3. Correction of the behavior of teenage infantils

Infantilism is one of the types of deviations from the mental norm, which consists in the lag in development, late maturation of the personality, its immaturity, when the physical and spiritual appearance, character traits do not correspond to the passport data, lag behind them.
According to N.I. Felinskaya, only in special vocational schools infantilism was found in 17% of the examined minors. In special schools, according to our data, infantilism is about 19%. There are no data on VK, but this level is not lower than in special PTU, by the indirect indicators that we have on the basis of the analysis of statistics on juvenile crime. Therefore, issues of educational and correctional work with this category of minors sent to places of social exclusion are very acute.
There are physical and mental infantilism. These types of infantilism are often associated with various violations of the genetic apparatus and, as a result, with a slowdown of biological maturation, usually accompanied by social infantilism.

However, even with normal physical and psychological development, social infantilism can be observed as a kind of social pathology, to which until recently no attention has been paid. A socially infantile young man is a "little man", a person with a prolonged childhood. Infantilism is manifested in a variety of ways: in the behavior, actions of a minor, not corresponding to his age, or judgments, opinions, statements, which are different in immaturity, as well as in mental states and experiences, peculiar to children, etc.
Juvenile infantilism in places of social isolation most often manifests itself in carelessness, carelessness with regard to their duties, superficial judgments, in violation of restraining mechanisms in the fulfillment of personal desires, in the underdevelopment of a sense of responsibility for their behavior. Such adolescents are very mobile and restless in the classroom, they take up work, then they leave it, they move on to another. Interests and attention are unstable. They can quickly grasp the explanations of the teacher, the master of industrial training, but do not think about them, do not complete the task. Often they violate the requirements of the regime, academic and labor discipline: they walk around the classroom or at the production workshop, talk, give up their workplace in the workshop, get involved in extraneous affairs, etc. Among them can be found and too touchy, shy, conformal, easily amenable to suggestion, which more mature adolescents and young men are often robbed, exploited.
When they talk about social infantilism, we must bear in mind that it can manifest itself both in moral and legal spheres of a minor’s life in the form of:
- indifferent attitude to the norms of morality and law, undemanding, condescending attitude towards oneself and others, lack of readiness and ability to fight for the observance of the norms of human society;
- legal and moral negativism, i.e. evaluation of moral and legal prohibitions that exist in society as unfair, active, amoral and illegal behavior.
We give examples. The teenagers B. and T. played with a teenager U. There was a situation when they caught the teenager O., depicting an "adversary", threw him to the ground and strangled him (all teenagers were barely 11 years old). They explained their actions by the fact that the teenager Shch. Violated the rules of the game - he did not give up when he was thrown to the ground.
The most common form of manifestation of infantilism is the absurdity of the behavior of adolescents: grimacing, unreasonable shouts, laughter, crying, etc.
The reasons for physical and mental infantilism are considered unfavorable conditions of fetal development of the child and some diseases of the brain. Its occurrence is influenced by infectious diseases carried in childhood, disorders of the trophic and endocrine glands, digestive disorders and nutritional deficiencies that cause a slowdown in development. A significant proportion of minors who have recently been in places of social exclusion and who suffer from mental and physical infantilism were born and raised in zones of ecological distress, which affected their health and development. Unfortunately, the influence of unfavorable living conditions and life of the child on the emergence and development of infantilism in the areas of environmental disasters is still poorly investigated, being replaced by general slogans of the threat of environmental disruption to human health. In this case, mental aspects fall out of sight of scientists.
The causes of social infantilism must be sought in violations of the individual personality formation. This may be due to mistakes in raising a child in the family, shortcomings in the work of educational institutions where minors are located (kindergarten, school, vocational school, boarding school, etc.).
In modern conditions, the predominant cause of social infantilism becomes hyper-care in upbringing, expressed in relation to the adolescent as a small child, in restrictions on the independence of his personality, which gives rise to his dependency, irresponsible behavior. Such upbringing leads to hypertrophied development of needs, the formation of a consumer attitude towards life, egoism, materialism, and a frivolous attitude towards one's duties. Many were shocked by the case described in a number of newspapers, when an adult son killed his parents because of the old “Zhiguli”, which he would have inherited along with the apartment and other property of the parents as their only child. But he needed these “Zhiguli” today in order to drive around with girls and lead a “beautiful life”. And the reason is that parents carefully protected him from the "prose of life", did not bring up independence and responsibility for their actions and behavior.
The cause of social infantilism may be an authoritarian attitude towards the child, which leads to the suppression of his desire for independence, to the loss of faith in his own strength, develops a passive attitude to the environment. Such people remain impractical in life for a long time, do not know how to resist the harmful influence of others.
The main areas of work with infantile adolescents and young men. The problems of individual work with each infantile minor come to the fore. First of all, a psychologist and an educator should identify such persons, create favorable conditions for them in the microenvironment of minors, and organize a system of their intensive formation as a person. Special programs are being developed for this. In order to accelerate mental and physical development, it is often necessary to resort to special medical measures: the use of tonic and tonic means for prescribing and under the supervision of doctors; to special general developmental physical exercises.
In the process of schooling, it is also important to apply a system of didactic measures: special techniques for attracting and maintaining the attention of infantile students in the classroom, initiating interest in the subject being studied, etc. These people have to patiently teach the skills and abilities of educational and work activities, cultivate the habits of collective behavior in the classroom and in work.
Serious preventive work should also be carried out: to stop ridicule and harassment of these adolescents by negatively-minded minors; take care of them, create favorable regime conditions; organize enhanced physical exercises; provide them with improved nutrition, etc.
But it would be better if such teenagers and young men did not go to places of social exclusion. In our opinion, persons with a pronounced infantilism in the manner prescribed by law (after passing a medical examination, the decision of the Commission on Minors and the public education authority) should be sent to auxiliary schools.
A different attitude is required to persons with signs of social infantilism. All efforts are directed to the awareness of the perfect offense, the awakening of a sense of responsibility and guilt, a reasonable attitude to their needs. Social infantilism can be overcome by constant monitoring of educators, teachers, regime workers, industrial education masters over the behavior of these individuals, increased demands on them, the gradual complication of independent tasks and assignments for them, and their inclusion in the work of student government bodies.
There are juvenile offenders who speculate on their underdevelopment, social immaturity, refuse assignments, social work, do not carry out educational and production tasks. With such simulators, covering the infantilism of the face of an egoist and individualist, a decisive struggle is being waged by exposing their individualistic attitudes, toughening regime conditions of detention.

Findings:
1. A significant proportion of minors suffering from physical and mental infantilism, as well as persons with delays in social formation as a person, are sent to places of social isolation. The specified contingent complicates the work on the execution of criminal punishments and the application of coercive measures of re-education, creating an intense social and psychological atmosphere in the institution.
2. The causes of physical and mental infantilism are sufficiently studied in medicine and psychological science. However, until recently, no attention was paid to the factor associated with environmental problems, which requires large-scale research.
3. To work with the infantile contingent, the development and application of special medical, educational and pedagogical, didactic, and general physical measures of influence and their reasonable application is required.
4. At the same time, timely identification of persons with pronounced infantilism (physical and mental) and their sending to auxiliary schools in the prescribed manner, the use of special measures for the re-education of socially infantile adolescents and youths is necessary.