Simplified Thinking (How Children Think)

It is easy to fall into the trap of overthinking a situation. It is also easy to fall into the trap, of believing that more information about something will help you reach the best decision. If you are dealing with one or more aggressive individuals, you won’t have the time to gather more information about the situation – however, many people try to do just this. I have seen people trying to process what is happening to them, and gain a complete understanding of it, when they are dealing with a person who is only moments away from punching them in the face. Asking “why” won’t help you in this situation. There is really only one relevant piece of information when somebody is in your face, screaming and shouting, and that is, there is a person in your face screaming and shouting; until you deal with that immediate problem there is no point in asking “why” they are behaving this way. People will sometimes confuse de-escalation and conflict resolution, mixing the two up; de-escalation is what you do to get the person into an emotional state where you can then attempt to resolve the conflict – only when they have been removed from their volatile emotional state can the “why” of the situation be examined.

Children are often very good at recognizing the important factors in a situation and responding to them. On the 26^th December 2004 a 9.3 magnitude earthquake occurred in the Indian Ocean. The earthquake triggered a number of tsunamis, along the coasts of almost all of the landmasses bordering the Ocean; somewhere between 230,000 and 280,000 people in 14 different countries were killed. Holidaymakers on a beach in Thailand, watched as the sea suddenly retreated. Most stood mesmerized, trying to work out what had caused this phenomena. An 8 year old girl came to a quick and startling realization; if that amount of water moved away so fast, there was a good chance it would come back at equal speed, and being in front of it wasn’t a good place to be. In that moment, she hadn’t stopped to ask the “why” of the situation, she’d instinctually understood what was the only relevant piece of information to her, and she knew she had to act on it. When she told her parents they should move off the beach because the water would be coming back at force, they didn’t question her reasoning; once revealed to them, it made absolute sense – they’d just got caught up in asking to many “whys” about what was happening, rather than considering the possible consequences of it. Her family returned to their hotel, and went to the fifth floor, and from there, they watched the sea rush back in.

When I was six or seven, I don’t remember understanding much about firearms. I guess I must have known that they need to be reloaded, etc., but I don’t think that really affected my and my friends’ play – I just remember us all running around pointing two fingers at each other and repeatedly shouting “bang” over and over again (I also don’t ever remember my fingers jamming). On December 14^th 2012, Adam Lanza walked into the Sandy Hook Elementary school and started shooting. There were many heroic moments performed by staff members, including the School Janitor, Rick Thorne, who ran through the hallways alerting people that there was a shooter and to evacuate the building; often people who practice martial arts and self-defense think that the way they can be most effective in a situation, is to use their skills and engage with an attacker – it may be that simply informing people of a danger/threat is the best way to be effective and save the most lives. At some point in the shooting, Adam Lanza, needed to reload his rifle. In that moment the shooting stopped. A 7-year old child, urged five of his classmates that this was the time to move from their hiding place and evacuate the building. All six survived, what is still the deadliest school shooting in US history (26 lives taken, not including Lanza who committed suicide). Too much information can cause us to hesitate e.g. if we have a good working knowledge of firearms, we can come up with a multitude of reasons why a shooter may stop shooting, and we might start to reason the possibilities and consequences of each one. That 7-year old knew one thing. If the shooter had plenty of targets and wasn’t shooting, it was because he couldn’t, and that’s a good time to try and get out of there. Simplified Thinking in action.

Children are also some of the most effective survivors of wilderness disasters, and cope with them better than adults. Up to a certain age, children don’t understand that the world continues beyond the horizon; what they see is what there is. Adults, however, understand that the world continues, and when lost, believe that there may be “information” beyond what they can see e.g. if they can keep moving forward, backwards etc. they’ll come across a landmark that they can use to orientate themselves with, or get to a vantage point that will allow them to see how to get back on track, etc. This search for “new” information, will often see adults rush forward, exhausting themselves. Children, on the other hand, only have the information available to them and so use that. Most adults who get lost in the wilderness exhaust themselves in their panic for information, whereas children just respond to their immediate situation; they eat when they’re hungry, sleep when they’re tired, etc.

When we are dealing with the immediacy of aggression and violence, we need to think more like children – I refer to this as Simplified Thinking (it’s not simplistic, just simple). The information we have is what we should work with, and not overthink the situation; we simply don’t have the time for that. We should take the first effective solution available to us – if it’s a tsunami, get to high ground, if it’s an active shooter situation, when the shooting stops we should look to evacuate, etc. If we get caught up asking ourselves the “what ifs” of a situation, then they will overtake us. Identify the relevant information and use it to respond.