To think some children are budding psychopaths?

[brasty]

I know being a psychopath does not mean that you will be violent or criminal. It does mean that you do not really feel empathy for anyone else and have a lack of a conscience.

I think rightly children are not labelled as psychopaths, but I do think children who are showing these traits should get proper treatment and their parents should get proper advice and support.

Children showing psychopathic traits are those pre puberty children who are bullies, setting fires, lying routinely, showing no empathy for others, deliberately cruel to animals, and for whom punishment has no impact. A child has to have a number of these issues, many children bully for example, but still show empathy towards people they love.

But at the moment, parents with children showing these traits, receive little help, and are often blamed for causing their child's behavior. There seems to be resistance to seeing this in young children.

There is no medical diagnosis of psychopathy by the way. You are not diagnoses as a psychopath, whatever the media thinks.

People can exhibit psychopathic traits. There may possibly be some brain differences but we aren't really sure what.

Surgeons, high fliers and captains of industry all score highly on measures of psychopathy.

I suspect that what we label psychopaths are people with certain deficits in empathy etc. If you bring them up in a positive way they are more likely to become a CEO. If you don't, then they are more likely to end up doing Very Bad Things.

I went to school with a boy who I believe was a psychopath.

He was terrifying. A bully, cruel, absolutely fearless and remorseless. I saw him beat up a severely disabled child once because he felt like it.

He ended up in prison for his part in the severe abuse and neglect of a child that ended with the child dying. Apparently he doesn't have an easy time in prison and ended up in a secure unit for his own protection.

I saw his mum a few years ago. She said the best thing that could happen would be for him to rot in there. And that the whole family had disowned him.

There was a really interesting documentary about sociopathy where it showed through brain scans that people who showed sociopathic/psycopathic signs have their brains wired up in the same way, and noticeably different from those who don't. Interestingly these people weren't all criminals, some were highly successful businessmen, scientists etc. And the researching scientist also had his brain scanned and turned out to be wired the same as the other sociopathic people.

He said that he realised that the love and care from his family when he was a child pushed him into the 'successful' sociopath mould instead of the 'criminal' one. So the influence that the parents have is that they can pass on the physical hardwiring to be a sociopath as well as affecting the child by the way they bring them up.

The programme affected me so much that I am always careful to tell DS how much he is loved, and make sure he is always respectful of other people, animals and even insects. I suspect that my father and his brother are sociopaths (or at the very least, total arseholes) and would hate DS to turn out the same way.

Xpost with Anatidae!

Psychiatrist friend reckoned all 3 year olds were psychopaths! Yes, she was joking but with a grain of truth.

Thank god for that, I was worried I'd bred a nutter!

There are parents posting on the internet who have children like this who swear they did not abuse them. Now maybe they were not the perfect parents - who is?- but I believe they did not cause their kids to have no empathy, torture animals, other kids, lie constantly.

Of course some kids are budding psychopaths. Did you think they were perfectly normal kids and then suddenly overnight at age 15-16 they turned into stone-cold, remorseless, unfeeling creatures out of the blue? They've been turning into psychopaths long years before.

I'd find it very hard to believe these children that you describe haven't experienced abuse or trauma.
Especially the middle class 'took you to stately homes' level.
It's a fact that if you don't pick your baby up and interact with it then it'll be lacking in empathy. The brain scan you are talking about was comparing with children in Romanian orphanages who were left in cots for long periods.

Atsea,no it is not comparing it with Romanian orphans at all.

Babies are not born with fully developed brains. They develop and change over time. A child that has extreme aggressive behavior and who lacks empathy has either been abused or neglected or both either intentionally or unintentionally. Nurture overwhelmingly overrides nature. There is always some kind of trauma in the backgrounds of children who display these behaviours.

My sil is a psychopath. Chilling. Something in her doesn't work correctly. She can get the look like she's pulling the legs off spiders as she talks to you. Her ds is vacant in comparison to a lot of children. I do wonder about him. Some of the lessons she's teaching him are shocking. Definitely being brought up to be a narcissist.

Just to add. Not all psychopaths are violent or terrible bullies.

I have a friend who's 6 year old son thinks its funny to pull the legs off spiders. & also killed a frog. I don't quite know how, am confused it seemed to involve using a straw to blow it up...! Nothing can be said about any of this as he is her precious boy so thats that

I don't agree that nurture always over rides nature. Babies are not a blank slate.

There was an article about children with Callous Unemotional Traits in the news today www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-41332662

Something like 10% of the population has a diagnosable personality disorder, it's just that relatively few end up being in a situation where they would get diagnosed. I'm not sure what 'treatment' you're expecting people with antisocial personality disorder to receive, though, or to what extent children should be monitored when their personalities are not yet fully developed. Who makes sure they get taken off a list again if they grow out of such traits after all, and/or don't represent a threat of any kind?

I don't think there's much scientific evidence suggesting babies can be 'born' with sociopathic tendencies, it's far more likely to come from a difficult upbringing and neglect/abuse.

Also 'true' sociopaths are incredibly rare. I think it's quite a difficult thing to quantify with troubled kids who might be displaying worrying behaviour, their brains aren't fully developed - they don't understand all of society's 'rules' and are still learning about empathy and considering others' needs as well as their own. I don't think it's fair to write them off as such.

brasty we learnt a lot about nurturing babies when the big study in the 1990's was done on children in Romanian orphanages.

I am not talking about children with signs of personality disorder, that is a pretty catch all term. The number of young children who show real signs of being budding psychopaths is small. There is work going on with young adults who show these traits to a very high degree, and it is showing some success.
The alternative is to do nothing with young children and their parents showing these traits. Surely that is worse?

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11370571/Loving-foster-homes-repaired-brain-damage-of-Romanian-orphans.html

Atsea Those orphans were neglected to an extreme level. The lessons learned from that have been "applied" to a ridiculous extent in a totally unscientific manner.

Totally agree, these children should be red flagged and lots of positive, confidence building done at early age.
One of reasons I love my job, I can work with children at early age. Just spending a bit of time with them, seeing the change in them after a few months.

sparklespocks I agree children with very strong psychopathic traits are rare. But the situation at the moment seems to be that there is so much fear about wrongly labelling young children, so instead parents and children simply get no help at all.

I saw his mum a few years ago. She said the best thing that could happen would be for him to rot in there. And that the whole family had disowned him.

TBH, a mother like that may have been a big contributory factor in his horrible behaviour. I think that most mothers - no matter how awful their child and their crimes - would continue to love that child, even if they were disgusted and horrified by what they had done. They might be glad that they are in jail, but to disown, and not to feel a pang of personal guilt (even if it is in the form of "what if I'd done X and not Y?" etc) is also unnatural to my mind.

I do agree with OP that some people are born with "faulty wiring" for want of a better term - and as others have said, nurture can shape nature into a socially acceptable form. But who is ultimately to blame? Maybe his mother "shaped" him into an offender. Perhaps one or both of her parents "shaped" her behaviour. How can we break this horrible cycle of cruelty?

Children with lots of psychopathic traits have an unrealistically high regard for themselves. They don't need confidence building.