To parents of RAD kids/budding psychopaths,

I wonder what opinions people have about the wisdom of diagnosing psychopathy in children. I hear the argument that kids under 18 should never be "labeled" psychopath. Maybe I'm interpreting this too literally, but I don't understand this point of view. Mental health professionals seem to me loathe to even suggest a kid may be a psychopath, even if all signs point in that direction. Are the folks who decry the labeling suggesting that we are putting sticky notes on the foreheads of these kids that say, "I'm a budding psychopath, stay away from me"?

If a kid were diagnosed as such, that information would be confidential. Only a diagnosing physician and the kids' parents would know about it, not the rest of society, or even the child himself. You wouldn't actually TELL them. Are people who make this argument thinking that these kids will be warehoused somewhere for child psychopaths? That seems like paranoid thinking. Some say it's a slippery slope to a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we tell a kid he's a psychopath at age 9, he'll have no hope of "unbecoming" one at age 19? I personally believe that psychopaths are born that way, not abused or neglected into the condition.

I'm of two minds on the diagnosing issue. If there is no cure, what is the point of trying to make a diagnosis? What would a parent do with that information?

On the other hand, don't mental health professionals owe it to parents to give them an honest diagnosis? If there are no accompanying diagnoses like depression, bipolar, ADHD, etc., just the psychopathy, would parents be able to get help to manage the behaviors of a kid with psychopathic disorder? I don't know the answer.

We are parents of an adopted RAD kid who has evolved into the classic psychopath. Sometimes I think had we known early on what we were dealing with, we could have done something differently to head off the ****storm that eventually descended on our family. Maybe we could have altered our parenting style - a big one would have been to train ourselves how not to engage in the mind games that totally occupied us for years. Or, we could have saved ourselves a bundle of cash that was spent in the countless, useless hours of talk therapy/treatment/care that in the end proved futile.

If anyone has any thoughts on this, I'd love to hear them.

Thanks.

Tangledup,

Would knowing that my husband and two sons were "Psychopath". Yes in fact it would have. I would have felt less like a failure as a parent and done more for myself before I was too old to get a job outside the house. These people suck the life out of you. The more you give, the more they take. When I finally fled the house, I could not understand why my youngest son, although 25 years old and still at home, felt that I deserted him. Now I know that it was because I was a huge source of supply for him.

Now at 50, I have no husband, two "Psychopath" kids that I'm not sure how to deal with. (knowledge is power, but also changes your relationship with them).

I think I vote to have the knowledge, even if only for your own emotional health.

1962,

Thanks for responding. I'm leaning your way. Knowledge is power and I think knowing early on might have helped us in many ways. Maybe the outcome would ultimately have been the same, but at least we'd have had an inkling of what the heck was going on all those years.

Tangled.

My 33 year old daughter trashed me, deceived me, lied to the world about me for 16 plus years. Once I was able to pinpoint her illnesses, I was able to go back to when she was 8 years old and identify signs I didn't know were signs. According to the massive research I've done, psychopathic behavior will present early and occur rarely and sporadically into the teens. The signs are almost always misinturpreted. I took her to a psychiatrist when she was 12, that was 1991. I never got a definative diagnosis, but after 6 months he said he couldn't help her. She was a good kid, and I missed the signs. There is no effective treatment for psychopathy. They don't believe there is anything wrong with them. They have no soul, no ability to feel human emotion. To stay around one is to be a permanent victim.

Jessie,

Your situation seems to be not uncommon. My Psychopath kid showed complete lack of empathy/remorse/guilt and a phenomenal ability to manipulate before she had barely learned to speak. Child psychologists and psychiatrists, in my opinion, are useless when it comes to helping parents figure out what's going on with their children. Are we not the first line of defense? Is it not their responsibility to be honest with the parents of kids exhibiting classic signs of ODD, RAD, NPD? On the other hand, they see these kids so infrequently - maybe once a week for an hour - that it is incredibly easy for the kid to manipulate the session - in our case that meant turning the tides on the parents so that the psychopath in the room suddenly became the victim. And we'd be sitting there defending ourselves from false allegations of abuse and generic "bad parenting." Instead of addressing the matter at hand, which was, how the hell do we raise this psychopathic child?

I am so glad my Psychopath daughter lives on the opposite coast and I hope we never cross paths again. It is the only path to healing.

Also, you can't grow out of psychopathy and it's easier to diagnose them when they are younger before they learn the full spectrum of cover ups. So it may protect also people in future who get into trouble with them - they can more easily prove someone is a Psychopath.