Have you ever met a child psychopath?

[TheJuryIsOut]

There's some debate about whether psychopaths are born like that or made as a consequence of their environment/upbringing. If they are born that way (which I believe they are) have you ever met one? What were the signs?

I say this because there is a child in my wider family who I think may be a psychopath, there has been signs from when he was very very young and as he moves through his teenage years things have only got worse. I can't get on board with it being an environment thing as no one else in the family behaves the way he does, it's quite terrifying to think that no matter what you do your child could still go on to do horrific things and not feel a jot of guilt.

What do you think? Are they born or made?

Thinking back now to my teenage years 😂

I was pretty horrible but what teens aren’t
But I was and still am a very very good liar and quick on my thought process and even now I have no problem in lying if needed . But I wouldn’t lie about stupid things.

I don’t have a lot of empathy either , I can think of at least 2 occasions in my life where I have lied and pursued something and it massively affected two separate people lives and their family’s
(two completely separate incidents )

but to be honest I didn’t feel bad about it and as far as I’m concerned they deserved it and I was just a dam sight better than they were and I would do it again if I had to without even thinking about it and try to do it better but

But I don’t actively go out of my way to be horrible I’m quite happy just being with my family but I know I can be absolutely horrible if provoked and whereas a “normal” person would let things go I will carry a grudge for years but you wouldn’t know

I know how to conform in society to get what I want so there are things I won’t do because it means I couldn’t do something else

I’ve never had a speeding ticket or been in trouble with the police or been arrested I have a perfect credit rating . I live a perfectly nice life

I remember when September 11 happened and everyone was crying and upset and the first thing that went through my mind was I wonder how many people will fake their deaths
apparently quite a few did so I’ guess I'm not the only weirdo who thought that

I do thank my late parents every day because I know i would have had a very very different life if it had not been for them

Hysteria is still diagnosed.

I worked in a school, and over all the years only met one child that genuinely scared me. They were highly intelligent, very calculated, and by their own admission wanted to kill another child to see what would happen. At any given moment they would pounce on other children, trying to strangle them.
There was zero empathy, and although we tried very hard, they could not understand that what they were doing was wrong.
We had training as to what to do if there was an active shooter in the school - they listed all the signs to look out for and this child had every single one of them.
What was worse is that he was only six. Single mother, who was basically terrorised by him, and it wasn’t safe to take him out on public transport in case he attacked someone.
These attacks were very calm, and when asked he would always give the same answer, that he wanted to kill them. He wanted to split their heads open to see what their brains looked like. This was one of the most disturbing things he said. Honestly, we had nightmares…
I have since left this particular school, but really hope he got the help he so desperately needed.

That was me 😂😂
He said I wasn’t able to wear contact lenses anymore and he had this huge rock type paper weight on his desk .
and trust me I wanted to pick it up and smash it in his face . And yes I know that’s a completely irrational thought and not one that a normal person would have

But I also value my freedom and if I was going to go to jail it wouldn’t be because I hit someone with a paperweight 😂

Anyway I went and got my eyes lasered a few weeks later so Mr Optician was safe from me and his paperweight

Pretty sure I’ve met an 8yr old that will be deemed as one when he’s an adult.
awful awful child, normal parents and siblings so imo must be born this way…
if he hasn’t committed murder he’ll have seriously harmed many and be locked up!
Every avenue has been exhausted this far and they don’t know what to do with him

Today my class (year 5) released the butterflies we've watched transform from caterpillars to pupae to butterflies. We had 3. We carefully carried them outside, unzipped them and waited for them to fly away. One flew and then landed on the grass. One of the children stamped on it. I'm still so upset about this. This, plus other behaviours, makes me think we have a budding psychopath on our hands.

I believe there are some genetics involved but mainly can be explained in terms of early years attachments and environmental factors that can impact on a child's ability to show compassion and empathy. Also pre birth needs consideration such as what the mother experiences such as domestic violence and how this can affect the developing foetus.

I don't know if it's good to talk about my late DB in this way, but I think he was in some ways a bit sociopathic, in spite of a extremely comfortable upbringing and childhood adopted by my wonderful adoptive parents.

He passed away from cancer but had ever opportunity and was helped by my parents in every way possible. He seemed to be totally self absorbed, extremely angry at times, quite selfish, didn't seem bothered that he was practically creating merry hell as a teenager, treating my poor parents terribly in spite of their kindness.

I believe it was inherently him, and nature was certainly at play. He had a great, nurturing upbringing the same as me, but the outcome was sadly very different. 😪

Surely not all children have come from a "bad life". Its like drug addicts whilst many have come from choatic backgrounds others have come from a decent home.

Agree that sounds like mental health.

Okay, so I have only met one child who exhibited all the early signs that they could develop into a psychopath.

Its a big stretch, so I'll explain properly.

From the youngest age, she was scarily cold, manipulative and callous. One by one, every single child in the class got bullied. The bullying was sophisticated and calculated from a very young age.

Before anyone assumes childhood trauma, there simply was none. The parents were like angels. They were intelligent, gentle people. Frequent church attendees. Committee members, volunteers. An accountant and a teacher.

Eventually my daughter came under the bullying, and it was cruel psychologically damaging torture involving being imprisoned against her will, with a cohort of terrified handmaidens who did the bully's every command.

To the outside eye, this child was an angel, but with maybe a glint in the eye. But the cold manipulation was sonething I'd never seen in kids that young.

What's funny is that no-one talked about it until you'd have a coded conversation. They'd admit it, then the story would unfold of the terror their child had gone through.

One of my friends outside school had known the family in the pre-school years. When I mentioned (without names) what had happened to my daughter, she guessed who it was, as she knew which school this child had gone to. She eas ashamed to admit ste had mentally thought of this child as "Evil X".

I might get bollocking for this, but I'm telling it as it is. Yes of course she may have grown out of it, who knows. But it was pretty spooky.

In the NHS anyone under 25 is classed as adolescent. Although in year 6 there was a very strange boy in my class who had to go to what they called back then a special school. He would pierce his ears with safety pins and killed a cat, skinned it, then hung it from a lamp post 🥺

There was also a young boy at my daughters school who was pretty cruel, he was adopted and so was his sister (not blood related). The parents daren’t leave him alone with her, he threatened to do harm to her. He also started several fires at school, he went to a special facility as his adoptive parents couldn’t have him under their roof, and they were wonderful people who tried so very hard. Makes you wonder if it’s nurture or nature 🤷‍♀️

My mother taught a six year old child who murdered his baby brother. He held a pillow over the baby’s face until he died. He made no secret of his action, he said that the baby’s crying annoyed him.

DM had previously discussed the child with his mother, who was ‘worried’ about the fact that he showed no love towards her, his father or his other sibling, whom DM had also taught earlier. She wanted to know how he got on with the other children in his class. My mother said that he was perfectly well behaved (discipline was a bit more overt in the 1960’s!) but he didn’t seem to have any friends.

I was only eleven myself, buthave never forgotten how distressed my DM was by this event, and she was quite a hard woman herself! No one saw it coming, except in retrospect…..

Exactly this! I’m speechless!
The ‘all children are wonderful and there’s an excuse for everything’ mentality is fucking dangerous!
I was a teacher and I have met several child psychopaths, obviously not diagnosed at the time but the signs were definitely there. I remember my ex husband had a friend with the most evil child I’ve ever met. On the face of it he came from a reasonably affluent and caring family, no issues, no trauma at all but there was just something really evil about him. I refused to have him in my house again after the first time I met him, he was 12 at the time. He has now been diagnosed as an adult after horrifically abusing children, thankfully he’s in prison.

How naive can you get! "The parents were like angels, frequent church attendees" 🤣🤣🤣 like all the lovely nuns who ran the Magdalene homes?

You revel in the fact the daughter seemed well behaved but was a cold bully behind closed doors, but think the parents were outwardly respectable therefore "like angels" and couldn't be different at home without onlookers.

Plenty of "pillers of the community" abuse their children behind closed doors, whilst keeping an immaculate home, being much nicer to their dog than their children, being charming to friends and acquaintances, having respected careers and and sitting on charitable commitees.

There's not only one "type" of parent who abuses their child, especially but not only psychological abuse.

Additionally attachment disorders can be more complex than abuse and begin before birth.

People like you just want to believe there’s a cause behind every negative behavior, but sometimes that’s just their nature, and no amount of ‘early intervention’ can change them

I know a 9 year old girl who I’m pretty sure is.
One of my nephews too, just turned 12. You can’t leave him with any younger or smaller cousins or he’ll hurt them and think it’s hilarious. He is autistic, which is families excuse but I fundamentally disagree with it, because the vast majority of autistic people aren’t like this….. he’ll do something awful one day I’m sure. He has never been properly parented though, gentle / permissive parenting approach which eventually when he was diagnosed around 8 became ‘he’s autistic, he can’t help it’. I do wonder if that plays a larger factor than the autism, or if he’d be like it regardless of how parented.

There is plenty of abuse going on inside "decent" homes.

But you cannot work backwards and say ‘this child went on to become a violent criminal so their home must have been abusive somehow’. Like you get that right?

Do you patronise everyone you talk to, sweetheart?

My point was that nobody except the person themselves can tell you if they had a "decent" upbringing, it isn't something that anyone looking on from outside can tell.

My feeling on the psychopath issue, partly supported by known science, is that psychopaths have a gene set that predisposes them to psychopathic traits. Those genes can be triggered into action or not triggered. And in the children where they are triggered, some of those psychpaths will end up leading very big organisations very successfully and some will finish their lives in prison. It's not very clear yet what the triggers are, or which children will head down any particular path.

That's not what was being said. Understanding why something happens is not the same as excusing it. Nobody's saying 'oh, there's a reason it happened, therefore it's not their fault and we should just let them off'.

If we don't understand why things happen, we have no chance of stopping them. As mentioned many times on this thread some people with the same unusual genes as diagnosed psychopaths in the prison system have grown up to be successful members of society, holding down responsible jobs and managing to stay married and raise children. The difference as far as anybody can make out lies in how they were brought up and how that's affected the way their brain developed in early life. We can't hope to make every child into a good member of society, but some of the children mentioned on this thread might have turned out better if things had gone a bit differently for them in early life.

If I ruled the world my top priority for public spending would be to give support to new parents and families. It's an investment. If we leave them to muddle through on their own, as seems to be the case in the UK nowadays in many cases, most will probably muddle through, but some will struggle and make avoidable mistakes. In the end we all pay the price for that when their children have poor educational outcomes, lower productivity at work and higher levels of crime and antisocial behaviour, and go on to make the same mistakes with their own children.

I have a distant relative who was an evil child. He loved belittling others and was incredibly cruel -to both humans and animals. All of his siblings were perfectly normal, so I assume it wasn't his upbringing. I wouldn't be surprised if he's a serial killer.

This story is very interesting
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-neuroscientist-who-discovered-he-was-a-psychopath-180947814/

I know Jamie Varley in the news at the moment seemed normal to the outside world but I was wondering if his parents and siblings knew he had a sadistic side behind closed doors.

This thread is awful. Calling children “evil” or “dead behind the eyes”. It’s upsetting people think this way.