How family conflicts are leading to killing of innocent children

Family conflict develops when members have different principles or perspectives, when people misunderstand one another, when someone’s feelings get hurt and develop resentment, and when miscommunication leads to mistaken assumptions and subsequent arguments.

Family stages often cause conflicts. These include learning to live as a new couple, having the first baby and any subsequent children, sending a child to school, dealing with adolescence and experiencing the passage of young persons into adulthood. Each of these stages has innumerable possibilities for conflicts.

Separation and divorce also creates conflict, as do moving to a new town, starting a new job or starting to commute long hours to and from work. Changes in financial circumstances also can lead to rusty relationships.

Children are vulnerable and suffer most when families are going through wars. This happens when parents engage in heated and hostile arguments involving verbal insults and raised voices which in the end develop to domestic violence.

Towards the end of last year, a man in Thika town stabbed his two children to death and tried to commit suicide.

James Kioho stabbed to death his son and daughter aged seven and two, respectively, in the chest before he attempted to poison himself.

According to neighbours in the area, the bizarre actions were triggered by a quarrel with his wife.