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.
Elizabeth….I agree and that is really where things are at right now. I have not had a good rapore with my sons couscelor from the start and I suppose that could be alot of the problem here. Getting that first appointment took several weeks. By the time the first appointment came the situation had progressed. And I was pretty emotional and feeling very vulnerable.
I am not good at articulating what I see at home with my son. Add emotion to that and I can’t even find the words to expess ANYTHING. And often what I see in my son and the manipulation that takes place is HARD to put into words.
I would conclude that this couscelor thought that I was the emotional basket case and my son was the healthy one. On that first visit.
I learned as things did seem to progress at a pretty fast pace (going downhill) to try and leave the emotion out of this where this couscelor was concerned. (well as much as possible anyway) I also had to learn to try to be more assertive. Not my strong point. Because my son does lie to the counscelor. I have always had the feeling that this couscelor is focusing more on me then the patient.
When I brought my son in for the intervention session when I thought he was having suicidal thoughts, this couscelor said something afterwards to me that I thought to be VERY unprofessional. After my son walked out of that session I felt very, very alone and vulnerable. And I had to chase him down as he was going to walk home (we were in the NEXT town) Finally he agreed to get into the car to go home as he refused to go back and talk to the couscelor.
The next visit, I had about 10 minutes alone time with this couscelor after the session and I will never forget what he said to me.
He asked me if I THOUGHT I could PREVENT my son from hurting himself (suicide)……. I was speachless. Of course I can’t keep my son from hurting himself if suicide would be his intention. I’m not God. (I couldn’t even keep him at the session) I BROUGHT him to this counscelor to begin with because I felt an intervention was needed. He also implied that I did the wrong thing by bringing up the entire suicide issue to begin with as I might have implanted ideas in my sons head that were not there to begin with.
I think that was ALOT to dump in a my lap. First off before I even called the couscelors office I called the 1-800 suicide prevention hot line. And talked to someone about this VERY issue. I voiced my concerns/fears why I thought my son might be having suicidal thoughts and was told that I should get intevention. NOT ignore my concern but act on it.
All along this couscelor disagreed with me and said my son was not depressed nor had a personality disorder. Yet when I questioned him directly on specific behavior or specific outward depression signs he had no answers for that. He would counter, well he hasn’t broken the law yet. Things that just didn’t make much sense to me. I didn’t bring him there because he was a criminal? When I brought up the more agressive behavior that my son was displaying at home he asked if I was afraid of him. And I said well, yeah… He told me to call the police if he did push me around. DUH. He never seemed to take me seriously.
This is why it took so long to get the referal. Interestingly enough the pysciatrist seemed to take many things much more seriously than the counscelor did.
It just has been such a battle to get this far. And I guess in my heart I believed my son needed (I still believe that) a much more aggressive treatment (such as Matt suggested) ….
When my son went from flunking 2 subjects in the begining of the year to flunking all of them……I could get him to school but I couldn’t get him to perform…..Take the horse to the water but can’t make him drink.
This whole ordeal with getting this far with the mental health issue is seeming parellel right now to the school issue. It took 6 months just to get a partial eval, 6 months to get meds, as soon as there is a tiny glimmer of hope of improvement, my son makes a decision he is done taking the meds. So basically he is refusing treatment……
Maybe because things went downhill so fast “paced” for awile I am very slow now, to processing all this new information. I kind of feel like I am in slow mo…. And maybe some of you already know what has all of a sudden become crystal clear to me.
I can take my son for treatment but I can’t do anything for him to be willing to accept it. Anymore than I can force him to take the meds…..
Dear Witsend,
(((((HUg))))) you are describing my frustration with my own son—WHAT TO DO? So worried, so concerned, so scared FOR him that I was terrified he would “hurt” himself (mine has never been suicidal in the term of fkilling himself, just DESTROYING his own live by his criminal behavior) even then I wasn’t aware of the criminal behavior, just his actions and attitude at home of TOTAL DEFINANCE.
God bless you and I will keep you both in my prayers!
BTW you DO express yourself very well, and I actually relate so well I can read between the lines anyway! (((hugs))))
OxDrover, Rx was Abilify. Diagnosis was ADHD Type 1. The focus, unorganized, one NOT the Hyper)
Also this was more sketchy Depression OR Bipolar he was not sure. The Abilify was Rx for the MOODS. And alone, not with another medication as is often found with Abilify.
At this time I was kind of surprised about him thinking Bipolar as I didn’t relate the manic symtoms with my son at all. He was soooo low. I saw the deep depression side only. But the medical text book symtoms that are used to describe the manic side of the disorder, High ENERGY phase (not my son), Not needing sleep, (again not) etc…Didn’t seem to fit. HOWEVER his moods could change as fast as you could slip on a different pair of shoes. Just not the High mood Vs Low Mood. His was more of a switch from ONE bad mood to another bad mood. So maybe I do not fully comprehend the manic side of this disorder.
I have believed since this began that my son needed a treatment that was more aggressive. Inpatient.
Now more than ever since he decided not to take the meds.
And although I don’t understand where the constant Lying, Manipulation, and all the rest of the disturbing personality traits play into all of this depression. I suppose that is where my instincts tell me that he has more than one thing going on. I SAW the disturbing personality traits a year and a half before I saw the depression. It is very possible though, that with an untrained eye I didn’t see the depression UNTIL it was pretty severe. Once I did see the depression though it seemed as EVERYTHING DID escalte VERY quickly. The personality issues, behavior, moods, and his social avoidance.
And now I feel like maybe 2 years ago when the school problems first started to appear and I thought it a behavior/defiant problem and treated it as such he might have had the first signs of depression and I MISSED them completely. And saw nothing that I would recognize as depression until a few months ago.
So 2 years ago when I was giving him a consequence for not doing his homework was he already depressed?
I have a phone call into the phyciatrist and waiting for a call back. I hope I can find the right words to plead my case with him.
Dear Witsend,
I have been following your posts and am praying for some doors to open for you. I think you have done an amazing job in advocating for your son and stopping at nothing to get him the help he needs.
I cannot say enough about a mothers maternal instinct and the mountains that can be moved by it when doors are opened and you are heard. If you feel at all in harms way or threatened or you son has actually verbally or physcially threatened you in any way, I believe that makes a big difference in his potential for becoming an inpatient. Otherwise if not, you simply can provide the psychiatrist with all the information you have and it might possibly be enough for inpatient treatment.
You mentioned some trauma in your sons life…depending on how deeply he was affected and his own internal emotional response system the depression could have began years and years ago..and with hormonal changes and teenage peer pressures…he could have reached his saturation point or breaking point.
Still through all of his trials and tribulations…giving him a consequence for not doing homework is something to continue to do. Even through depression we can all still do some of lifes requirements and face consequences. If he is unwilling or unable to do it so be it for now.
I dont know if this will help, but as you are going through this and becoming aware of potential new diagnosis or new management skills, taking the approach that you are doing the best you can and take a deep breath and meeting your son half way for now may be beneficial. By that I mean, choosing you battles and knowing when to let him feel validated in the sense that he is in a calmer frame of mind until proper medication for depression or/personality disorder is on board. I dont know if Im making sense, but trying to balance his medical needs with his unbalanced emotional needs – finding middle ground with him – until something gives medically.
You will find the right words for the psychiatrist. Trust yourself. You are a caring mom who is doing everything you possibly can for your son.
witsend:
There is a variation on bi-polar called cyclothymic. The person who has that variation cycles off the mid-point and either suffers severe lows or severe highs, but not both. Several members of my family have been diagnosed with this, and several others are undiagnosed, IMHO.
Dear Witsend,
There is also a kind of bi-polar with very HYPO (low) manias that are DIFFICULT to diagnose. It does sound to me that there is a multiple problem going on here.
Also, are you SURE he is not doing drugs of some kind?
Another thing too, there are several mental illnesses that do not really “show up” til the teenaged years or slightly after. ALSO, just because you get a bi-polar diagnosis does not mean your son cannot ALSO be a pyschopath of some level.
The intense depression can make him difficult to deal with in and of itself. Good luck and I will continue to keep you and your son in my prayers!
It is entirely possible that you didn’t “notice” some of the symptoms until they became more overt, but you know, that is just the way it is when we live with someone and things sort of change slowly, or we see it as “teenaged rebellion” or a lot of other things. That is why it is best to have a professional diagnosis and if it doesn’t “feel right” then a second opinion in necessary.
With your son refusing to take medication, however, an inpatient admission might help him keep on the medication long enough that he would “calm down” and start to feel better. I think this is a whole lot more than just teenaged rebellion. God bless.
To answer your question about the drugs OxDrover it is possible. I guess that is why I hoped he would have the FULL evaluation to include thyroid, urinalisis, & bloodwoork as well as the full “clinical”.
I don’t believe it to be drugs at least none that I am familiar with because I don’t see the signs. He never left the house when he is depressed. All winter break … All weekend. All spring Break etc. I mean he goes to school, so he could be getting drugs there…But he is getting enough to last a duration of time if he never leaves for an entire weekend or an entire week or two during school breaks.
His father WAS an addict so I am aware of many of the common drugs that people abuse..
My experience of addicts and drug abusers is they get pretty “ansie” when they need their drug and have to leave and go get their fix. I don’t see that. BUT I am not saying it can’t be….
I look in my medicine cabinet as well to check and see if there is cough syrup missing ect….But there are so many drugs out there that kids abuse.
Drugs was actually the first thing I thought of when I originally saw this change in him.
witsend:
S was a cocaine addict. What confused me was that he was gaining weight. A drug counselor set me straight. The counselor asked if S was drinking lots of soda and eating lots of candy and carbs. When I said he was the counselor said “that explains it. If he can’t keep the cocaine supply steady, he’s using sugar to keep the buzz going.”
Have you noticed any dietary changes like this with your son?
Dear Witsend,
Steroids can also cause sudden mood swings or rages. They can be “laid in” for a reasonable period of time as well. It might not be “regular” street drugs like you would think of cocaine, etc.
There are just so MANY POSSIBILITIES, and combinations of possible things, that it is mind bending!
Good luck!
The only change I have seen in his appetite is that it has declined. He eats less. Always had a sweet tooth but I would say that he eats less of everything now, including sweets…..He seemed to have lost interest in food when he lost interest in everything else in general.
And there are so many drugs that are abused now, not just the “norm” drugs but kids find all kinds of things to get them high and that is why I would never say never where this is concerned.