In response to last week’s entry, Sociopathy and the fearless child one of our readers (Bobby) wrote of his brother, “He was often punished – usually by being sent to bed without his meal – but he would repeat the same behavior as if nothing had happened.” This statement illustrates why the usual parenting does not work with children at risk to develop into sociopaths. They do not respond to punishment!
Parents of sociopaths are often blamed
Tragically, the parents of sociopaths are often blamed for the presence of this condition in their offspring. The belief of many is, He wouldn’t be a sociopath if his parents had taught him right from wrong.
The belief that “discipline” will cure the problems of the at-risk child is illustrated by the fact that there are over a thousand books on disciplining children offered through Amazon.com.
The tool most parents use to discipline, to teach right and wrong, is punishment. But, as stated above, at risk children do not respond to punishment.
Punishment of at risk children often makes their behavior worse
I was in a department store with my three kids last month and my son threw an enormous tantrum. We had to finish shopping because my daughter really needed something for school. A passerby seeing the situation said to me, “Why don’t you just spank him?”
Believe me, if spanking children cured them of behavior problems, there would be no need for over a thousand books on discipline. We would simply tell parents to spank children when they misbehave.
Recent studies of at risk children reveal that parents who emphasize discipline often fail with at risk children. At risk children are punished more often, even though this punishment has little to no positive effect. But if punishing wrong doing doesn’t help, what does?
There are likely two paths to developing a conscience
Scientists are now actively investigating and writing about two pathways to conscience formation. The first is the usual pathway, conscience through guilt. Guilt develops from fear of punishment. The fearless child does not develop conscience through guilt because punishment has no effect.
But, I am sure you have noticed that not all fearless people are without conscience. There are many relatively fearless people who have morals and do good. A beautiful example of such a person is the late Steve Erwin, the Crocodile Hunter. His good heart shown brightly each time he was on screen.
Conscience through empathy, the second pathway
Conscience can also form as an extension of our ability to love. Fearless people who have a conscience also have large amounts of empathy. To see this for yourself, watch the clips of Steve Erwin, he was clearly an extremely loving man. Animal Planet also has clips of his parents discussing his upbringing. He was not an easy child! What comes through the clips is the exceptionally close relationship Steve Erwin had with both his parents.
To develop empathy, a fearless, at risk child has to have an especially close bond with his parent(s)
Excessive punishment alienates the fearless, at risk child and often worsens his behavior.
To develop a consceince, at risk children require huge amounts of nurturing attention. Next week we will discuss this second pathway for conscience formation in more detail.
bluejay
Buttons,
When I talked to the therapist, I was emotional, crying (but not wanting to) because I was talking to someone who had compassion, who understood the disorder. You go through the days, still recovering from what you’ve experienced, feeling like you’re not making a lot of progress. I am very concerned about my children, wanting to create a rich home life for them, but not there yet. My children are precious, sweet, genuinely nice people. I do not want to screw them up. I feel badly for myself and my children, having had enough DRAMA (as Oxy said), to sink the Titanic.
Buttons
{{{{Bluejay}}}} Stop beating yourself up, girl. “Progress” happens in baby steps. Recovering is a lifelong process. Conern about your children’s emotional health is appropriate, but you cannot “fix” their experiences, you can only help to guide and teach. It takes time and hard work to get started and (for me, personally) to stay on that healing path. You’re in a GOOD place and where you should be at this moment! Every one of us experiences our healing and recovery at our own pace on our own paths – you’re getting there, dear one. Give yourself some credit!!!!!
Brightest blessings!
bluejay
Buttons,
Thank you. I’m feeling emotional now, weepy. I’m off, wanting to take care of some things in the house.
Buttons
Bluejay, dear heart, the emotion and weepy is a Good Thing! Holy cow, when I found this site, I was just about frantic with triggers, disbelief, self-disappointment, etc……I was sobbing at the drop of a pin. I typed in the Google search, “my son is a sociopath” and this was the first site that came up. Bam.
I still have my moments, Bluejay – not as often and not as intense, but I still have them. It’s all a part of healing and letting that poison out.
Brightest blessings and gentle hugs.
Ox Drover
Dear Bluejay, Buttons is so right, we can’t “keep the peace” by ignoring the ELEPHANT CHIT in the room or ignoring the elephant itself—-that “let’s pretend we are a nice normal family” crap is just that CRAP and crap STINKS whether you admit it is there or not.
I was trained from birth to deny the elephant and the mess it made, but eventually I got to the point that I started not only seeing the elephant and the crap, but talking about it as well,….but we can’t clean it up until we do.
As long as we can keep that beast out of our houses and lives we don’t have to wade through the chit!
silvermoon
We can’t exercise that self determination you wrote about so well OX until we have confidence in autonomy.
This is a hard lesson.
One perhaps so many of us hoped to learn by loving someone else in exchange for a security they did not provide not had to offer.
But it looked like….And the real is that most of us do and have done all along.
Now, owning it is the challenge because the voice that speaks elephant chants to deprive us.
I see this in myself and over and over here.
Ox Drover
You are right Silver, especially with us “Cindarellas” we wait for a “prince charming” to whisk us off to happiness and in the meantime whatever our life is like it is boring, unfullfilling, etc.
We don’t even stop to think that we can provide ourselves with our OWN CASTLE and our own happiness, and then when we have done this, we might find a guy who has provided his own happiness and built his own castle and we could JOIN together our two fulfilled and happy selves into a great happiness, neither one being DEPENDENT on the other, but inter-dependent instead. That to me is perfect happiness.
silvermoon
Perfect happiness? Can’t imagine it yet. Still working on peace and some balance in the wake of this experience.
I was a child and am old, but not grown up in these days after- so soon after and I am tentative for getting ahead of being grounded in my new understanding….
It teaches me about my own ego- some great lessons.
Just now, understanding what happened and feeling it sink into the pores and erase most of what I though before was true.
I feel both more defensive and more vulnerable than ever and it is enough in these days to be steady.
Perhaps a dubious progress but somehow, some way it must begin.
In all the other aspects of life, I’ve never been a Cinderella but in matters of relationship with men, that was my training. And it was very specific. It falls away now as being out of date.
Prince Charming? Get thee behind me Satan!
Life is full of excitement- the adrenalin kind. I just hope it can get to the point where it slows down. Where there is peace and a sense of being whole.
I so crave a garden now.
Time to go interdepend on business associates….Working another million hour week in hope that the reward that is equal to the risk follows soon on.
Is it true that he who is born to hang will never drown? I think on that when I swim with sharks……….
Ox Drover
Dear Silver,
My little Jack Russell Terrier was barking this afternoon, and I looked out the window to see what he was barking at and it just appeared to be a spot on the grass, so I ran out and sure enoug hit was a NASTY looking water moccocin so I shooed the dog away and went to get an implement of destruction (should have had my gun with me the first time) but by the time I got there I saw it slither off into the dense folage of my plantings around the tree and couldn’t get it to show its ugly head again.
So just remember even the GARDEN OF EDEN had its snake, so be careful where you put your hand, and make sure nothing is hiding among the flowers. I realize that when I plant flowers I give the snakes a place to hide, but I’d rather have the flowers than barren earth which would expose the snakes better! It seems that snakes like to hide where the flowers are the most beautiful and we are most off our guard.
But I’m not going to let that slit-eyed pit viper take away the joy of my yard! Of my garden!
bluejay
I can put myself in other people’s shoes, grasping why they “do what they do,” having compassion, but truthfully, I am royally p.o.’d that this disorder has hit my life. I have a lot of patience, but I have reached my tolerance level for suffering, not wanting to have any more. I have to take a mental break from the chit (as others say). I remember telling my therapist (a few months ago) that if you have a spath in your life, there is no way that you can live your life without worrying, because of the bombs that drop. It’s a vicious cycle because you want to control the disordered person, preventing him/her from screwing up, but you can’t do so. My h-spath doesn’t want anyone’s help, guidance, direction – he wants to do things his way, even if it leads to disaster. I figured out that he dislikes being corrected, ignoring common sense, being a rule breaker. Ah, I am going to get out of the ditch. These are things that I have figured out about the spath while separated from him.