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?

I haven't met a child psychopath and hope i never do.

@Samysungy I'm not sure what you mean by "ACEs were withdrawn"? In my field they have never been used as an actuarial predictor or in a checklist fashion, but do still provide a framework for understanding how someone's biopsychosocial development may affect them, and this feeds in to risk formulation.

I think it’s more that their brain hasn’t developed sufficiently to know one way or another.

Babies don’t have empathy but we wouldn’t call them psychopaths (at least I wouldn’t!)

In the town where I live there was a 15 year old who murdered two people. My friend worked in the primary school he attended, she always said that even as a child he gave her the creeps and she wasn't at all surprised when the police revealed he was the killer.

No child of that age has genuine empathy yet. Your friend should consider another role if she has them kind of thoughts about such young children.

I work with adults with severe mental illness, many of which have also committed terrible crimes and/or have diagnoses of personality disorders. IME, true psychopathy-that is, the inherent inability to feel empathy for others due to a neurological defect-is incredibly rare. I’ve been in this field a long time and I don’t think I’ve actually ever met one. Everybody else is a combination of neurodivergence, trauma, deprivation, poor parenting, poor education, mental illness, drug use and desperation. That doesn’t mean they’re not responsible for their actions. Except for the most seriously mentally unwell, they knew what they were doing and should be held to account-but psychopaths they are not. Just sad, desperate flawed humans. Often thoroughly unpleasant and criminal people but not evil.

Nothing has ever been heard of Thompson

Yes it has, if you look hard enough

Venables has become a convicted sex offender. He should never, ever have been released. Thankfully he is very much locked up.

In my late teens, I went out with a man who had a younger brother. He was 6. In the 6 months or so I was in that relationship, the brother had stabbed an adult with a knife, tricked his even younger sister into drinking alcohol, and set fire to a comic in the kitchen and just went onto the lounge to watch TV like nothing happened.
TBF, I am not sure that is psychopathy or just the environment he lived in. 2 adult kids and 4 younger all living under one roof with a disabled mother who was not able to get up the stairs (she was in a wheelchair). Upstairs was a mess as the kids ruled the roost up there.

I honestly hope things are better for them all. I had never seen such chaos in one house in my life.

Yes very true. Maybe someone can explain how they come up with that statistic. And as you say, the likelihood of being able to tell if someone is a psychopath is very low.

I read a book once by a guy who invented the Psychopath test (Jon Ronson also wrote a book on Psychopathy that I’d recommend to anyone!) and he ran a team of people who were studying people diagnosed with Psychopathy in prison. His team knew they were working with diagnosed Psychopaths yet some of the women still fell in love with these men! They were also adept at being complete chameleons. Several times they managed to convince parole officers that they had found god, got released and went on to re-offend. One successfully managed to convince others that he had a different mental disorder and should be in a psychiatric hospital. He was transferred, stored up all the medication they gave him, convinced them to transfer him back and he sold it in prison!

I had this conversation with a friend who is a SEND-CO. I was wondering if all the kids with hard to manage behaviour came from difficult/ chaotic/ abusive families and she said definitely no. Some kids’ behaviour just seemed to have no obvious reason. They simply had the urge to disrupt/ lie/ hit other kids etc. And this is before puberty hit them. Her feeling was some had the potential to be socially dangerous at a later age and there was no clear explanation why. Granted, for others there were potential reasons within their family and upbringing.

Why are people so pedantic and think that makes them sound intellectual?

Everyone knows there are little psycho kids and "definition" doesn't change this. We can see with our own eyes when someone isn't right and they don't have to have an ID that confirms their age at 18.

It's so exasperating reading comments that offer nothing at all to the question.

Yes, I believe I've met a couple of child psychopaths. One grew up to be diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and one is still roaming free, without diagnosis, doing whatever it is that psychopaths do.

Yes Age eight they'd tortured and killed a rabbit, the children they were with who werent exactly angeks themsekves were beside themselves. They had no remorse or empathy aover anything.

Sometimes adults just take a disliking to a kid. The kid might be pretty, weird, neurodivergant or just otherwise be different to what they expect from their family

The kid picks up on it and acts out = labelled a psychopath by some aunt on the internet

My well wishes to this kid

my sister was actually mental when she was younger. I mean psychopathic, however she has grown into the most wonderful woman and is a great mum and actually works in mental health now and is a great therapist, highly rated and awarded. We found out sadly when she became a late teenager that our neighbour had been SA’ing her since she was 7 but alas she was a mental child. Our neighbour confessed and things got better after that.

When she was a child a few standout things:

1. Threw our neighbours kitten into the pond, she says to see if he could swim, he couldn’t and he drowned. She didn’t run for help to get him out and basically watched him die. She was ten.
2. When she was eight ish, we went to a restaurant as a family. She told my mum she was going to the soft play but instead went up to the place where they kept all the white order strips and took them. The chef lost all his orders that the waitresses had taken and she didn’t tell us until we got home. Whole restaurant was in disarray and she sat and watched.
3. told everyone at school that she had a baby sister who had died and told them in detail about her sister who wasn’t real and how she’d died.
4. Found porn in my parents drawer and took it to school and showed everyone and tried to make people reinact it. This was in primary school.
5. Stole another little girls diary at school and wrote awful things all over it and then burnt it.
6. Lied about several pregnancies as a teenager to get men to stay with her then said she’d had an abortion.
7. would lie about illnesses and say she’s got something worse than she had
8. Stole money from a charity pot at school to spend on sweets etc. which is weird as our parents weren’t broke.
9. Refused to sleep at all as a child and would scream the house down like she was being murdered.

These are a few but everything stopped once she was sixteen ish.

The creators of the CAEs framework has said they are not to be used as they cause harm to children. They are a deficit model and telling kids they are destined for utter shit in life because of what they experienced is harmful. Also they were ignoring kids who suffered trauma but had no ACEs as they didn't experience one of the 10 ACEs so did not qualify for support.

The fact they are so narrow and ignores most trauma as only 10 traumas exist according to ACEs and are all equally weighted is shocking. To me ignoring kids who have suffered things like bullying, poverty, war, famine, displacement, murder, sexual abuse from someone similar age etc is wrong. It also has been used to prevent kids from doing things which again is wrong.

Trauma cannot be quantified. We all know experiencing trauma can cause kids to suffer but not always and certainly not in the stereotypical way that ACEs say happens. Almost everyone suffers trauma in childhood but telling a child them suffering trauma means they will never amount to anything is wrong. Most professionals have experienced childhood trauma which kind of tells you that trauma responses are personal, cannot be measured or quantified or predicted too. Most who suffer trauma do not display the stereotypical 'violence' bullshit that is peddled.

Also those abused in childhood are less likely to abuse in adulthood. The myth of abused ppl abuse ppl is just that...a myth and excusing of bad behaviour.

Yes. Obviously they were not diagnosed with ASPD as a child but still, all the signs were there.
Now they’re an adult and they’re just better at hiding it.

I don’t know because a personality disorder label wouldn’t ever be given to a child. But I have met deeply traumatised children with parents who have harmed them in awful ways who act out those kinds of harms on others. They needed intensive therapeutic support. They got zero care and support. As a society we only have ourselves to blame if some of these children do grow up to be ‘psychopaths’. It’s really sad. I think of the kids I knew in this situation often and wonder what happened to them.

I taught many children with behavioural issues when I was younger. I could see most of them had traumatic lives and/or had developmental ages a lot lower than their actual years. Sadly, most of them are likely to be in jail now (it was a very poor area of London where a huge portion of young men at the time ended up in jail).

When I had a toddler it kind of freaked me out because terrible 2s were a lot like how these 11 year old boys behaved! I can see how if you don’t have a competent parent to get you out of this phase, it could stick around for longer. All of them were neglected or abused to various degrees.

There was only 1 kid I taught who really freaked me out. He had whatever that “thing”
is that you imagine a cult leader would have, very enigmatic and earnest. Also completely ruthless and violent. Would never admit he’d done anything wrong. I often search his name to see where he ended up but I can’t find him!

Yes. And it was very obvious. Member of my very extended family, so I can't go into details.
My boyfriend went to a special boarding school in the 1980s and early 90s. Most boys there were on the spectrum but some were definitely psychopaths. One in particularly was from a very rich background and didn't reign in his behaviour as he was essentially untouchable. Hurt and abused multiple pupils from the age of 13. Later sacked from his job got for him by the old boy network, after someone almost got killed 'accidentally'. After all his protectors died he finally got locked up on child p* charges, and is due for trial on other offences.
Boyfriend, some of his mates, other pupils and a few teachers have all given statements to police about this guy: he apparently threatened to burn down the 18th century school building if the headmaster tried to expel him!
BF and his two best friends state that he is the most evil person they have ever encountered. Charming guy by the sounds of things.

Or doctors. A disproportionate number of surgeons, in particular, are psychopaths as well as CEOs and entrepreneurs.

And adults and parents try to disguise highly problematic, sadistic kids as having ADHD and such like. They refuse to open their eyes.
No wonder there is such a rise in serious crimes being commited in schools by young kids.

Sometimes the only understanding you need is they are a psychopath

Adults and parents like to single out, belittle, subtly disrespect and even bully a kid who doesnt appear 'normal' when they're just different than expected - which could be for a number of reasons

This then creates a kid who feels unsafe and unloved - and is right to feel this way

No wonder we have such unhappy kids in schools

I believe Axel Muhanwa Rudakubana was. The trial uncovered no evidence of childhood trauma when investigating his horrific murder of those three little girls.