There was a great factual programme i just listened to on radio 4 at 9.30 pm 12th august 2008. It was called The Choice. A woman described giving her adopted child back after finding they could not cope and the child showed the classic symptoms of a rad fledling but the social services and psychologists said the family was the problem. She describes a child a lot like mine who did not cry and who had emotions but nothing behind them. The hyper vigilence/ need to control were classic symptoms.
One thing that strikes me now is my daughters complete ability to manipulate me without me being aware of it in regards to other people. A word here and there slipped into a conversation and a suggestion would be planted so softly in my head. This is such a useful ability. Politicians and the like would love it. {It doesn't work on everyone though, but with these children they are able to instinctively know who is susceptible} She formed relationships with others I believe on the basis of who could be useful to her. It was, she realised, useful for me to be kept in the dark about these friendships. Now I think of it this is a good tool for messing with someones head. If you know their bonds and relationships and they have no idea of yours the scope for game playing knows no bounds. Often she would make out she hated a certain person. Then I would find out she was actually pretending to be best mates with them. It happened quite a few times. She was good at pitting family members against each other too.
But the radio programme was so interesting. The woman says she felt like the worst mum in the world and that is something I felt too. She also describes losing control and shouting at the child. Also interesting was the way her son became upset and disturbed due to the behaviour of the adopted child. It truly brought home to me the danger for both parties in adoption. You can go on all the courses in the world but come up against a disturbed child and one who looks perfectly normal but is actually one step ahead of you at all time then that is a recipe for disaster. She describes her sadness at letting her adopted child go back to a foster carer. She noted though that the child had 101 coping mechanisms and she felt her and her family had exhausted theirs. I only wish I had had such courage to make such a decision with my daughter she may have had a better life and got professional help. We were out of our depth with her. Drowning but not even truly realising at the time. There were some good moments but we were not right for her she knew it and made us suffer. As the mother left her adopted child at the foster carers home she noted the child was laughing and quite happy whilst she meanwhile was in floods of tears. Initially the foster carer said the child was happy and perfectly behaved three months later and she showed signs of severe disturbance and the true self was revealed. The sad thing is in families where they try to do the right thing and hang on to the child the most pain happens. The child grows up and is able to play the family. In my case I have made the break but my child was grown and had caused much anguish in the meantime. Damaging many relationships in the process that may never recover. Still I am awfully glad I can see what actually happened. It is a powerful thing to understand the psychology of family life and many people will go through life and never realise what is going on around them.

Hello Damaskrose

I have contacted Radio 4 to see if it's possible to hear the programme again, I'm sorry I missed it.

You now have such insight into what went on in your family and I know how difficult it is to live with a person like your daughter with all the classic signs of psychopathy but how does anyone come to the decision to remove the child from their home? In your situation you made a committment and your high standards and morals did not allow you to go down this route.

In my situation where the kid was my partner's son and he had sole custody was also a moral dilemma because he had committed to bring him up. If I had not come along he probably would still be with him, he didn't see what his kid was doing for various reasons including denial but mainly because he was the host for this parasitic kid and like any parasite they have to anaesthetise the host or they will get shaken off.

I was told by a psychologist that the kid was destroying 3 lives and it would be better for all concerned if he was taken out of the family dynamics and 2 less people would be destroyed. We tried sending him to a state boarding school with special needs staff but I don't think there are many people in the UK who would know or recognise psychopathy. They treated him like a badly behaved brat after the honeymoon period was over when he showed his true colours.
The kid was keen to go to the school because he couldn't care less about his family and as he had exhausted his parasitic supply with us he was happy to find a new source. He had the matron cooing over him to begin with but even she lost patience when she realised she was being used. Other parents asked if they could have their children removed from his dormitory but we were never told why but I can guess.

Holidays were still a nighmare but he began spending half the time with his gran and then later I decided he should spend time with his own mother and I admit it was purely for selfish reasons. The kid realised that his mother was also a source of supply and took the opportunity to spend holidays with her too. It was heaven because he never came home and totally his choice. He doesn't care about anyone all he wanted was to milk people.
When he went to the school I gave him enough coins to phone home every day from the pupils phone but he never phoned once and I know he would have spent the money on sweets the minute he got there.

At this point we cut all contact with him because we knew there was no hope of him changing, getting any help or even wanting him in our lives.
We all project our emotions onto others but kids like this don't have any which is impossible for most people to understand, they don't miss anyone they leave behind.

Your post was spot on, you said it all.

I hope thing are improving for you and was wondering how the move was going?

Regards
Jan

hi jan we are packing and in a complete mess but should be in and settled soon.
Life is improving in that I have finished my counselling and have moved forward this year considerably. I wish I had seen the program advertised. I would have put it up on the board. As so often with radio four I am just listening and on the off chance I find the most amazing gem. There was a contact number given after the program for anyone wanting to discuss any issues it had raised for them. I am sure if you contact the bbc they would pass details on to the program director. She might be able to link you up with the woman who spoke in some way. I do know this gave me the most amazing lift. Something powerful about hearing someone talking like this and it opening your eyes just a little bit more.
You say you have cut all contact with your step son. You must have had to soul search to get to this point. But like you say it hurt you much more than him. Once we stop projecting our own idea of distress we are truly free. Tell this to most people though and you will come across as a heartless beast. I bet you felt like the evil step mother at times. I know i felt like the nasty adoptive mother who treated this poor innocent child horribly and wasn't able to love her. Quite the opposite I loved her and it was excruciating turning my back on her. One friend reminded me the other day of how much I had loved her even to the point of putting her first most of the time. I guess I always felt like she had lost so much we had to make it up. when I think of how basic our adoption training was I cringe. I hope twenty years later it is substantially better.

just edited to add the listen again facility for the program ...... http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/thechoice/pip/pvslh/

Hee Damaskrose,
Long time no see.. But no wonder with all that is going on with moving....
How couragious of that woman!!!!
And how much did she save her family from...
Pppff I am the biological mother of my psychopathic son but oohh I wish I would have listened to all the warnings.
One friend was brave enough to tell me to let go of my son. He was around 7 years old at the time and I was furious for what she told me.
I blamed his behavior at the time to the father who abbandoned him and rufused to do the same thing.
Little did I know of what would happen later on in time.
it is so hard to say what would have been better...Still on emotional level I am sometimes thinking what I did wrong, Where could things been improved,
I know though that nothing could have been done and indeed probably it would have turned out for the better for me and my youngest son if I had give up on him much sooner.
IF .... If there would be a little more help out there, things could be explained a little more, then probably more parents will be brave and go for the well being of the rest of the family?
Segaya

Hello Damaskrose

Life is certainly moving forward for you and the family and I hope it will be the new start you need. Well done on finishing the counselling, I've heard it's not easy.

Thank you so much for posting the Radio 4 link, I have listened to it and recognised everything the woman said. I have contacted Radio 4 to ask if I can get any more information or possibly a transcript. I don't know why I couldn't get the 'listen again' link.
If only more people felt they could open up like this without criticism parents may stand a chance of getting some support. It's as though it's an admission of failure to say you can't cope with a child whether fostered, adopted or biological. If there was a single person who could 'cure' these children then they would be world phenomenon, what chance do we ordinary people stand when professionals can't help us? I give you all the credit you so rightly deserve to look after your daughter with such diligence until she was able to leave home of her own choice. I coudln't and didn't do it.

Yes, you are right, I did some very deep soul searching but not because I had any affection for my partner's kid, in fact it was the opposite because I couldn't bear to be anywhere near him. For me it was either I would have to leave the relationship and leave my partner alone with him, or he could go back to his mother or we could give him enough rope and he would have come to the attention of the authorities and maybe even put away or taken into care.
I was consdidering what to do as a logical, moral person not as a step mother. I never took the role of step mother but I did all a carer would do and MORE!

I respected my partner's feeling on not giving up on his own kid so I offered to leave as I seemed to be the catylist in the family dynamics but my partner didn't want that option so he had to make a decision. His decision took a very long time to come about and was, to a certain extent, taken out of his hands and the kid went back to his mother. She is a nightmare but probably one of the few people who would not notice too much about what was happening around her. She is usually fuelled by alcohol.

The third option may well still happen and I feel sorry for whoever suffers to make this happen. My partner and I did all we could to protect society from the kid and it was a full time job and we had to be aware of all the things he might do not just the things he was doing, like the stealing from peoples' homes. If we went anywhere we had to follow him round and even if he went to the toilet in someone else's house we had to be watchful. It was so wearing always trying to be 10 steps ahead of him.

The kid showed no signs of distress at anything apart from not getting his own way. He couldn't care less if he didn't see his parents and when he went to boarding school (his choice to go) he never phoned home despite me giving him enough coins to make a phone call every day. He spent the money and didn't phone once. When he came home for holidays the first thing he did was go and see the next door neighbour to demand goodies from her. He never once said he had missed his father and showed no interest is spending time with him unless there was the liklihood of getting something from him. The nearest we got was a request for his father to take him to town....not because he wanted to be with him it was because he had his mind set on getting something bought for him, if he was refused he had terrible temper tantrums like a toddler despite being a teenager. His father then used to get the look that would kill just like I used to get just for being there.

It's classic projection when we think these kids feel like we do and want to be attached to someone. We will never know what it feels like to be like them just as they will never know how we feel.

A huge black cloud lifted the day I knew this kid was never coming back into my life, all contact was severed. If he wanted the kid could contact his father but has chosen not to because there is nothing left he can extract from him. When his father told him he knew what he was up to the kid gave up, he had been outed so moved on to his next host.

Regards
Jan

This is an interesting link about attachment issues.

http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-3305076/The-development-of-an-assessment.html

What I would find more interesting is research about children who have not had trauma or abuse and live with their biological parents and still have 'attachment issues'.

I have first hand experience of this and I know other members of this forum have too but we don't seem to attract the attention of researchers.

I would welcome any research other members find on this when kids have no reason to develop personality problems but still do.

Regards
Jan

hi jan
you have hit the nail on the proverbial head. If we as parents felt we could honestly come forward for help then how many lives would be saved. Getting help with these issues needs to be seen as something normal like going to the doctor. Imagine the parents who persevere and their child grows up to be a murderer or criminal of some type. I thank god that my child is probably not going to do that but she will take victims along her way. I feel guilt for that but thanks to counseling I am letting go. You are right counseling is difficult and actually makes you feel worse for a while. But after initial bad feelings it seems to clear your head a lot. Reading about snakes in suits of course reminds me that these children do grow up and why not see the white collar crime as just as bad as the other kinds. Not all psychopaths are violent physically as we know. I have always felt more worried by that which is not obvious. Was reading about a serial killer who the police did not even know was there- they had lots of murders over a time but did not at first connect the dots. Seems the killer had read all the criminal psychology stuff and purposely changed each murder a little to throw them off the scent. It was the absence of much info at each crime site that led them to believe a serial killer was at the hub of it.
Awareness seems to be the most important thing in all this awareness that things may not always be what they seem and the ability to question what is in front of us.

hello everyone still reading alot about Psychopath's and discovering how great life is when you get rid of the Psychopath in your circle! Still once you learn how to spot people with antisocial personality disorder you see quite a lot of them about. The trick to survival seems to be to learn the modus operandi of your own personal Psychopath. My daughter never faces me directly and this is why it took so long to spot what was actually going on. I know now she is passive aggressive. Able to get her own way without obvious agression or confrontation. She finds it funny to provoke others to violence and shouting whilst all the time acting completlely innocent. That in itself is a skill. She has amazing control and is able to hold off on showing any emotions at all. Yet she can act when need be. She is very clever at finding weak spots in peoples character or their fears. From a young age she was able to read a room. Psychopath's are hypersensitivefrom years of people watching. She finds out my social contacts and infilterates so to speak my social circle. Very cleverly she opens out to them and elicits sympathy and asks them not to say anything to me. The result is that I felt lots of wierd vibes going on and people looking at me oddly! No wonder as according to my daughter I am the abuser and she is frightened to death of even uttering a word to me. People I did not even know well seemed drawn into the concentrated close network of as I call them double agents. My daughter even moved in above my friend's flat and worked intensely to get her onside over a year or so. Still not sure how she did it but I learned it involved her saying she felt suicidal and made friend feel very sympathetic and attatched to her. People either love or hate my d. Depending on whether or not she needs them in her circle!
Letting go of your children is a very difficult thing to do. They are after all close to your heart even the difficult ones like you segaya people told me to give her up but I would not hear it. Trouble is we are bringing our emotions in to it when they clearly have none except anger and hate. I once saw my daughter with two black eyes and she was about twenty at the time I felt sad at the time as I did not like to feel she was being hit even after the stress she had dealt out to me and the psychological violence. Now three years later I wonder exactly who gave her the black eyes and why. Whilst /i would not like to see anyone suffer physcial violence I sure would like to see her come up against a stronger psychological bully than herself some kind of stalker perhaps!! Because that is what it feels like she has done to us she had taken personal knowlege and used it to damage and hurt. I realise now this is because when we put our foot down and made her leave she was so very angry and I think she could not take the fact that we could live without her. It is funny really as I don't think she can live without us! It is like one of those stalkers who fixates on a victim who wants nothing to do with them and yet the initial love/attatchment the stalker feels for the victim turns to hate and destruction. I do worry as I believe her anger will not disipate.In fact with age it will be worse. And as her mother I am not able to have any effect on her behaviour so it feels to me like a naughty child who is able to go on with their behaviour with out any discipline. Psychological anarchy. These children must be spotted at young age and helped or put in an enviroment where they can do least harm. My child is grown now and like I said out of my control but I took control back by finding out exactly what was going on and not burying my head in the sand. Then i took the decision that it was time for a change. Instead of sitting around waiting for her next little bout of game playing I thought of what I wanted and moved out of her range completely. Before she knew everything about our life and social circles and lived very close. Now even if she tries to game play she has to make much more of an effort to affect me because of emotional and physical distance. My older son laughs because he says mum she is not going to turn up on your doorstep! But direct confrontation has never been her way still if she ever does trygame playing again.. knowlege is power and before I did not understand what was happening, now I have researched and explored many aspects of psychology. For this I have to thank her as I sit on the beach and look out on my new horizons. I see now she is limited by her pain and anger whilst I have no boundaries to where my knowlege can take me. Love to you all and wishing you the strength to find a way through your heartache and pain to a new understanding of life and the universe! If it was not for the help of friends online I would not have found my way through my Psychopath's games and out the other side. I hope we can help more people to see the Psychopath's in everyday life as they are not just the creepy ones in films etc. All too often they are right beside you in your own home or social circle!

Hi Damaskrose,
I agree!
Ones you know what to look for it seems to be so very easy to spot those around us who fit the discribtion.
And when living with someone, maybe especialy when it is your own child makes it at the same time so hard. We looked for all possibillities and more so started off looking for what we ourselves do or did wrong in the way we raised them.

To survive it seems that knowing them and knowing what to look for is not enough. knowing their habits is one, but I think the main thing is to get a distance between yourself and the psychopath in your life.
Even when it is not possible because of circumstances it is very hard but possible to get an emotional distance, but very hard to do.
As soon as possible though the 'trick' is to get out of their way. Or get them out of your way!!

The first time someone told me to give up on my psychopath son was when he was 7 years of age...I blamed another abandoning for his behavior so that was the last thing I would do...yeah well, need I say it should have been done?!!
I sometimes wonder how live for me and my other son would have been without him being around. When doing so I have to stop that thinking process for it is of no use and it can be realy, realy,upsetting. The kind of live my youngest son would have had, if only..........
The other side of that is; My youngest son is a very kind, loving and caring person. He is studying to become a psychiciatric nurse and wants to work with those kind of children. Who would be more suitable then he is?


After a little over a year I saw my oldest son just 2 weeks ago. I have to say the distance now is so big that it doesn't seem to get to me anymore. And that is another thing to cope with, for who am I... What kind of mother, person am I not to feel care and love for my own kid?????
I think though I am a mother who loved him dearly, cared for him in a way maybe other mothers don't do for their children.
I am so lucky; I had a change to talk to someone who knows what it is like. Who knows what psychopathy is in real live, Who lived it herself; She has the same feelings, the same experiences.
That person is a lovely woman, very intelligent and seems to know a lot more about the subject then I do.
Talking to others it is always that I know the lots, I am the one who has to explain, to defent, to go over it over and over again... Now, talking to this woman there are no more excuses for blaming myself.She is caring, loving, lots of humor, intelligent, smart.... and has (had) the same feelings and frustrations I (have) had....

It is like looking in a mirror and finding something else then expected; When someone like that is NOT a bad person to abandon a psychopath kid...Then why should I be???
And it is what this forum is doing for people I guess. Mirroring, checking, sharing and making us strong(er)

You say;..'I am sitting here on the beach looking at my new horizons, she is full of pain and anger....'
One of the things a psychopath can't do is feel... So ; no pain.
Maybe, for I recognise it!! We are the ones who like them to feel pain. Not because we are the kind of people who like to hurt someone, but because it would mean they the psychopaths do feel....Lets not fool ourselves telling to our mirror they 'feel pain' or they 'hurt' or are ' confused' and there for 'vulnerable'....That is a trick, it is a trap..don't go there for it makes you to live in danger, hurting yourself and others around you.
The psychopaths are such good actors They want you to believe they hurt and are in pain. You have to believe that for them to fool you, take adventags of you, to milk you......

Letting go in physical distance is one thing; Letting go of the emotional feeling is what will free us of those who are out to get us!

Regards Segaya

Hello Damaskrose and Segaya

Talking with my partner echoes exactly what you and Segaya say...how on earth do you make that decision to give up on your child, yes it may be possible to give up trying to change things but to send them away from their home in your heart brings into question who you think you are. He asked himself, like you both did no doubt, 'what sort of person would I be if I could do that?' It's easy for outsiders like myself to be objective, I did not consider myself a step parent so did not have the emotional ties. He now realises it was projection and that the child he thought he had didn't exist. We all look for the good not the bad in children and hope that any problems they may present will get better with love and attention. As someone said to me recently it's the last drip that makes the bucket overflow and the day that happens is the day when parents have to make their decision and often they do not have a choice. It is a strong person who acknowledges they have to do something that every instict tells them not to, self preservation is vital to look after oneself to be able to take care of the rest of the family. The psychopath is intent on bringing everyone down. As I've mentioned before a psychologist told us that if my partner's kid stayed with us he would destroy three people but if we let him go two people would be saved. I think the only other person he is likely to destroy is his own future partner or partners but we could not prevent that happening even he had stayed with us.

My area of interest is now Reactive Attachment Disorder and Psychopathy, is it one and the same thing or two disctict problems? RAD seems to be a euphemism and I'm not comfortable with the term.

I thought you might find this link interesting

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nQFrF...=result#PPP1,M1

In Belgium they talk about Bottomless Pit Syndrome which seems to be another term for RAD. I wasn't aware that RAD was not a universal term. What I find difficult to understand is that RAD is not addressed in relation to biological children only adopted children which implies that it is purely nurture so different to psychopathy. From my research primary psychopathy is highly heritable therefore mainly nature. My conclusion for what it is worth is RAD is an over used term ..a catch all...and psychopathy is something different but the professionals are not making the differentiation.

I found the stats interesting in the book link, Colombia, Hungary, Indonesia, Korea and Sri Lanks have the highest number of adoptions between 1970 and 1994..... do these countries have the same number of psychopaths recorded during this time???? I would love to know the answer. There was also a peak in adoptions during 1975 and 1968 so I wonder what the stats are like during that period.

When I read the excerpt from the book it's no wonder adoptive parents like yourself are not given background information about their children, the professionals just don't know what they are dealing with and there is no way they would be able to understand the difference anyway.
We need to keep sharing information in the hope that we can make some difference to other peoples lives at some point. By being open we may make others feel comfortable that they can open up too.

Regards
Jan