Where do horrid children come from?

[TranquilMind]

Cool. I guess I am horrid person. A psychopath just like my son. Not a good loving parent. I have been faking it all along. You figured it out.

I don't think so. I don't know your story but there could be any number of things going on that have nothing to do with YOU being horrible!

 

Praying it works out.

[Loudwater School]

... isn't some form of empathy innate? I had always assumed so, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it has to be taught.

 

The question of where horrible comes from is one of the great questions, though, that philosophers have talked to each other about over the centuries. We do know now that empathy IS innate except in cases where something's gone wrong biologically. So many studies have demonstrated that infants are born altruistic (theoretically because of the survival benefit to socializing).

 

So I'd say that something has likely gone wrong in this child's life or body. Or else maybe she's having a really hard year. I saw malevolence in junior high kind of frequently, and not much in the world besides there.

[Cassy]

Cool. I guess I am horrid person. A psychopath just like my son. Not a good loving parent. I have been faking it all along. You figured it out.

 

Of course you're not. However, machine-gun kitty is another matter entirely :tongue_smilie:.

 

FWIW the couple of truly evil children that I've ever known had really lovely parents.

 

Cassy

[laundrycrisis]

I will probably get jumped on for this, but that's ok. I think some of these sorts of problems are spiritual, i.e. demonic. There is nothing normal or simply difficult about serial killers or others who enjoy hurting people. I don't think demonic spirits simply vanished after the first century, as many do (who are Christians, I mean). But, obviously, I don't have the manual on how it all works, but Christians are called to discernment.

 

I do know that I've met a person here and there in my life that caused the hair to raise on the back of my neck.

 

I think it is dangerous territory to go into thinking of children as possibly spiritually afflicted or flawed. In past times, children have been executed for these suspicions.

 

I don't know what produces cruelty. I think in some cases, it has been modeled in the family, seen as a way to feel powerful, and nobody has corrected the child or taught the child another way to feel powerful. In other kids it may just be an experiment that is successful enough times to become a pattern. In others, they may have inside them some anger at some unfulfilled need that has become a black screaming void of resentment that the child is looking to fill with the energy of other people's hurt. I don't know. I do know that I have regularly seen it in specific kids as a pattern, being carried out right in front of the parent's face, and the parent does not see it. And this can go on for years and years and years. I have up close and personal experience with this.

[TranquilMind]

laundrycrisis: I think it is dangerous territory to go into thinking of children as possibly spiritually afflicted or flawed. In past times, children have been executed for these suspicions.

 

 

Well, that won't happen today. And perhaps I was unclear; I was not advocating action of any kind (just prayer), unless it is one's own kid, of course, where counseling with an appropriate spiritual basis would be in order. But I don't advocate ignorance either, as in dismissiveness that anything spiritual could ever be an issue.

 

I don't know what produces cruelty. I think in some cases, it has been modeled in the family, seen as a way to feel powerful, and nobody has corrected the child or taught the child another way to feel powerful. In other kids it may just be an experiment that is successful enough times to become a pattern. In others, they may have inside them some anger at some unfulfilled need that has become a black screaming void of resentment that the child is looking to fill with the energy of other people's hurt. I don't know.

 

All or any of that could definitely be true, for sure.

 

I do know that I have regularly seen it in specific kids as a pattern, being carried out right in front of the parent's face, and the parent does not see it. And this can go on for years and years and years. I have up close and personal experience with this.

 

 

Yeah, that is really frightening.

[justamouse]

I will be the first to admit that some parents are awful. There are many reasons for that. Most of what I see is parental laziness.

 

But I refuse to accept that all bad kids are made from bad parents.

 

My first was a nightmare. I admit that if I did anything wrong, I punished him too much. But I have 6, other, awesome kids, who have been nothing but a pleasure to raise.

 

It's all easy to say until you HAVE one of those kids.

[Laura Corin]

They come from my house :glare:

 

My children have acted with malevolence before (although I'm not sure they transmitted the intention to do so through their eyes). If yours haven't, they're unusual, or you're not a neutral observer.

 

I can't remember seeing this look in any other child's eyes before. This goes beyond being mischievous.

 

Laura

[Laura Corin]

That sounds very typical of middle school. This girl is 12ish and working hard to maintain her position as queen bee by cowing all the other kids in her class. She might be a sociopath or she might mature a bit and become a decent human being before going off to university (I'd lay my money on her maturing).

 

She's been like this from the beginning of primary school (age five or so). It is one school straight through from four or five to twelve. There is hope that she'll grow out of it none the less.

 

Laura

[Farrar]

Cool. I guess I am horrid person. A psychopath just like my son. Not a good loving parent. I have been faking it all along. You figured it out.

 

Yeah, I thought that comment was pretty hurtful. :grouphug:

[Laura Corin]

I thought that everyone ELSE was doing it wrong!

 

Can you expand a bit? You thought that the rules were wrongly set and the way you behaved was natural and normal? Or you thought that others were forcing you to behave in a way that got you punished? Or something else?

 

Thanks

 

Laura

[Laura Corin]

I think it is dangerous territory to go into thinking of children as possibly spiritually afflicted or flawed. In past times, children have been executed for these suspicions.

 

.... by relatives who believed he was possessed. They were trying to exorcise the spirit. By the end, he was begging to die.

 

Laura

[laundrycrisis]

She's been like this from the beginning of primary school (age five or so). It is one school straight through from four or five to twelve. There is hope that she'll grow out of it none the less.

 

Laura

 

I went to the same school from kindergarten through graduation. I remember a few kids who were like this from day 1 of kindergarten, and never changed.

 

IMO it takes much more than a "nice" parent to deal with this, or a parent who is baffled, or making excuses for it, or in denial. There is no hope at all unless a parent is strong enough to deliver the message to the child that this is not in any way acceptable, and make continuing in it an unbearable situation for the child. To deliver considerable consequences every time. To force apologies. To stop a child in his tracks, in front of other children, and call him out on his behavior. To commit to deciding that if your child is going to be cruel, he will not be allowed social contact with other children until he mends his ways, and stick to it, regardless of the child's unhappiness. I think the nice, easygoing parents are probably at a disadvantage.

 

I saw our oldest developing a mean streak at one point. I believe he was learning these behaviors from some neighbor kids who are very cruel. We came down on him very, very hard and held things like that for a while. It was not a fun lesson, but he got it. His life was not going to be bearable if he was going to be mean to other kids.

 

I realize there may be kids for whom this may not be enough. But I see this level of response as the minimum if there is any hope of stopping the tendency toward socially cruel behavior from growing.

[melissel]

I just wanted to throw one more thing out there, for whatever it's worth. I don't have too much experience with older kids or other people's malevolent kids (though I have seen kids who have been mean for fun, as if wielding some kind of enjoyable weapon). But I was terrified for my youngest until a year or so ago when we discovered that she was intolerant of food dyes. I truly thought that she would have no productive future, that she had no empathy. My mom warned me that I should watch her around animals (though it was never an issue). Some of the things I saw her do to her sister and to me and to objects and to her room shocked and horrified me. I saw hatred and red rage in her eyes on a regular basis, and I had no idea what I was doing wrong. I was looking for psych recommendations when I finally figured the mystery out after someone posted here about Red 40 being under investigation by the FDA for what it was doing to kids. (Her real problem is with yellows though--sweet pete :svengo:)

 

That all changed entirely when we took food dyes out of her diet. Now she's a kind, empathetic, loving handful of a kid. I cannot imagine what a pre-teen version of that earlier child would be like :001_huh: I could see it being a lot like you described in the OP.

 

As others have said, in many cases, it's the parents who ignore the issue. After what we went through with her, I cannot understand how a parent could not exhaust every avenue trying to help their child. But again, it's those same parents who make that kid a problem for the rest of the world. (And Brandi, of course I don't mean parents like you, who ARE doing everything in their power. I mean parents like the parents of a child we see weekly, who lament the kid's issues but won't inconvenience themselves to go so far as to simply tweak diet and see what happens :banghead:)

[Henriettakittycat]

There is one family in our area that we've known for about 10 years now. All four children have been awful but the parents don't see it. They see the faults in everyone else's children but not their own.

 

All four have snooped, destroyed things in homes and businesses, have had smart mouths, glare when they don't get their way, and just do not listen to anyone unless they want to.

 

A bunch of us in various groups have had to resort to being the parents to these kids. One night at a Scout parent meeting when the mom started lecturing everyone about how WE all needed to be mentors to everyone's kids I had to walk out. Here she is letting her kids run wild telling us we have to be more involved? Nuh uh.

 

Now that the three older ones are in their teens they have settled down a bit. The youngest one is still a nightmare though.

 

It as really funny last year though. The mom was talking about how her niece and nephew are allowed to run wild, don't have any boundaries, talk back to their parents, and are destructive. I said, "Well, to be honest, your kids were like that when they were younger and B still is." She denied it and said her kids were curious but not destructive and ended her example with, "Well, one time F did take a chair apart in a dentist office but he wasn't being destructive, he was curious!" :confused:

[Elinor Everywhere]

... isn't some form of empathy innate?

 

Laura

 

Laura, I always thought so, too, until we adopted P. After being in an orphanage until he was 6, he did what most of the other kids did - laugh at someone else's pain or embarrassment.

 

I'll never forget soon after we got him home, and he and T were outside swinging. She fell off her swing, hard (you know she's not the crying type), and was bawling her 6yo little head off. P just kept swinging next to her, laughing and laughing. That wasn't even remotely the only time.

 

We had to actually teach him empathy, or at the very least, to present an empathetic face and voice to the world. We still don't know which one it really is.

[5kidsforME]

is about consequences maybe? If she has always pretty much gotten away with it.......

 

I know of a horrid girl and this is the problem i think. She is never called on it from her parents. They truly think the best of her in every situation. I want to think the best of my children too, but if you choose to only recognize the best you are in denial. Part of training, loving and directing your children is to, well, call them on their crap. Ignoring it is only going to be a world of hurt someday for the child, the people around her and the parents.

[5kidsforME]

My own personal experience with kids/people who are malevolent is that the child's parents do not see this in the child at all. It is either blindness or denial, but the parents do not see it and it is never addressed. They may be aware of other problems with the kid's behavior, but not the raw cruelty. I don't know if it is parental-love goggles or emotional self-preservation or what, but the parents appear unwilling or unable to see what might be a horrible character flaw in their child, and address it properly.

 

 

YES! This exactly. :iagree:

[KidsHappen]

... isn't some form of empathy innate? I had always assumed so, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it has to be taught.

 

 

Laura

 

Unfortunately no. Some people are born without it and can not learn it, usually sociopaths. Some people just have difficulty with empathy. Some of these people can learn it to a certain extent and some that can not can learn appropriate behavior even if they do not understand it.

[laundrycrisis]

I am going to point out again, that lack of empathy does not equal cruelty. It may appear cruel at times for a child to laugh when another is in pain, but the cruelty is not intended. To the child who lacks empathy, the child in pain may really look funny falling, or with limbs flailing, or kicking or screaming etc. Even blood can look fascinating to a child who lacks empathy. Since they don't identify with the pain and fear, it does not mar their experience of enjoying what to them appears to be funny. They do not intend to cause pain or be cruel.

 

It is a very different thing when a child or person knows full well that they are causing pain, completely understands it, and truly enjoys the experience of purposely causing either physical or emotional pain.

[Miss Marple]

I've seen some families where there is 1 child who turns out "bad". The other children are great, the parents seem great, and no one has an explanation.

 

I have come to the conclusion that we (parents) may not be quite as important as we like to think we are in the sense that if we do everything "right" our kids will turn out fine. I believe there is some responsibility on the part of the child - the book of Proverbs says, "Even a child is known by his actions, by whether his conduct is pure and right." Children make choices - as parents we hope to be able to guide our children's choices to good but the child has her own heart and desires.

 

That young lady sounds like a bully throwing down the gauntlet. Too bad no one has picked it up and taken her on.

[kalanamak]

Well, I fall back on genes and upbringing, and certainly see pretty decent parent and step-parent combos dealing with the inheritance from the parent-long-gone-from-the-scene. However, a lot of sick people have sick parents, and the ones that think deary can do no wrong, those bad, bad police who just don't understand junior, etc, are very damaging.

[TravelingChris]

We just had this discussion I think in late winter. It was about children with RAD who do act like this. We know that RAD can cause this behavior and while bad orphanages and bad parents can activily cause such problems, for some suspectable children it can be long hospital stays when the child is first born or something like that which has nothing to do with the parents.

 

Sometimes this behavior is only temporary or in some circumstances- that can be because of items beyond a person's control. There are well know cases of various items causing extreme changes in behavior including some anti-malarials, sudden secessation of SSRI or SSNRI, headache medications, hormonal disruptions, and as per pp, food color. And there is no reason to doubt the strong effect some items can have on a person- look at how tiny many of our medicines are that keep some of us alive and functioning. A tiny pill keeps my blood from clotting and I have no doubt that some other tiny ingredient can cause rage, emotional detachment, lack of empathy or what ever bad behavior one sees. Other than witnessing such things in my own family, where some medications or lack of medications and also hormones, caused horrible disruptions, there are many. many academic journal articles about this phenomenon.

 

Another part that is the case in some circumstances is inborn problems, whether genetic or not. There are certainly some people who seem to be born with abnormalities in some areas of the brain. We don't really know much about that since the brain develops so much depending on interactions it has so my suspicion is that the worse cases are probably always bad brain, bad parents or caretakers. But that does not mean that kids born with a tendency towards meanness won't always be more mean than others. I think it may be something like I observed on the wonderful Nature program on dogs- in Russia,they have had a 40 year program to re-engineer dogs from foxes. I believe they first started with wolves but didn't have much like but with foxes they did. The fascinating thing I thought was that the nice foxes actually changed shape and physical characteristics too so they looked more like dogs, and cute ones at that. Anyway, the fact is genetics do count for some part of behavior so try to teach your children to choose responsible, caring adults for their eventual spouses or partners. I don't think that it was solely prejudice that makes people fear for the infant's future when some very socially deviant person has a baby (like the guy I watched last night who had 17 prior convictions). I hope that baby wins the genetic lottery but if that mom stays with that character, it would be hard to distinguish which bad effects are from genetics and which from the interactions with the excon father.