Kids with sociopathic traits - ever know one, and how did they turn out?

One of my cousins was like this. Total psychopath from day one. Cruel to animals-- that's almost always the first sign. He's doing hard time now, and I'm so glad. And before you ask: He came from a "good" family. Environment doesn't matter in cases like these.

We know that this happens - it's not a theory, it's reality.

Now, how much of this is allowed from permissible parenting? I don't know. But why does it seem so many of these kids are white middle-class or UMC kids?

There's something to be said for fearing your parents. Nobody is advocating going back to the physical and emotional abuse from decades ago - but there is a middle ground.

Fearing your parents and consequences of behavior is good - it's a lesson about life and the real world.

We had one in our family. He went on to murder his own parents to avoid paying back a loan. He’s in prison for life. No parole. He was a cruel bully as a teen.

20/20 had a special segment on this many years ago. They featured a family who institutionalized their oldest son before he was 10. They were terrified of him to the point they locked the kids up with pad locks at night and their own room because they were afraid he would kill them. They locked up kitchen knives because he'd hide them and threaten to kill them or rape and murder his little sister which he threatened. I think they did say any pets brought in died or disappeared. A child psych studying him said even while he was hugging his mom and cajoling her with "I love you, mommy" he had a calculating look and if she still refused him his eyes would go evil and he'd start screaming with the death threats again and actually try attacking. It was proof to me they are born bad.

Yikes, R1 and R3. It does seem to me like bad wiring on the inside, in many cases — sure, maybe the parents did an imperfect job but certainly nothing to warrant such a nightmare outcome.

They end up in jail, OP. Where they belong. Hopefully incarcerated until they die.

Unless they're wealthy enough to pay the courts off or delay the cases indefinitely. Then, they go onto being successful politicians.

Although I find it hard to understand how someone can be "born evil" -- because what kind of gene or birth defect or whatever would cause something like that? -- it sure does seem to be true.

Only the milder end, I knew a couple of smarmy Eddie Haskell types growing up. From as young as first grade they were smirking and sporting shit eating grins like slimy salesmen as they tried to schmooze teachers and friends' parents.

They grew up to be a major slumlord, a shady lawyer, a surgeon. All professions sociopaths gravitate towards.

On the more dangerous end, this clip from Chicago Med depicts a child psychopath well.

Brain chemistry R7. Just like some people are born genetically predisposed towards schizophrenia.

R8, this is the first I've heard that sociopaths gravitate towards becoming surgeons.....

My sister was friends with a girl like this in 4th and 5th grade. She was at our house all the time and used to say she wished her father was dead so it would just be her and her mother. No mention of her brother who was just a couple of years older.

She was mean. I used to always “third wheel” when my sister had a friend over after school but not so much this girl. She would also invite herself for dinner or to sleep over all the time. It got so my mother wouldn’t allow her to come over without first speaking with her mom to make sure she could come pick her up before dinner time.

She used to steal and break shit all the time. I let her borrow a record and when I finally got it back after weeks of asking about it, it was ruined with a deep, and, I am sure, deliberate scratch. I asked her to pay for it and she refused. I asked my mother to call her parents and my mom declined and said it was best if we didn’t see this girl anymore.

She ended up dropping out of high school. The next time I saw her was on one of those Current Affair type shows in the 90s. She stabbed her boyfriend to death and her father and brother cut up and disposed of the body. They made a Lifetime movie about it.

I hate to bring this up because of who he is and he gets enough attention, but...a good friend of mine's Dad grew up in the same neighborhood in Queens as the Orange Turd. Was on little league with him as well. Said he was a fucking sociopath then and everyone hated him - by age 9.

R10 - well, it's been proven that a good % of CEOs have sociopathic personalities. It's easy to step on people and get ahead when you don't have the capacity for empathy or guilt.

A little psycho in my neighborhood terrorized all of us, even the older kids. He couldn’t have pets. He had hamsters but squeezed them all to death and left them on the sidewalk. He also lit things on fire. The parents were trashy but had money from some inheritance.

That kid died when he was 20 of an OD. A friend sent me the obit and wrote “good riddance” on it.

r10

CEO, Lawyer, Media, Salesperson, Journalist, Surgeon, Police Officer, Clergy, Chef, Civil Servant (Politician).

I lumped the slumlord into my list as it falls under the salesperson (real estate) in my opinion.

Waaaay back when I was a teacher, I had a student who was a sociopath. The school district decided my first year of teaching would be the year they tried to mainstream her.

She was incredibly smart and did good work when it came to things that she could learn by rote. There was no creativity, though. Completely dead in the eyes, but she had sort of learned how other kids would react to things, so she would try to do the same which lead to a very creepy fake laugh. Like an alien studying Earthlings.

At first, I was told to treat her like any other student, but then she started doing things to other students. The last straw was when she stapled a piece of paper to her neighbor's hand. Just out of the blue during a reading class. She went to the back of the room where the art supplies were, picked up a stapler, and then sat there with it until we were deep into quiet time. Then BAM...screaming, blood and crying. I have absolutely no idea why the parents of the stapled kid just didn't sue. The nurse came to the room and took care of it while the other kids and I sat in the hallway. The mainstreaming experiment was officially over, and she was was switched to solo instruction in what was called the K-School, an old K-Mart turned into a specialized learning school.

This past Christmas, I was visiting my hometown and ran into Aldi to get crackers for a party. There she was, working the check out. I got super nervous, and of course, she recognized me. She asked if I remembered her. I said, "I do, Jeanette (not her real name). Have a great holiday," and then beat a fast fifty out of there.

She's still terrifying.

She's also probably the reason I left teaching. Thank God.

I have a teacher friend who had a student who looked like a little blonde angel who routinely got sharp pencils and stabbed other kids with them out of the blue or if they got something she wanted. When the mother was brought in she denied her darling angel could have done that and how dare she not be allowed to go on the special field trip. My friend swears the girl will end up bad.

Stabbing a classmate with a pencil to see what happens is fine, but doing it more than once is crazy. Same goes for swinging a classmate around by their hood, or putting a thumb-tack on a kid's chair, or setting a girls' pigtails on fire, or painting 'ass' on the back of someone's jacket. Sometimes kids just need to see what happens if they do something nuts. But if they do it again and again then run.

R12, it makes sense for a personality as disordered as Trump’s, that he’s never changed and has been this way from a very young age. And he crossed my mind after posting the OP … I realized it probably accurately described DJT seven decades ago, as what he was: a sociopathic 8 year old rich boy.

There are four classic signs: cruelty to animals, bedwetting, starting fires, and I forget the fourth one. If your kid has two or more, watch out.

[quote] Did you know any kids like this, growing up? Maybe even siblings? (hopefully not you.) How did they turn out?

It is, sadly, sometimes a mother’s responsibility to ensure that they do not “turn out” at all.

I had a childhood friend who used to enjoy torturing insects. He never progressed to animals and today is ashamed of what he did. There is mental illness in his family (uncle and brother), but he escaped.

[quote] Stabbing a classmate with a pencil to see what happens is fine,

Tell me you’re MAGA without telling me you’re MAGA

R15 interesting to see the profession "chef" on there as it aligns with my theories on chefs as well.

Or at least a restaurant cooks--bunch of tatted up antisocial freaks.

R20, right — that cluster, together, is said to be a marker for full-on psychopath. This kid (described in OP) was maybe 1 for 3; the mom said absolutely no more water or juice after dinner, and I didn’t think about bed wetting until now. If we’re armchair diagnosing, and I totally am, I’d say the kid is a sociopath but not a psychopath. Though the nail slashing thru artwork was quite a feral move. Mom said her kid denied it for a day, and then under pressure for a “why?”, admitted it and said she did it out of anger because our kid can draw well.

Also re R15 and the professions, there’s a high ranking NYC dermatologist whom I saw once a decade ago for a routine skin check. All was going well until he glanced at my chest, took out a knife and sliced out a tiny nondescript wedge of my skin, then closed up the wound quick and explained that that little bit looked suspicious, very premature but a problem, that he’s an expert at prevntive excision, “you’ll thank me later”, etc. I got a weird feeling, like did he really need to do that? or was he just asserting dominance over me in some freak way? But he’s got the degrees and credentials etc so I tried not to be paranoid. I still have a tiny scar.

Then a couple years later I was mentioning this story at a social event and someone in the group froze — then went on to explain that the same dermatologist did the same EXACT thing to him, on first visit.

How does bedwetting fit into this?

Also OP, in my research on this subject I had read that a parent needs to figure this out and treat before the kid turns 6 otherwise there's no way to fix. I think there are levels. But the book the sociopath next door was what my therapist had me read. I have a sociopathic parent.

It doesn't, r27. That's stale pseudoscience.

It's a potential marker of psychopathy, r27. It's referred to as part the dark triad (BW, setting fires & animal abuse). Any or all can mean that.

I assume you have no plans to keep seeing these people, right OP?

R28 I know of no treatment for sociopaths.

AKA Conduct Disorder

R29, that part doesn’t make sense to me either but as R30 said it’s in the literature.

R30, hell no, and my kid asked me again this morning to make sure. She handled the slashed artwork pretty well but she’s as creeped out as I am about what might happen next time, which won’t be occurring.

Sociopath vs. Psychopath

R20 The Macdonald triad refers to the idea that there are three signs that can indicate whether someone will grow up to be a serial killer or other kind of violent criminal:

being cruel or abusive to animals, especially pets setting fire to objects or otherwise committing minor acts of arson regularly wetting the bed.

Likely a fourth is writing on walls with feces. Don't Google that.

I knew someon who would apparently stalk younger kids for fun when he was in high school. He grew up to be someone who flunked out of high school, didn't get his GED and ended up dying in his twenties from an overdose. Most importantly, he looked 50 when he died.

The psychiatric hospitals in my area will not attempt to treat Conduct Disorder or ASPD, they consider them “untreatable.”

A quiet kid in my 4th grade class invited me over to his house after school. He was a living nightmare. We watched TV and He took out an BB gun and started shooting at his dog, who was trying to hide under the TV stand. I tried to grab the gun but he wouldn't stop so I went into the kitchen and told his mother, though I'm sure she heard what was going on.. She knelt down to eye level with me and said "You look like you've got a little of the devil in you too." I freaked and ran out of the house. Soon after that our dog was killed, and then most of the other pets on our street. Finally, they moved out and 25 years later I saw his name in the newspaper reporting he killed a kid's dog in his job as a dog catcher. The AP picked it up. Several years after that, I clicked on a link on Drudge that was talking about cats being mutilated and the people were demanding that something be done. The cops drew up a map showing all the different little murders. I zabasearched his name and his address came up smack in the middle of that map. I notified the cops, the FBI, everyone I could think of, convinced he was now a serial killer. I don't know if they talked to him, but a week later there was a fire at the pet shelter that killed a bunch of dogs and cats.

There’s a great Law & Order episode about this. Dramatic ending, check it out!

I knew this girl named Rhoda...

“ Now, how much of this is allowed from permissible parenting? I don't know. But why does it seem so many of these kids are white middle-class or UMC kids?”

Belated reply to R2 — There is definitely a wave of meek/coddling/lax parenting out there, but does that create child sociopathy? Also it’s the white suburban ones who tend to make the news and become stories that get the clicks. Any inner city teacher or social worker who’s been in their field a while has stories about young non-white sociopaths, many from impoverished and dysfunctional home environments. They don’t usually get into the news unless something truly shocking happens, like whole-family homicide.

I would tell that mother that she probably has a psycho on her hands. Her reaction is concerning.

R1/R2 One school of thought is that people who are upper middle class, or wealthier, tend to either; have children later in life (old eggs, plus sperms quality degrades, both bc of medications taken and drinking), but dealing with less than stellar biological materials can lead to all sorts of behavioral issues, although any substance abuse can increase the likelihood of a child getting poorly wired in utero, alcohol does the most prolific and extensive damage to both parents biological materials. Also, that demographic is the highest demographic adopting children. Reactive attachment disorder isn't uncommon with adopted children.

The town I grew up in and relocated back to 20 some years later, has a private school for the wealthy and troubled, has a staggering number of adoptees attending.

Smearing feces on the wall reminds me of the account Denise Richards gave years ago of why she could no longer take care of Charlie Sheen's twin sons as that is what they were doing amongst other things.

R42, interesting, this mom had the girl when mom was 45 or so, and there were all kinds of fertility issues so they used an egg donor unrelated. So the kid looks and seems adopted next to the mom, absolutely zero in common, though it was the mom’s pregnancy.

R44/OP Curious about the egg donor, also, there's another issue with surrogacy because the fetus is bonded to the incubator that cooked them, as surrogacy is a newer method there's (that I know of) little known how surrogacy effects the kids in the long term, but there are questions there.

I grew up around too many working class sociopaths and psychopaths who were born to young parents to believe there is any link between age of parents and behavioral issues.

Anyone raised in MAGA country can attest.

R45, interesting questions and personal here because we (older gay dads) had our daughter thru surrogacy. I’m thankful beyond thankful that the dice roll was good, our daughter is healthy on every level, fun/smart/kind, teachers and camp counselors and sitters all love her, etc. But I humbly acknowledge that’s a dice roll, and you raise the kid you get.

I’ve seen some data that much-older fathers can produce a higher % of kids on the autism spectrum, but to my knowledge there is not yet any evidence for surrogacy producing kids with psych issues — nor for older parents producing sociopaths which is wholly different than “the spectrum.”

R47 I'm not saying it's a given, as you've clearly had a positive experience, I'm just pointing out a few other variables that complicate the 'nature' end of the argument. Nurture being another key factor as well as environmental factors. Not easily explained, but there are some interesting questions worth exploring there. Hopefully the art slashing 'friend ' is out of the picture (although acknowledging they did it out of jealousy is somewhat positive, if they're being honest about it, as doing it to hurt your daughter or to 'see how she'd react' are less than settling motivations).

I also think it's completely possible to 'make' a sociopath through learned behavior, parents install the buttons we later struggle with, especially when the people who installed them hit them just right. Then again the diagnostic titles are slapped on all over, when some people are just assholes, raising little, younger assholes.

[quote] But I humbly acknowledge that’s a dice roll, and you raise the kid you get.

Not necessarily . . .

Count me as someone else who doesn't understand why bedwetting would be a possible marker of sociopathy.

R50 stress, developmental issues, or a dysfunctional home environment

I got curious and checked it out - the Macdonald Triad dates way back to 1963 and, as a triad, it is pretty much discredited today. However, the “cruelty towards animals” element is still regarded as a psychopathy indicator.

R12, did your friend's father give any examples? I've read a story from another neighbor who said he would throw rocks at smaller kids, maybe one in a stroller. If I'm remembering correctly.

I read that too. His parents shipped him off to military school where the budding sociopath fit right in.

My niece was in kindergarten. A boy in the class kept bothering/hurting his classmates. He started grabbing my niece’s genitals. She was five at the time. He was suspended for that one. The day he came back, he called the teacher a bitch. They kicked his ass out after that. I found out later that his mother was a child psychologist. Go figure.

R50 As a former bedwetter who managed to start a small fire in the bathroom (it was just in the sink), let me assure you that you must have the cruelty to animals part of the triad. I love animals (since childhood) and have rescued many of them.

There’s almost always another sociopath/psychopath adult in the family. AND oftentimes the parent(s) is/are fucked up in ways the parent(s) doesn’t/do not show to even their closest friends, but the kid DOES pick up on it.

Oh, man. A friend's sister Steffi (her real name) and her husband got obsessed with being yuppie saviors to some adopted child. They had actually printed up professional brochures of Their Wonderful Life to convince single mothers they would be the perfect parents.

For whatever reason, they picked a complete skank and actually moved her into the house for the last few months of the pregnancy, which backfired when she started sunbathing topless on the picnic table in the backyard whenever the husband was around.

Skank hit the road, baby stayed, and in a few years they had a dangerously unstable little boy who was obsessed with knives and fire before he even was in kindergarten. Steffi started drinking heavily and calling family members to cry. The universal response was "What did you expect?"

R56, the flip side supports your argument 100%: If a child is torturing or killing animals, but not wetting the bed nor setting fires, obviously there’s still a five-alarm problem with the child.

Op you should poured corn syrup all over the kid and said if you don’t stop everyone is going to laugh at you.

Wow R58. My cousin was a yuppy savior too and adopted two "crack babies" back in the early 90s, a boy and a girl. The girl grew up to be a sweet child but the boy had a dark force in him, you could see it in his eyes and just his whole aura. She told me he had a thing with matches and setting fires too. And he told my father, whom he'd just met, that he hated fags. Just out of the blue. They sent him to boarding school. None of the relatives wanted him in their homes. I have no idea what happened with him, no one talks about him.

I’m a schoolteacher and taught a student who was a full on sociopath. Every teacher in the school hated him because of the amount of the trouble he caused. He was outright mean. A few years later after graduation he was killed by sister’s boyfriend after an argument. Every teacher that heard the news either chuckled or smiled . Karma’s a bitch.

[quote]They end up in jail, OP. Where they belong. Hopefully incarcerated until they die.

Or as President. Whichever.

Yes. I worked in psychiatric facilities with children.

A new kid was admitted and the other child grabbed the fire extinguisher off of the wall (now they are locked) and tried to bash the new 6 year old in the head to kill him. At 17 he was incarcerated for attempted murder & his brother was incarcerated for murder.

There was a girl who at age 9 or 10 drowned her cousin in the pool intentionally. I rarely worked with girls by choice. Boys may be more aggressive but what you see is what you get.

There was a boy who was just so resistant to treatment. So many people tried over the years. Taxpayers likely paid over a million dollars in psychiatric treatment, residential treatment, special education for severely disturbed children and later in juvenile justice facilities. He kidnapped and raped a Circle K employee and he’s been incarcerated in maximum security prisons since his early twenties. He’s 50 or so.

Another 9 year old boy. He had absolutely no conscience. I knew, given the opportunity, he could easily stab me to get to a cookie jar and then sit on my body while he ate the cookies. His mother would take him out on a pass to somewhere fun. On the way home from the outing he was vicious towards her both verbally and physically. She was trying very hard to reunite with him. She was getting married to a man in the military and moving to a new state. She was hoping to take him with her. She didn’t. The child psychiatrist told her to go live her life and leave him as a ward of the state. I’d never seen that before.

R64, wow. That work must have taken a lot from you at times.

This kid I hated for being a pathological liar and creep completely crashed out in life. He impregnated a middle schooler shortly after graduating and then eventually killed some people driving drunk the wrong way on the interstate.