The first time she witnessed a student’s major tantrum — a 2-year-old hurling a toy stove filled with plastic pots and pans — Shanikia Johnson had just started as a teacher at Little Flowers Child Development Center in West Baltimore.

She knew toddlers acted out. But the rage-filled reaction, triggered when Johnson wouldn’t allow the boy to play with a toy, stunned the 22-year-old teacher. Then, time and time again, she saw other children throwing classroom furniture. Bookcases, chairs, tables — all were flung around the room.

Some students bit classmates, leaving teeth marks on hands and cheeks; a few threatened to hurt staff members. Other children, dubbed “runners,” darted out of the building and down barren city blocks, with frantic teachers on their heels. The encounters exhausted Johnson and other teachers, who began to see the children as troublemakers.

Science increasingly shows that Hardy-Flowers is right. Even as shootings, stabbings and murder trials grab the spotlight, violence in Baltimore is exacting another insidious, often invisible, toll — warping the health and development of the city’s youngest residents. For every child who is shot, provoking public outrage, hundreds of others hear gunshots or see fights and stabbings in neighborhoods across the city. After the ambulances drive off and the crime scenes are cleared, many of these children are left with deep psychological wounds that can trigger physical ailments.The first time she witnessed a student’s major tantrum — a 2-year-old hurling a toy stove filled with plastic pots and pans — Shanikia Johnson had just started as a teacher at Little Flowers Child Development Center in West Baltimore.

She knew toddlers acted out. But the rage-filled reaction, triggered when Johnson wouldn’t allow the boy to play with a toy, stunned the 22-year-old teacher. Then, time and time again, she saw other children throwing classroom furniture. Bookcases, chairs, tables — all were flung around the room.

Some students bit classmates, leaving teeth marks on hands and cheeks; a few threatened to hurt staff members. Other children, dubbed “runners,” darted out of the building and down barren city blocks, with frantic teachers on their heels. The encounters exhausted Johnson and other teachers, who began to see the children as troublemakers.

But the day care center’s owner, Crystal Hardy-Flowers, urged the staff to be patient with the children, who often were like any other preschoolers — dancing to music, playing tea party and climbing onto a teacher’s lap. The former social worker understood something that her teachers did not. The kids were growing up in Upton/Druid Heights, where police chases are common and sirens wake up kids like unwelcome alarm clocks at night. Almost every day, in some way, the kids were exposed to violence.

“It’s not just bad behavior. It is not just defiance,” Hardy-Flowers said. “No, it is deeper than that. People just don’t pick up chairs and throw them at you. Children don’t just run out of the building.”

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