Posted on 05/13/2012 12:12:29 PM PDT by KantianBurke
One day last summer, Anne and her husband, Miguel, took their 9-year-old son, Michael, to a Florida elementary school for the first day of what the family chose to call “summer camp.” For years, Anne and Miguel have struggled to understand their eldest son, an elegant boy with high-planed cheeks, wide eyes and curly light brown hair, whose periodic rages alternate with moments of chilly detachment. Michael’s eight-week program was, in reality, a highly structured psychological study — less summer camp than camp of last resort.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Bingo. My thoughts exactly. Remove all animals and small children from the home and deal with the problem (of which the parents might be part and parcel.)
Sorry, the case I cited above in #34 was a wonderful Christ-centered family who raised three other kids without a problem but had one bad seed. Psychiatric problems are not just a case of sparing the rod. Did you read the whole article? MRIs can visualize deficits in these kids’ brains. They’re actually not formed right.
Judging from the contents of the article this isn’t the run of the mill kid. This is one which exhibits extremely dangerous behavior up to and including remorseless violence. If he or any of his kind threaten me or my family I will defend myself and my loved ones. Period.
I just got rid of a roommate who was exactly the way you described. She was creepy -- everyone tensed up when she walked in -- yet outwardly she was pretty, articulate, & put together. But very childlike. And mean -- she had rages & engaged in spiteful behavior if she couldn't get her way. She absolutely terrorized me & the other person living with us. Told out-and-out lies to the community (i.e. other girl pinched her all over). If not psychopathic, she might be borderline.
Apparently she had been abused by a schizophrenic mother (who later died in an institution) & raised by her father, who was somewhat otherworldly himself. He remarried (& divorced) someone who was also slightly off. Lethal combination: crazy mom, passive dad.
I strongly see the biogenetic base in these children. Just yesterday I had Sabbath dinner with some friends whose precocious five-year-old exhibited disturbingly hostile behavior. Kept attacking his baby brother. The parents, though very nice, were a bit off & probably unaware. The home was very messy & chaotic.
Particularly since punishment is so ineffective as a behavioral tool.
bump
Yes. Very good show on tv several days ago about the origins of evil. All these people had either a chemical imbalance or portions of their brain or were not producing chemicals in the part of the brain that produces compassion/empathy and so on. As you said the MRI's picked it right out.
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.
Nope, I read the article and in this case it is the parents:
“Watching Anne ride herd on her two younger boys that afternoon, I found her to be brusque and no-nonsense. When Allan started running around the living room and then crashing into the sofa cushions, she spoke sharply: “Allan! Stop it.” (He did.) When Jake and Allan grew whiny about a shared toy, she arbitrated the dispute with a tone of patient exasperation familiar to most parents. “Just let him play with it for five minutes, Allan, and then it’ll be your turn.” And when she grew touchy about parenting strategies — Anne favors structure and strict rules; Miguel is inclined to be lenient — Miguel listened quietly, then conceded that his relaxed approach might be “optimistic.”
It certainly seemed so. As the night progressed, Michael’s behavior grew more violent. At one point, while Michael was downstairs, Jake clambered goofily onto the computer chair and accidentally unpaused Michael’s Pokémon video. Allan giggled, and even Miguel smiled affectionately. But the amusement was brief. Hearing Michael on the stairs, Miguel said, “Uh oh!” and whisked Jake out of the chair.
He wasn’t fast enough. Seeing the video playing, Michael gave a keening scream, then scanned the room for the guilty party. His gaze settled on Allan. Grabbing a wooden chair, he hoisted it overhead as though to do violence but paused for several seconds, giving Miguel a chance to yank it away. Shrieking, Michael ran to the bathroom and began slamming the toilet seat down repeatedly. Dragged out and ordered to bed, he sobbed pitifully. “Daddy! Daddy! Why are you doing this to me?” he begged, as Miguel carried him to his room. “No, Daddy! I have a greater bond with you than I do with Mommy!” For the next hour, Michael sobbed and screamed, while Miguel tried to calm him. In the hall outside his room, Miguel apologized, adding that it was “an unusually bad night.”
“What you saw, that was the old Michael,” he continued. “He was like that all day long. Kicking and hitting, slamming the toilet seat.” But he also noted that Allan had provoked Michael, at one point taunting him for crying. “He loves to poke at him when he can,” Miguel said.
From the bedroom, Michael called out: “He knows the consequences, so I don’t know why he does it. I will hurt him.”
Miguel: “No you won’t.”
Michael: “I’m coming for you, Allan.”
An hour later, after the boys were finally asleep, Miguel and I sat down at the kitchen table. Growing up, he said, he had also been a difficult child — albeit not so problematic as Michael. “A lot of parents didn’t want me around their kids, because they thought I was crazy,” he said, closing his eyes at the memory. “I didn’t listen to adults. I was always in trouble. My grades were horrible. I would be walking down the street and I would hear them say, in Spanish: ‘Ay! Viene el loco!’ — ‘Here comes the crazy one.’ ”
According to Miguel, this antisocial behavior lasted until his late teens, at which point, he said, he “grew up.” When I asked what caused the change, he looked uncertain. “You learn to pacify the rough waters,” he said at last. “It just happens. You learn to control yourself from the outside in.”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The parents are, apparently unknowingly, using reinforcement to create Michael. He gets a ton of attention for acting “crazy”, therefore you get more craziness. The father’s a goof and the mom’s a controller.
My former supervisor was like that. Outwardly sweet, a real southern belle, but an evil witch when she wanted to be. She would pit co-workers against each other and say contradictory things depending on who she was talking to. The worst was she would use things said in confidence against you. She reminded me of The Bad Seed girl or Single White Female. Really frightening to have to deal with.
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 have a by-marriage family member who fits that description to the letter. The Master Thespian performances are most sickenly displayed in the presence of People With Money.
She is a saleperson for a nationwide corporation, and is consistantly ranked #1 in sales out of everyone from all the affiliates.
Yes, mental illness never strikes Christian families. /sarcasm
where the successful ones are republican presidential candidates and the stupid ones end up in jail. Really stupid liberals.
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This is the New York Times. Face it, people who read the NYT are ignorant and limited. Proven time and again.
where the successful ones are republican presidential candidates and the stupid ones end up in jail. Really stupid liberals.
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This is the New York Times. Face it, people who read the NYT are ignorant , parochial and limited. Proven time and again.
I think the parents’ first duty at this point is to protect their normal children.
This kid's glib response re: his mother's not thinking her actions through clearly...is not a kid's response.
Just a suggestion...but someone else (NOT A CHILD) is speaking!
Have seen enough evidence of possession (anecdotal and otherwise) to recognize the warning signs!
I don’t deny the physical structure of the brain or mental illness, BUT. . .
to you and to other posters who seem to just want to reduce this boy’s problems to the physical, genetics, etc. -
where does evil enter in?
Is there such a thing as evil in your opinion? What is its source? How should it be dealt with?
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