I believe the parents re kidding themselves and putting the younger kids in danger forcing them to live with the older child. What will they do the day after he kills one of the other kids? I am the oldest child and probably id have a little of the first child syndrome since I was an only for almost 5 years but nothing like this! I used to hid his shoes so he couldn’t go paces with us....not try to kill him.
I have to believe that some children are simply evil. It made me think of “The Bad Seed”.
Twaddle. All of us knew kids like Michael while we were growing-up. They were kept in line by stern dads. Few continued their bad behavior into adulthood. But today, every little kid is precious to Liberals whether they want to gut and eat people or not. They are today’s Occupy savages — darlings of the Liberal press.
I think the parents’ first duty at this point is to protect their normal children.
I’m a teacher & witness kids like this too much. What is scary is that parents have NO idea that their kids are in a room w/these types of children & in danger because of their violent tendencies.
Violent children should NOT be mainstreamed.
The Childhood Psychopath: Bad Seed or Bad Parents?
In 1979, sixteen-year-old Brenda Spencer received a rifle for her birthday. She used it to shoot kids at an elementary school near her San Diego home, wounding nine and killing two. A reporter asked her later why she had done it. Her answer: “I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day.”
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/criminal_mind/psychology/psychopath/1.html
According to Canadian theorist Dr. David Lykken, psychopaths are set apart. They differ in temperament from other children and are at greater risk for delinquency. He has looked at the statistics on juvenile crime and concludes that only a few children with antisocial tendencies were born with such a predisposition. They are fearless and probably have a weak behavioral inhibition system. However, Lykken contends that most antisocial behaviors in children are caused by poor parentingabsent fathers and inadequate mothers who fail to properly socialize their child. Perhaps the child frustrates them or perhaps their parenting skills are subnormal. Either way, the child acts out. Lykken calls these children sociopaths and he believes that we can decrease their numbers with better social skills. He does acknowledge the twin studies that support the view that criminality has a substantial heritability factor, but claims that traits like fearlessness, aggressiveness, and sensation seeking, all of which contribute to antisocial behavior, can be properly channeled toward better things. It is up to parents to do this, and where parenting fails, the child with those traits may express them through violence. In other words, in his opinion, even the child most prone to psychopathy via inherited traits can be guided through good parenting toward using those traits in prosocial ways.
4 things I’d like to know:
1) Were (are are) the parents ever involved in the occult?
2) Are the parents observant Christians?
3) Was the Michael ever baptized? (I know, Baptists may snicker...but you shouldn’t...)
4) Was Michael spanked/disciplined when he first learned to manipulate with his terrible tantrums?
If you see this as a second amendment issue, you may need a bit of therapy yourself.
One of my own sons was always cold and detached from a very young age (his pre-school teachers called him the "ice man"). With a little love and understanding - and several years of karate training - he's turning out to be a very fine young man. Now he's about to graduate from college and has trained and studied diligently these past three years to become a Navy Seals candidate. I've also discovered that he has a very deep love of family that just isn't visible from the surface.
I have no doubt that the "tough love" he found in the karate dojo was a key contributor to his successful development as a person.
Great article. This kid might not turn into the next Ted Bundy but I don’t think that this is behavior that can just go away as they get older. These kids as they get older and more in control of themselves learn to hide the rages and learn how to act “properly” to get what they want from society. Its usually one thing that touches them and they shape their lives into getting that “high”.
The article talks about some, throwing the baby in the deep end of the pool and pulling up a chair to see what happens, or slowly cutting the tail off a cat piece by piece. Arsonists burn things not for any reason other than to watch something burn. For serial killers they get off on watching that moment when the life slips out of a persons eyes and some more get through life on making as much money as they possibly can.
I’m not sure these behavior’s can ever be fixed and I tend to think the one’s that “grow” out of it really don’t they just hide it very well. As for the boy in the article, he should be pulled out of the home, the fact that he routinely makes viable threats to the life of his brother should be reason enough to have him put away to see if he can ever function properly in society.
“Possessed” comes mind.
Also a failure to properly apply “pain association techniques” for undesirable behaviors. Might not be effective in this case, though.
I won't claim to know what has gone wrong, here.
I do know this: Right now, that kid has a date with a bullet.
It's a matter of "when", not "if".
Wow, just found this article you posted and read it and read all the comments. It’s kind of timely for me as we have a child in the neighborhood that is/has been a problem. We were gone over the weekend, but when we got back to the neighborhood, my husband heard that one of the neighbor kids had gotten into trouble and that it was related to sex. Yesterday, I found out from the mom of one of the victims what it all involved and who was involved. The victims were the boy’s sister who is about 8 and this lady’s son who is only 5 years old. The boy that did it is almost a teen and has basically been a problem since he moved in at 4. His parents seem like decent people overall from the contact we have had with them, and the sister is a little sweetie, but the parents don’t know how to handle what seems to be an ever increasing bad situation. If you ask some of the neighbors, most would probably say that they could see something bad coming. Maybe not this type of thing, but something. A couple of years ago, he set a fire to his house and they had to move out for several months. Over the years, a lot of little destruction has happened. Stealing, deliberately breaking things, lying. The parents of this boy seems to be in denial or detached and each time something has happened over the years, they set him loose on the neighborhood again after a brief grounding. Grounding isn’t going to cut it this time. Anyway, the mother of the 5 year old rightfully reported it to the police and since the instigator is over 10, something is going to be done—I hope anyway. Personally, I would like to see him go away for good or at least a long time, but that is unlikely to happen. Like the mother of the 5 year old said, you have to wonder what has already been done to the little sister. I HOPE nothing else has happened to her, but he is unsupervised with her at various times. Anyway, I feel sadness for all parties involved.