This week while reflecting on the writings that most influenced my thinking about psychopathy/sociopathy, I received a letter from a mother of a five year-old boy whose father shows many signs of the disorder. She wrote:
Do you believe that children can show signs of being psychopathic? If so do you teach them to suppress the way they really feel by masking the problems with fake feelings? Can feelings of love really be learned? Just because someone on the outside appears like they have feelings does that mean inside they have actually changed? As you know they are good actors. The skill is learned very quickly to lie to blend in with the others. I bought your book off Amazon I should be getting it today. And i am also reading Dr. Hares book. I will try to look at your book some more today.
Shortly after my son’s father was arrested, I sat on my bed, with our seven month old baby asleep beside me, with the psychiatry DSM manual open to the page containing the criteria for “antisocial personality disorder”. I asked myself “do any of these criteria relate to common themes discussed in the child development literature.” I had to answer that question to know how best to mother my own child.
Interestingly, all the criteria mapped onto three developmentally acquired abilities: Ability to Love, Impulse Control, and Moral Reasoning. I then vowed I would read everything there was to read about each of these.
I started with Ability to Love. In my opinion the most important book about Ability to Love is Learning to Love by Harry Harlow, Ph.D. He is the scientist who demonstrated that a baby monkey clings to his mother out of pleasure in affection and “contact comfort” not because mother is a source of food. Prior to Dr. Harlow, scientists believed that the child learned to relate to his mother because she was associated with food.
The profound conclusion reached by Dr. Harlow’s research team is that babies are born to “learn to love” just like babies are born to learn language. We don’t come into the world talking but as our brains develop and we are exposed to language we learn to talk. Similarly, we don’t come into the world loving, but as our brains develop and we receive the right input we learn to love.
There are other interesting parallels between talking and loving including the observation that both are disordered in autism and both are influenced by genetics.
My world completely changed when I read page 44 of learning to love. It is on this page that Dr. Harlow discusses a very important developmental sequence. Ability to Love starts to develop before pleasure in aggression and competition sets in:
“The primary basis of aggression control is the formation of strong generalized bonds of peer love or affection… All primates, monkeys and men alike are born with aggressive potential, but aggression is a rather later maturing variable. It is obvious that a one year old suffers from fear and is terrified by maternal separation, but the child neither knows nor can express aggression at this tender age…This lack of aggression targets accounts in part for the fact that “evil emotion” culminates during the age-mate stage, long after peer affection and love have developed. It is the antecedent age-mate love that holds the fury of aggression within acceptable bounds for in group associates.”
Love starts to develop before aggression does, and has a head start in the race for the brain connections that form the basis of our values.
Now back to our 5 year old boy. I am very disturbed by the recent trend of referring to children as “psychopathic” in the scientific literature. Not that she does not describe symptoms of psychopathy, but to call a 5 year old psychopathic, negates the importance of learning to love and acts like it is an inborn ability.
I would say that this boy is learning disabled and requires extra help when it comes to learning to love. Just like speech therapy would help him if he couldn’t speak, love therapy will help him if he can’t love. Studies of autistic children show that a mother’s love makes a big differences for many severely affected children. Why shouldn’t we at least give this 5 year old the benefit of the doubt and give him love therapy.
Many studies show that the parents of at-risk children struggle with loving them. It is hard to love an impulsive child who goes after the cat with sharp tools. These parents are also harmed by suggestions that psychopathy is entirely genetic and firmly in place by age 3.
The focus on “discipline” also hurts these families because children need to learn to love. How can they learn to love if the people who are supposed to teach them are constantly yelling at them and scolding them or spanking them?
What is the answer?
An at-risk child is a full time job! Parents have to love that child 24/7 and not leave him alone to go to the kitchen to pick up the knife and go after the cat. Preventive positive parenting means waking up before the child, being there when he opens his eyes and saying, “I love you”. It means giving him hugs and kisses, playing and having fun together.
Parents do have to be told to spend time loving their kids. Most families have two working parents who get home at 5 or 6 tierd needing to make dinner and put the kids to bed. On the weekends they clean and shop.
Happy Easter, Everyone. I think that ultimately the answers will never be known for certain until we develop weird science like a truth and love implant that makes the Sp’s capable of feeling and incapable of telling lies. Even when we question them, study them, profile them, the best we can hope for is some prediction of what is probable. We know they lie so even cooperation and disclosure could be full of BS when coming from them. I know my ex was a horrible child. Totally arrogant, violent, a killer of a pet without a show of remorse because the pet and I quote, “I broked his neck cuz he didn’t minded me” this at three. And this story and the fact that he set his mom’s bed on fire with her in at the age of 5 are told at family get togethers with the wasn’t he such a horrid child laugh, laugh. I think parenting plays a huge role. Not the whole role, but a large portion. I don’t know that good parenting will prevent anything, but I’m certain that horrid parenting will increase the odds of a bad outcome. The message that the child is just evil, Haha, never holding the child responsible for his behavior, will guarantee a bad outcome.
This is such a good discussion, though, of course I don’t think we will ever come to an OBJECTIVE CONCLUSION, as the entire situation is SUBECTIVE. It would be nice if we could come up with an objective 1-2-3 formula for parenting though.
I keep thinking back to my egg donor’ls brother, Uncle Monster. At age 7 he didn’t like this new thing that took up his mother’s attention, and had every intention of killing and/or torturing “it” (my egg donor). His mother discovered him (in time) to save her daughter’s life, but protected him from his father finding out and he continue to torture his little sister by smothering her until she became unconscious for 7 years, AND hiding this fact from his father. He knew apparently by age 7 that there would be no consequences except a slight verbal scolding from his mother, but knew that his father would warm his pants if he knew, so he was savy enough to AVOID the consequences.
If his mother had “told on” him and his father had warmed his pants at age 7,, the behavior might have stopped, but the DESIRE to kill or harm his little sister would, I don’t think, have stopped. I firmly believe that by age 7 Uncle Monster’s attitudes and entitlement as well as his malevolent nature were SET IN CONCRETE.
A discussion I had with a hired hand the other day comes to mind just now. My pasture renter has about 25 or 30 weanling calves here. Barbed wire fences, as I told the hired hand, are simply SUGGESTIONS to cattle to stay in one area. They are not really BARRIERS of any strength. Because he had bought these calves (recently deprived of their mothers) over here and just dumped them out in a very large pasture, they had gone through the fences in a frenzy of searching for their mothers and their homes.
We had rounded them up and put them back, fixed the fences, etc. but they then repeatedly got out through the fences because they had learned that fences were NOT barriers, but simply “suggestions” and they now more or less roam at will….into my yard, on to the air strip, etc.
They were TAUGHT that they can go through fences if they are determined enough and now they can not be “untaught” this, unless you put them into a fence made of STEEL (like a pipe corral) i.e. “jail” which will contain their BEHAVIOR, but not their DESIRES.
If the hired had had put them into my corral (which is more secure than a barbed wire fence, but still isn’t a pipe fence) for a few days before turning them out into the “big world” of barbed wire fences, they would have been able to settle down, calm down, forget about their mamas and would never have tried to go through the barbed wire fences, they would have respected the “suggestion” of the barbed wire fences to stay on the side they were put. Even their desires to roam would have been quelched, I think. But at least their BEHAVIOR would have been different.
I wonder sometimes if our children are not “trained” and their attitudes changed by the social “fences” that are put around them and the ones that they break through (either openly or secretly) without consequences.
The calves were “rewarded” every time they got through the fences with lush spring greens on the other side, which they much prefered to the hay they had on their side of the fence (Yea, I know, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence! LOL) so even being drive back into the pasture with the dog was not enough of a consequence to undo or overcome the “reward” that they got by breaking through.
Since cattle are, believe it or not, about as smart as asses, there will NEVER be a way to break them from being “breechy” (the term for a bovine that will not respect fences).
The bottom line in all this “lesson in bovine behavior” is it makes me wonder about human behavior as well. About psychopathic behavior because, like the steers, the psychopath sees no advantage in staying behind the “fences” and great advantage in going through them, and NEVER CONNECTS THE PUNISHMENT/CONSEQUENCES WITH THE CRIME.
Wow Oxy, That makes so much sense. His Mom turned his crib over upside down like a little jail cell to contain him as a toddler because he would climb out of the crib and wander the street with a river out front or get into stuff in the kitchen and even turn on the stove burners. Just a handful and smacking his behind would make him laugh. His Mom says, but it is always Haha, that he would so wear out her nerves that she would hand cuff him to a chair and sit in it til his Dad got home and again popping him didn’t help. He loves the challenge since criminal past was more about taunting the cops and getting away with stuff than the actual score from the crime itself.It often talked of really missing that high that comes from beating others by getting over on them and making them look stupid. Of course all this confessional talk was after I had said, “I do.” But he can say the most heinous things in a way with such charm that you buy into his excuses.
Dear Joy,
My P-son gets his “thrill” I thinkk mainly out of “putting it over” on someone. I am his CHIEF person he likes to “put one over on” but he loves doing it to the cops, my egg donor, his brother C (I think C is #2 choice because he has been jealous of C since he was a teenager at least, maybe before that I don’t know.) Because he IS so smart, it gives him fun to make others appear “dumb”—actually, the funny thing is that he has never even been much of a “success” in getting away with things, but he scores a POSITIVE stroke for each success, and never acknowledges the NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES, so it is always a WIN-WIN situation for him, just like for the calves getting through the fence.
My P son also crawled out of his crib by 12-13 months and apparently had been doing it at night and then CRAWLING BACK INTO IT so I had no idea he was out wandering around the house while we all slept until one night I caught him, and then it “jelled” in my mind why things had been “moved around” during the night which I couldn’t account for until I saw my toddler had crawled out of his crib and gotten on the conunter, gotten a loaf of bread and was toasting it on the space heater and feeding it to the dog which sat there attentively waiting. How he managed to not get SERIOUS burns on his little hands I do not know! He was quite physically precocious after he learned to walk though, which continued on into adulthood. My husband believed he had the best hand/eye cordination he had ever seen in one of his students—even at an early age like 7 or 8 he was an instinctive marksman with a gun or a bow and by his teen-aged years he was outstanding. He was also an instinctive pilot (and his fearlessness didn’t hurt any) and an excellent car driver (but reckless as well with a car, but not with a plane). My older non-P son was clummsy from the get go and how he never killed himself with his climbing and running I will never know. He HAS, though, developed good or at least adequate cordination though now and is no longer accident prone, and is a good and safe driver, though he was 25 or 30 before he acheived that.
Your X does sound a lot like my P-son in his glee at “putting one over on Joey” because mine just loves to match wits with the guards at the prison. I imagine he probably numerically gets away with more than he gets caught, though I know of 19 times in 20+ years he has gotten caught on SERIOUS rules infractions, including a smuggled cell phone which he had installed inside of an electric razor in such a way that the phone was inside, charging, but it looked like the razor was charging. Even then, they didn’t find the sim chip. He had apparently had it for several years by the time it was discovered though.
One of the correction officer majors said to me when I went to visit him and pick up his craft shop tools and materials “he’s a regular little electronic genius isn’t he?” I said, “Yep, he’s that all right!” For that little feat, he spent several weeks in solitary confinement, lost his craft shop priviledges, was transferred to a different prison, was also taken off “minimum custody” for a year, and other sanctions, but they did not slow him down for a second. It was shortly after this episode that I went NC with him, and the “Trojan HOrse” Psychopathic ex cell mate of his rented a house from me and infiltrated our family. That particular “con” had to have been set up months or years in advance, just waiting for his buddy to get off parole. One thing my little “darling” is is patient, even as a small child, his patience in working on something was amazing to behold. While most kids have no patience with fishing for example, if they don’t get a bite in 5 minutes, they are gone doing something else, but he would sit with a pole for HOURS at age 6 or 7 and never get a bite, but hold on to “I’m just about to get a bite” when you dragged him “kicking and screaming” (not literally) away from the water after he had sat there all day and it was bedtime! I’ve never seen that kind of patience in any small child on a fishing trip and it was consistent.
I have plenty of “ha ha” stories about my ADHD son’s antics, but they were NEVER EVER MEAN, and he was never defiant or disrespectful. He just had to be watched to keep him from things that were too far above his ability levels to be safe. At the time they happened they weren’t always funny (at least until they were over) but in retrospect, with everything turning out “okay” they are definitely funny!
After my P-son started his serious antics, though, there is NOTHING FUNNY about his conduct or his thinking! A serious waste to humanity of a man with a superior intellect, that, who knows what he could have accomplished for mankind, if he hadn’t become a monster instead. I’m just glad that neither you nor I are still “brainwashed” by these monsters in human form. TOWANDA!!!!!
Joy’s comment reinforces my statements: “a killer of a pet without a show of remorse because the pet and I quote, “I broked his neck cuz he didn’t minded me.”
To me, that shows a child with a warped perception who had been shown discipline, and had translated that discipline into “permission” to punish the pet “cuz he didn’t minded me.”
This is precisely the concern I have about dealing with a strong-willed at-risk child, because the very tools that work well with most children to set boundaries (whether steel-pipe fences or barbed wire, to use Oxy’s analogy) can somehow become exactly the WRONG example for the child whose possibly genetically “different” brain will twist the information around to create the OPPOSITE effect.
EC says, “I cannot say with sufficient vehemence that discounting the emotions of a child is a grave attack on the child’s sanity.”
I respectfully suggest that it IS the SANITY of the child that is in question — relative to the child’s ability to integrate normally into the values of society down the line. I would NEVER advocate turning away a child’s loving response or “for the woman to sit around at a distance “feeling love”, without ever expressing her love to the child in word or deed.” That is patently absurd.
However, I think the mother is rightly cautious, especially if she feels that the child may be learning manipulative tricks, turning on and off the affection, becoming more and more adept at faking what others want him to fake.
I encourage parents to nurture and love their children with authenticity, to set limits, model good behavior, and reward behavior that supports a healthy society. Every one of us who has come to this site, however, knows that the sociopathic can present very “presentable” behavior, while having a completely different agenda.
Different children respond differently to typical parenting tools. With an at-risk child, I believe that the mother’s additional attention to the possibility of the child having a different perception and agenda is VERY appropriate. Her attention, observation and responsiveness at this early age may be the best chance for the child to grow into a normal and safe-to-be-around adult.
I have been reading this blog from time to time as I am struggling with my son who is 16 years old and has developed some disturbing personality traits during the past year and a half.
When my son was young he experienced a tramatic event and I knew that he might have problems at some point in his life. The extent or type of problems he might experience where unknown to me.
Most of what I have read here deals with adult relationships with sociopaths. And how so many are broken and shattered by lies and manipulation by the end of these relationships.
However when reading about children it is very confusing to me as so much judgement seems to be projected onto the parent. What people don’t seem to understand is that when these personality traits come out in a young teenager it is very difficult for a parent to even comprehend that they are dealing with a “child”. Effective parenting becomes impossible. My son gets VERY angry when he is confronted about anything. He expects people to believe his lies. He retaliates if he is grounded for an action and he lies and manipulates more, not less if he is punished for anything. And I am not talking about REGULAR teenage retaliation here. I am talking about major manipulation and constant and consistant lies. He always makes the situation to be a win/win situation for himself.
As a young child he was different than he is today. Being loving and nurturing towards him wasn’t something one had to think about. Now I seem to have to THINK about every interaction I have with him.
I might have known that my son was going to experience some problems in his life because of the loss of his father but in my worst nightmare I never imagined he would have the kind of problems we are experiencing now.
It is something that is very hard to articulate and I would suppose if you can’t relate to it because it is something you haven’t experienced it would be impossible to understand. I DON’T understand it and I live with it.
This isn’t your normal parent/adolescent relationship. The rules do not apply to him, just as they don’t apply to an adult with this kind of personality deficency. When boudaries are set with a teenager and they cross those boundaries there should be consequence. This doesn’t work. Confrontation doesn’t work.
I have seen very little information on this site or any other that I have found of HOW to parent a teenager with these difficult personality disorders. I know it is my responsibility as a parent to prepare my son to enter the real world. But he doesn’t live in the real world (he seems to believe his own lies & has his own version of what reality is) and I would like to hear more information on how other parents have delt with this kind of situation.
witsend,
Ox Drover is one smart lady, and I believe she’s got some experience with this.
I don’t. All I can suggest is that counseling for both of you may be helpful. A professional or team of professionals may have some really good ideas. I’d look within the context of what you can afford, and what you understand and trust. If a Christian Counselor through your church is someone you’d be comfortable with, go that route. If you’d rather start with a Psychiatrist, go there. School counselors can be good resources for some families. Start with the type of professional help you’re likely to feel comfortable with.
Never forget that you’re in charge. In the end, parents usually know their children best. Get help, but be prepared to reject the help and seek a better solution set if the help isn’t helpful. Don’t let supercilious professionals intimidate you into egregiously dumb parenting. You can’t put your wits in their keeping. The responsibility and authority of parenthood are both yours.
I say this because I’ve had challenges in my 12 years of parenting also. My children have both been seriously ill, and both of their educations have been difficult. Both the best and the worst advice has come from highly trained professionals. As the parents, my husband and I have had to weigh all the advice, then make the tough calls. If we hadn’t said “No way!” about 80% of the time, our kids would still be seriously ill and badly educated, not to mention emotionally ill. Nothing has stiffened my spine like parenting. It’s not a job for doormats.
The disorienting part about the experience is that these helping professionals often see themselves as authorities. They tend to express their advice in terms of imperatives and directives. You have to both act on your love for your child and remain rational, or you’ll find yourself merely along for the ride. It’s a balancing act. That being said, good help is out there. You just have to be a cagey consumer.
I’m 10 minutes late starting our morning Literature lesson, so I’ve got to get to work. I wish you well. What you’re facing is very difficult.
Oxdrover do you have any suggestions for me? I believe myself to be a rational, logical, THINKING person. However in the past I have tried logic, reasoning, positive reinforcement, negative consequences…. I have over thought this if anything and I got “nothin” at this point. My sons behaviour isn’t rational. He tends to live in his own little world and that is where he stays. He isn’t out there breaking the law. But do I think he is capable of such actions….You bet I do. If something PRODUCTIVE isn’t done to chance the course of him now while he is still young, I believe he is headed down a slippery slope….
Yet I don’t believe he is just a “troubled” teenager. I know it is much more than that. His brain does not think or react like a normal 16 year old. His troubles are deeper than just on the surface.
My decisions and parenting through this period, since my son has shown this disturbing personality traits hasn’t worked. I know that. I don’t know what to do anymore. I have backed off from trying to parent him in the way of “action/consequence”. I have backed off from confronting him on his never ending lies. However I also feel that by not confronting the lies I am condoning them, so in essence I don’t feel like I am parenting him at all. I am picking my battles so carefully only to step in when it seems absolutely necessary to the point of me not feeling like I am doing my job as a parent. However when I don’t back off and I do confront him or have normal expectations of him, things escalate so quickly that he is like a time bomb waiting to explode.
He is currently going to counceling but I don’t have good insurance and the councelor that he is seeing is not the best. At this point I would have to say that I am not sure if he isn’t doing more harm than good. After a looong struggle with this councelor I finally got him to refer my son for an evaluation to the psyciatrist. He put my son on medication and now my son refuses to take the medication.
I can’t even for sure say if the medication was going to help in the long run….But I would say that it seemed to take a little of the edge off of his MAJOR irritability. Maybe with more time on the meds that could have improved. I am unsure if the meds had enough time to make any more improvement or if that was even possible.
I know that sounds irrational even to me….Well how can he refuse to take his medications? Your the parent. You require him to take them.
See that works with kids you CAN reason with. That works when your child has a healthy respect that you are the parent and they are the child. That works when boundaries are present.
I am sure the only reason he is refusing to take them to begin with is because he knows I want him to take them and give them a chance.
My son is currently flunking every subject in school. He blames the teachers. No accountability on his part. After many sessions with his counscelor going over this school issue with my son and myself (I was present during these sessions) My sons counscelor and I were talking privately and I told him my fear that if my son flunked this year (sophmore) he wouldn’t return. In our state he can quit at 16 WITHOUT parental consent. He said well…..(in a condensending manner) You have rules, if hes not going to school then he has to work and have a job. I am like LIVID at this point with this counscelor because if I can’t keep him in school how in the world does he think I can make sure he has a job? Forget the fact that in this economy who even wants to hire a 16 yr old drop out. BUT I am almost speachless at this point because we had spent many months (in counsceling) going over the PROBLEM of the lack of my son following the “rules” at home. I had told this man numerous times that this IS the problem with my son. Grandious behaviour. The rules don’t apply to him. Not at school, not at home.
Is there any kind of parenting that is productive at his age? What has been known to be effective?
“I am almost speechless at this point because we had spent many months (in counseling) going over the PROBLEM of the lack of my son following the “rules” at home. I had told this man numerous times that this IS the problem with my son. ”
You really need Ox Drover. All I can do is sympathize.
When a helping professional’s advice proves impractical, assumptions of parental negligence, incompetence and even abuse are frequent. You are far from the first exhausted and frustrated parent to have to deal with this lack of support.
It’s par for the course when your child is seriously ill, injured or misbehaving. See if you can find a support group. Only parents who are there or have been there are likely to understand. You can make it without confidants, but they do make things easier.
There are often support groups for the family members of mentally ill people. I’m sorry to imply that your son is mentally ill, but I think there are some corollaries here. The family members of mentally ill adults often solve problems like getting patients to take their medications. It’s tremendously helpful to have contact with people who have been in the same boat, or close to it.
I can empathize with you here, because I’ve had to pick my way through “professional advice” to select the most viable options. Along the way I’ve taken my share of flak.
When professional advice isn’t working, helping professionals often continue to restate their useless advice. Sometimes it’s because they’re dumber than stumps but often it’s because they’ve assumed that you’re not applying their advice. They begin to attach the blame for the child’s problems to you. It’s easy to start to wonder if they’re right, or to wonder if there’s no viable solution to the problem. This whole routine is an unproductive distraction. Once a helping professional starts to play this game, you can safely assume this particular person is out of good options. Find someone else, or a string of someone else’s. Don’t give up.