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columns have talked about the importance of the first years of a child's life in his or her development.  The focus has been on encouraging the positive.
   The dark side of the equation is what happens if a child is abused or neglected during this important period.  Those first few years are the basis of both good and evil.
   "Ghosts From The Nursery" takes the reader to an area most of us don't want to go.  It focuses on recent studies that have provided evidence that violent behavior is fundamentally linked to abuse and neglect in the first two years of life.
   Case histories relate how multiple factors predispose children to violent behavior. 
   The newspapers tell us of violence committed by children 12 and under. What they don't tell us is that the majority of these early offenders have a record of consistent patterns of aggression, bullying, tantrums, and coercive interactions with others by the age of 4. The book details factors both negative and positive which affect the development of children.
   A study of prisoners found that 62 percent of people in prison were arrested as adolescents.  Most of these troubled adolescents were identified in grade school as having learning, behavioral or emotional problems.
   I recently found out that there is a small but growing problem with children being kicked out of daycare for aggressive behavior.  By the time that child reaches grade school, the behavior patterns are well established.

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   In the book, Morse writes,  "In order to understand the tide of violent behavior in which America is now submerged, we must look before preadolescence, before grade school, before preschool, to the cradle of human formation in the first 33 months of life."
   The argument is strong that society is facing a dilemma: how to respond to increasing violence. There is now a group sponsored by members from the law enforcement community and their slogan is, "Fight Crime: Invest in Kids."
   More of our resources need to be focused on prevention, rather than incarceration.  If you need to be convinced, take the time to read, "Ghosts From The Nursery."
   John Colina serves as chairman of Everybody Ready! He and his wife, Nancy, established the Colina Foundation in 1992. The mission of the foundation is "Helping Children."