There are more competent experts than I am to spell out how to limit access to guns, how to change the reporting of mass murder and how to persuade parents to spend more time with their kids. What I believe needs changing is the way kids think about their troubles. We need to teach our children warranted self-esteem and realistic optimism based on the skills of doing well in the world, on doing well with others and on personal responsibility. These research-based programs improve the ways that all kids think about their troubles, manage emotions, solve problems and communicate with others. But when it comes to aggression, counseling which focuses only on the child has limits.
Programs involving the family and the school do much better.
Whole communities suffer the consequences of schoolyard violence, and whole communities are required to stop it. A version of this column by Martin E.P. Seligman and Roger Weissberg appeared in the May 27 USA Today. Cover Page for This Issue APA Home Page .