Are some children just born horrible?

[Courteneycrocs]

Hear me out. I know there are environmental reason, poor upbringing for example. Learnt and even taught poor behaviour being another. Attention seeking being a common cause too.
But aside from those reasons causing poor behaviour/bullies, have you come across children who are just plain horrible for no reason and with no cause?
As there are adults who are just generally nasty whether at work, relatives, acquaintances and the likes, everyone is capable of being horrible and it isn’t age dependent, sometimes it’s a choice.
If you ever mention a child who is known for poor behaviour or attitude, they’re often labelled SEN or ‘they can’t help it, it’s xyz’. Sometimes noted as the ‘naughty child’ if no excuses are made. But the general gist is that there are always excuses. The parents are always blamed even if they have done their best. No one ever stops and thinks, actually that child is just horrible.
If a 10 year old child broke your baby’s toy, damaged something expensive in your home and laughed, stole something from a shop, told lies to hurt someone, called someone names, disrespects rules and adults and never uses manners would you consider them a horrible child or just raised poorly? Would your answer be based on assumptions from seeing the parents or only if you know how they’re being raised?
If the same child was 5 years old would your answer be the same?

(No offence meant to anyone who may not like this post, it isn’t aimed at anyone or to start a heated debate, posting out of genuine curiosity after a conversation I had with a teacher friend).

@pickledandpuzzled yes exactly, it's a bit of a shock to find that your child doesn't see the world the way you do. Empathy and kindness just aren't top of the list for him, whereas they are for my husband and I.

We're trying to channel his social skills in to positive things, otherwise I worry that his behaviour patterns are the kind that can lead a boy down a bad road.

Before having children I wouldn't have assumed a child's personality could be so different to his parents, but it really is. But I am his mother and I do love him and see the strengths he has along with his weaknesses.

This is my view too: possible but rare.

On the basis of ‘look to the most likely thing first’, most mean children - as general personality, not individual events - are the products of parents and upbringing. There a few who cannot be explained that way though.

The prison population bears this out.

There's a short story by Louis de Bernieres called 'The Turks Love Children' which describes this exactly. It's quite chilling!

I also agree with a pp who very insightfully pointed out that very young children are not by nature wired to be unselfish or compassionate. Parenting IMO starts with that recognition.

The vast bulk of ‘bad’ children, later adults, are brought up either without sufficient boundaries and example to change the selfishness or with neglect that leaves the void of compassion, or both.

I fear we’ve rather lost sight of some simple parenting truths.

Bad is such a reductive term. Like what exactly are we talking about here? What are the bad behaviours?

Bad /bad behaviours also encompasses an array of conditions, personality disorders, mental health disorders.

We can't talk about all of them as being the same thing or having the same causes.

Psychopathy for example, is a genetic risk factor. Other environmental factors can add to that risk, or act as a protective factor.

Sociopathy on the other hand is generally thought to be a nurture problem.

PTSD , attachment issues ,the effects of trauma, abuse ,severe neglect etc. are all environmental, they still change the chemistry and connections in the brain and can manifest as "bad".

Conditions like ASD are present at birth and have genetic links. That baby that cries all the time and is furious and hates cuddles can have severe sensory issues where their lovely ,cute baby grows feel like sandpaper on their skin, but they can't express that. Or the living cuddles and what parents think is comforting, again it's causing physical pain. So the baby cries and cries and parents are exhausted, there's no medical reason so they feel resentful and rejected.And you end up with a "bad since birth" mentality which it's impossible not to also have an effect of how that child is raised .

It's not that reductive as they were born bad. It also doesn't necessarily follow that a bad child will always turn into a bad adult. We don't just give up.

No. She didn’t witness or experience anything. She is a complete narcissist.

Agreed.

I’ve worked in schools for many years. In my experience, there is usually a reason.

I think it's always down to upbringing, or even experiences in the woman during pregnancy like high maternal stress levels impacting development.

It doesn't matter if you have multiple children that 'have all had the same upbringing' because they haven't. They can experience the same event in entirely different ways depending on their age. The oldest child will have had more 1:1 time with inexperienced parents, middle child has more experienced parents but perhaps they now have money worries so the house is more stressed and 1:1 supervision is different to the oldest child, youngest child has parents that have 'been there done that' perhaps they don't do the same activities as the older ones as the parents have had enough of play groups or need to work more.

This. Something like 1% of the population have this. No empathy. (Not always murders either!). Very common in certain careers too.

I think that 'bad' children in the way the op means are usually a mixture of traits they were born with but which are then fostered and grow due to either parenting or trauma.

Yes. My younger sister is psychotic. Same upbringing as my youngest sister but she's a nasty piece of work. She ended up in prison for GBH and asked to leave the Royal Navy as she was violent.

I can remember a girl I went to school with who was, if not a horrible child, one of the bitchy clique and incredibly high maintanence in lots of ways.

I'm distantly related to her, and my mum knows her mum better than I ever knew her. She's one of four, and no obvious upbringing reasons why she was and is a difficult person, (and all her siblings are lovely) so I fully believe some people are just born not very nice people.

I've also got a lovely colleague who has a sister who has always been very troublesome ever since a young child (they are now NC). She thinks she was "just born wrong" too.

The book the series Dexter was based on was interesting

if I remember correctly, between the book and the series that is.

His foster father saw the psychopathic tendencies in him and trained him to use them for ‘good’- only to target men who were evading justice for hideous crimes. There was a bit of a twist later that I won’t give away. Essentially though, the foster father chose how to channel the child’s behaviour.

His tendencies were trauma based in that case.

I think there is probably some diagnosis there that will come apparent as the child gets older, but yes, I absolutely believe that some people are just born that way

Yes, this has definitely been the case in our family and in my husbands also.

He has two children from a previous marriage. The eldest was cruel to other children from a young age, he would be violent towards them, general ghastly behaviour over the years. His sister, a completely different person, wouldn't say boo to a goose, would never hit another child at school, they are literally chalk and cheese. Granted the family haven't helped, neither of them were held accontable for their behaviours and have grown into quite horried people because of that. But apparently they were different as very young children. I don't see being on the spectrum being relevant, it doesn't stop facts from being facts, you just are who you are.

In my family we had a similar situation with my mum being a kind, sweet, loving calm girl. Her sister a nasty, liar, attention seeking girl who grew into a disaster of a human. Same parents and upbrining.

I think it's where the saying, their a bad egg came from. Basically, if you have one lovely child, stop there just in case!

But surely the reason is actually frequently genetic. Which doesn’t mean if you have those genes you will definitely be a psychopath, but it does mean you’ll be far more likely to become a psychopath. Same as any other disease basically.

I know a child who has lovely parents. She is ... wrong. There's just something wrong about her, has been since she was 3. I expect to see her on the news in future.

No child is 'born horrible', what an ignorant and revolting idea to hold. Children are formed by their learned experiences. Look to their carers.

Whenever I hear these, ‘oh those children were treated the same, yet one turned bad!’ I think, ‘did ye, aye?’

Thinking of it, I was one of those children ‘treated the same’ yet ‘ turned bad’. At least in my family narrative. I wasn’t bad. I studied hard, got good grades, had friends, didn’t smoke or drink or chase boys, went to bed early and got plenty of sleep. But my Dad would make me the butt of jokes, say hurtful things, say inappropriate things. When these bothered me I was derided as ‘overly sensitive’. As I got more upset as I tried to explain how this made me feel, this became further evidence of how ‘difficult’ I was. As I cooled off my relationship with my Dad due to his behaviour, again this was evidence of my ‘inexplicably difficult’ personality. This narrative of me was created by my father, believed by my brother, and spread to and believed by family friends. Families can create narratives about a child which stick, with further evidence about that child constantly gathered as everything is viewed through that lens.

How many posts are there on here where it is clear a poster is not treating children equally? Read Siblings without rivalry for many accounts of siblings not being treated equally, even when parents think they are, the child picks up in the difference. Read that book also for the dangers of labeling children.

I think there is always a reason.
Sometimes, it’s parenting. Being raised by the same parents doesn’t mean you are raised the same (see the golden child). Plus different people react differently to the same treatment (see the fact two siblings might have a very different memory of their childhood. One saying it was fine, if not great. The other talking about abuse.)
Sometimes, there is some SN/diagnostic (and yes this opens up the door to genetics too)
Sometimes it’s their own life experiences (eg one is bullied but not the other. One has had health problems/separation due to hospital stay etc….)

Basically we are who we are due to many reasons and I’m not the Nature side if things is the most important here.

I do think that most things re temperament/behaviour quite early on (some experts say before 6yo) and to change anything after that requires a lot if work.

This is a really interesting thread.

Quite a few comments about wet, incompetent, indulgent or lazy parents.

I work with children and families, many in crisis, with multi-generational trauma and multiple ACES.

I think parents generally parent to capacity. We do well when we can, just like children. Sometimes circumstances are not conducive to consistently good parenting, for anyone, anywhere. When a child's behaviour presents as challenging, irrespective of the myriad reasons that could be causing it, our capacity to parent said child in such a way that the need giving rise to the challenging behaviour is met, very much depends on the circumstances we as parents find ourselves in. It is a self-perpetuating cycle of unmet need, lack of insight or capacity and support.

I find hard-and-fast comments about 'wet parents' really unhelpful. It is so easy as parents to credit ourselves with the loveliness of our well-adjusted DC, yet never to have walked a step in the shoes of a parent who is managing chronic illness, debt, DV, neuro-divergence, eviction, whatever it may be. Parenting is hard for most people, and 'winning' at parenting is generally underpinned by considerable privilege in terms of health, housing and relative financial stability.

Ironically, all the "she is wrong", "born bad", "horrible baby" etc are risk factors for "bad" conditions to exacerbate or develop.

Kids are not stupid they know when you don't like them, reject them, fake smile,looking for confirmation bias etc. That breaks trust and bonds and increases the disconnect. They also learn to lie with a smile on their face and be fake. Because that's what the adults around them do. It's even harder then for well intentioned adults to make a difference and gain their trust and help them.

I've seen this play out more than once in the schools I've worked in.

Quite simply, yes. It is not a comfortable opinion to hold. Having worked in a school, I was particularly shocked at the behaviour of one child. Their behaviour was absolutely horrid, and manipulative. The other staff just spent their time pandering to them. I had never seen such behaviour before, and would not have thought that a child so young would have been capable of acting like that, if I had not seen it for myself. There were a couple of others who had a not very nice streak, but nothing compared to that other child.

great posts from @evesix and @paperdolls