Berlin. Young children are hitting other young children and sexually harassing them as early as three to six years of age. The new official figures from nurseries in Germany's most populous federal state, North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), speak for themselves and are causing horror, but also a sense of helplessness. Other federal states and educators’ associations also confirm a trend towards markedly more aggressive behaviour among children at an early age. How has such interpersonal neglect among young children arisen, and how have the figures quadrupled within just a few years?
The responsible state youth welfare offices in North Rhine-Westphalia recorded a total of 4,718 assaults last year, compared with “only” 2,680 in 2024. This is according to the state government’s response to an enquiry from the SPD parliamentary group, as reported by the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger. The data show an increase of almost 80 per cent. Within four years, the number of cases has quadrupled.
The statistics from the responsible youth welfare offices record all sexual, physical and psychological assaults – both by educators and by children among themselves. In recent years, there have been repeated serious offences committed by care staff, such as in the case of a 34-year-old educator who sexually abused nine girls in his care. However, cases of violence such as the force-feeding of small children are also recorded.
Violence among children escalates
Cases in which children use violence against other children, sometimes with sexual implications, are also recorded particularly frequently. In western Rhineland, the number of such incidents rose from 323 to 501. Registered sexual assaults by adults on children increased from 75 to 162 during the same period. This means that there are more sexual assaults among children in day-care centres than by adults on children. This finding alone is staggering.
And so it seems more like an expression of helplessness and an attempt at appeasement when Youth Minister Verena Schäffer (Green Party) explains that the dramatic increase in the number of incidents of violence among young children is “proof that more cases are coming to light and no longer remain undetected”.
This statement implies that there has always been this much violence in German nurseries, but that it has now simply emerged from the shadows and become visible. “Only if we all look and act together” can we “ensure even better child protection”, says the minister, who also refers to the newly created office of “Commissioner for Child Protection and Children's Rights” – as if a single man could solve the problem in the hundreds of day-care centres across the country by “looking”.
However, such a conclusion does not solve the problem, but rather shifts responsibility for a development that is not only worrying, but also requires thorough investigation into its causes.
Children imitate what they experience
Children do not spontaneously become violent in nursery simply because no one is watching. Rather, they act out what they are accustomed to and what is already going wrong at home. Parenting is not “child's play”, but a laborious, lengthy process – and also a question of cultural influences and the values of the parental home. In educational science, it is regarded as a truism that children imitate what they experience. If violence is used as a tried and tested means of conflict resolution at home, children will use it as well. Children must not only be protected from violence themselves, but also guided towards appropriate social behaviour through praise, as well as through reprimands and punishment.
What has changed so fundamentally in recent years that violence is no longer confined to railway stations, dark corners of the country or among adults, but now also occurs among young children – and has even quadrupled in frequency?
German police statistics have long documented an increase in violent crime among children and young people, including in schools, even among girls. Equality is therefore also making its way into violence among children – a “success story” that no one wants.
Not more cases, just more reports?
Politicians argue, as the minister said, that there is a greater willingness to report offences, i.e. that more cases are simply being reported today that were not reported in the past. This line of argument is also popular with politicians as an explanation for the rise in other violent crime, such as the dramatic increase in sexual offences against women over the past ten years. The motto is: there are no more rapes – women are merely reporting them today. This claim has never been substantiated by statistics, but it serves to fuel the myth that it has always been this way. Move along, nothing new has happened.
In connection with the cases of violence in nurseries, another argument put forward is that nursery teachers are “overworked” and no longer able to maintain sufficient oversight and supervision to prevent or pre-empt violence between children.
Some german commentators argue that the lowering of staffing standards in German nurseries is the problem and the cause, claiming that politicians have slackened in recent years and permitted relaxations through an amendment to the Child Education Act (Kibiz). Michael Kutz, regional director of the German Child Protection Association in North Rhine-Westphalia, also takes this line. He says the increasing number of cases of danger is “not least a consequence of inadequate staffing and the lowering of standards in training and qualifications, which has led to considerable overload for nurseries and staff”.
So is the number of children per nursery teacher to blame? And would smaller groups actually lead to less violence? According to this theory, there should have been constant violent incidents in nurseries in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. At that time, there were hardly any quality standards for staffing ratios.
It was not uncommon for a nursery teacher to look after twelve children, statistically, instead of five to six today, and there were no reports or police statistics on excessive violence among children because it was simply not a relevant factor. Ten or 20 years ago, it was simply not necessary for a nursery teacher to ensure that the children in her group did not sexually harass or injure one another in an unobserved moment in such a way that it had to be reported to the authorities.
Data that no one asks for and no one collects
What is always interesting about statistics are the facts and figures that are not collected because the answers would require debates that no one wants to have.
The increase in violence among children may have causes other than inadequate supervision by educational staff and the excessive demands placed on educators, which are not discussed in society. When figures on violence surge within a limited period of time, it would be standard scientific practice to ask which conditions changed during that period and thus influenced children's behaviour. Some altered parameters are almost obvious when examining the causes. However, politicians are not permitting them to be statistically recorded or scientifically investigated.
Attachment disorders caused by early external care
The number of children in German nurseries who are younger and in care for longer periods has increased markedly over the past ten years. In some federal states in eastern Germany, 60 to 70 per cent of all children under the age of three are already in full-time external care. The west of the republic is also steadily expanding provision. Here, the number of children who attend day-care every day as babies (from six months) or from the age of two at the latest is increasing significantly in order to mobilise their mothers' labour to address the shortage of skilled workers.
Experts have been warning about this for 20 years, arguing that such children are more likely to develop attachment problems, developmental disorders and behavioural difficulties, and are also more prone to aggression and delinquency later in life. However, because women are supposed to be “liberated” from the home and hearth, the fact that excessively early and prolonged daily external childcare can cause problems by increasing the stress hormone cortisol in the body is simply ignored. The consequences are now becoming apparent.
Social behaviour disrupted due to coronavirus lockdown
Social isolation during the coronavirus pandemic has also had a significant impact on children. An entire generation has not grown up in a child-friendly environment for several years. Statistics from health insurance funds and the police confirm an increase in various worrying indicators, which can be divided into “before” and “after” coronavirus. If, on the basis of these parameters alone, an average increase in violence among schoolchildren of 20 to 30 per cent has been documented in schoolyards, why should such a trend not already be apparent among young children of nursery age?
Statistically, many of the children who are in kindergarten today have spent half or even a third of their lives so far in social confinement and isolation and have had little opportunity to practise their social behaviour in interaction with other children. Some react to this period with psychological difficulties, social phobias and withdrawal; others with aggression.
Sex education or early sexualisation?
Sexual assaults by young children on other young children do not come out of nowhere either. Children do not devise such ideas on their own. Only in the minds of overzealous sex educators and very specific “friends of children” are children regarded as “sexual beings” who must be confronted with sexual diversity and adult sexuality as early as possible, even before they are able to speak properly.
And here, too, the same applies: children imitate what they have seen at home, on television or in pornographic images on the internet, without the ability to reflect on what they have experienced. Parents who give their children access to the internet at this age are responsible for this.
Kindergarten concepts that deliberately confront children with early sexualisation in the name of tolerance and rainbow programmes should also be mentioned in this context. “Kindergarden suitcases” on sexual diversity are financed and promoted by education ministries, as are educational programmes in rooms where children are encouraged to play doctor and undress. In recent years, nurseries have repeatedly come under criticism because parents were outraged by such concepts or because children reported specific incidents of abuse, including in washrooms. When some six-year-olds are already attempting to sexually harass other children, it is not enough to increase the number of teachers. Educational intervention is needed – both in kindergarten and at home.
What is the background of these violent children?
Finally, there remains another large elephant in the room that is not being named: which children exactly fit the perpetrator profile, and what is their family and cultural background? Here, too, the following applies: if, in police statistics across all age groups, perpetrators with a migrant background constitute the largest group in the area of violent and sexual offences because they are overrepresented in relation to their share of the population, then the question must also be asked whether similar patterns can be observed in the youngest age group.
Every primary school teacher in a problem district in Germany is familiar with the “little pashas”, as Friedrich Merz put it. This refers primarily to young boys who, even at this age, stand out for their disrespectful behaviour towards girls, but also towards their teachers. Children who display such behaviour in the first year of primary school at the age of six have usually already been influenced in this way and have apparently been allowed to behave in this manner without facing any consequences at home.
Tackle the causes, not the symptoms
Yes, more teaching staff are certainly needed in German nurseries so that the facilities do not drift towards mass childcare, where upbringing or even education is hardly possible. However, large groups are not in themselves an explanation for the almost explosive increase in violent incidents committed by young children.
Of course, one can appoint “child protection officers” and compile further statistics – but as long as all possible causes and amplifying factors behind such developments are not rigorously examined, these measures remain placebos. The same applies to violence among children: the causes must be tackled, not the symptoms. Politically, no one seems willing to confront this issue; it would expose the failure of state institutions as well as the growing influence of sex education ideologues on the minds of children.