence and emotional turmoil. He had become a teenage boy, now, not only in inner pain, but beginning to show outer signs that should have been of concern to all around him, as he turned into an adolescent who studied how to make bombs, set off small explosives and became increasingly fascinated with firearms. Ultimately, growing in an unresponded-to despair, Kip was to write in his journal prior to the fateful day of the killings: "I am evil and want to kill and give pain without cost and there is no such thing. In the end, I hate myself for what I have become."

When Kip's story is placed against the backdrop of the United States Secret Service, Department of Education's Safe Schools Initiative interim report of 41 "attackers" who were current or recent students at their schools, he seems more typical than we would like to imagine.

The report revealed that although planning vicious violence in these teens' cases varied in its time frame or intricacy, almost all of the tragic events had a "lead time" from days to months in which some preemptive action could have been taken. Indeed, in a large number of the cases the assailant-student- "child" eventually broke their "code of silence" and told either a peer or an adult of their intent with little or no interventionary response forthcoming.

Most of these tragedies were not only preventable early on through family and community interactions, but were stoppable up until the last moment if others had taken roper heed of the seriousness of the youths' communications. Most attackers, in retrospect, engaged in behaviors - not just thoughts - prior to the tragic events that caused others concern or indicated a need for intervention. Yet again, either no reasonable intervention on the part of the adults vouchsafed with these children's and our children's safety occurred, or the intervention was not completely or properly monitored.

While America's politicians debate the righteousness of their cause as to what a "real" boy or girl must be to gain support within our society, while religious and philosophical pundits regale us with their unique definitions of who a truly virtuous father or mother must aspire to as a role model, and while we ceaselessly debate the definition of what a "real" family is to be in this new century, we lose sight of the growing body of psychological knowledge which can help the widest range of family "units" survive and prosper among us. We also lose the opportunity to not only support what we know to be "the psychological glue" that sustains family health, but also to sustain families of all stripes and colors as central forces against the scourge of violence which threatens the vigor of our culture and the underpinnings of society as we know it.

Our so-called "culture wars" which center around what constitutes a "real" family have obscured the centrality of psychological connectedness or relationships as the bulwark of genuine "family values." Families can be a "holding environment" which may subdue the very real threats of violence while creating emotionally free climates of safety - havens of love and positive self-esteem - within healthy family structures. These "new" enlightened family environments may affect our entire society, by sustaining parents and children alike, and enhancing academic achievement and economic productivity.

The same factors for which our newly gained psychological knowledge can be of inestimable value in creating and supporting genuinely "healthy" families, may lie at the heart of leveraging family connections to diminish both the threats and realities of fighting the growing specter of violence in our midst.

Family connection

How does youth violence fit with the so-called "normal" family life, or even less egregious aspects of dysfunction? Targeted school violence represents the "tip of an iceberg"; that is, the most extreme example of disconnection-turned-to-violence, existing on a continuum all the way down to emotional teasing and psychologically induced blows to self-esteem. It is the family that can make all the difference in this society as to whether our youth grow into happy, well-adjusted adults or whether they become depressed, dysfunctional or even violent and hateful - the tip of that iceberg, beneath which lurks all too much pain, heartache and potential crime/violence - pain that the emotional glue of family love can ameliorate or eradicate.

What teenagers need most to survive the tribulations of adolescence is knowing that they have meaningful connections not only with their peers, but also with their parents and other family members. Although we are often taught that adolescents need or want to separate from their families, this is another dangerous, unsubstantiated myth. Certainly adolescents are struggling with issues of identity and growth and will push at us, even push away from us, at times. Certainly they wish to spend some time away from home and develop an individual sense of self. But our sons and daughters rarely wish to cut their ties, to be on their own, or to "separate".

In fact, most of our children desperately need their parents, family and extended family - coaches, teachers, ministers, rabbis - to be there for them, stand firm, yet show flexibility and form a living wall of love that they can lean on - and bounce off - regularly. It's not separation but rather individuation. It's becoming a more mature self in the context of loving relationships - stretching the psychological umbilical cord rather than severing it - that healthy adolescence is all about.

One 15-year-old boy named Seth, describing how he copes with the "separation" pain many boys experience, said, "I think...[It's] just the closeness of my family. The way my parents have brought me up to want to be part of the family. I love going home and spending time with my mom or my dad."

"I'd have no problems going and spending the whole weekend with my family than going to spend the weekend with my friends," Seth explained. "Sometimes I'd rather be with my family. When I'm with my friends, sometimes I'd say I'd rather be home."

For the adolescent, knowing that they have a loving home and that they can tap into the strength derived from positive family relationships - the "potency of connection" - is truly the key to making it through adolescence.

Conclusion

In a national survey of close to 100,000 adolescents from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, researchers found that what affected adolescent behaviors most was social context - but again, most often the family. The study also showed other important factors that affected behaviors, such as whether an adolescent's parents were present during key periods of the day and whether the parents had high or low expectations of his or her academic performance. But these factors paled in significance to the "connection factor." Such connection, according to the study, involves "closeness to mother and/or father" and a sense of caring emanating from them, as well as "feeling loved and wanted by family members."

It is the potency of family connection that guards adolescents from emotional harm and gives them succor from a world that's rough, a niche where they may express their most vulnerable and warm feelings in the open without fear of ridicule. By protecting them from the harm of disconnection, we in turn are protected form being harmed by violence as their desperate last attempt at connection.

Pollack WS: Preventing violence through family prevention. Presented at the 109th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, San Francisco. August 2001. "William S. Pollack. Correspondence to: Dr. Pollack, McLean Hospital, 115 Mill St., Belmont, MA 02478.

William S. Pollack, Ph.D. is assistant clinical professor, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School and director of the Centers for Men and Young Men at McLean Hospital. Dr. Pollack is consultant to the Safe Schools Initiative, academic advisor to the National Campaign Against Youth Violence and director of the National Violence Prevention and Studies Center. He is also the author of several books, including "Real Boys, Real Boys' Voices" and "Real Boys Workbook".