Hi Exhausted,

This trully is an exhausting situation. I have a feeling it is not going to resolve any time soon, and you still have many years ahead of you having to deal with it. Of course, theoretically you do not have to. But I think that is how it is going to be. I found his response "It doesn't help me, just makes me mad" interesting one. I am trying to understand what does he mean. Does he actually understand that he does need help? If those things do not help him as he claims, did you ask him what does he think WILL help him? That is the number one question I would of asked him right away. Does he have ANY suggestions? Also, is there anything, and I mean anything, positive about him? How does he do in school? Did he ever complete any one homework or assignment on time? What is his favorite movie? What his grades are like? What does he want to be when he grows up? Who are his friends in school and outside of school?

I am thanking God he saved me from the horror of having a psychopatic child. I think this is because I am too weak, and he normally doesn't give more than you can handle. But one time in my life I came across a psychopatic boy. He is our neighbors' child and attends the same school my daughter goes to. They are the same age, 12 year olds. One time I even volunteered to babysit him; he was 10 at the time I think. Those two hours were the most draining hours I had ever had in my life, even after 33 years dealing with my mother! He is very hard to explain. I always knew he was "strange". He is very well known across our town (with quite a large population!) as "strange". He caused numerous problems in school, and it was a common subject of conversation at dinner time in almost every household in our town "So, what did Cyle (name changed) do today in school again?" And then the kids would relate to their parents how he called a principal a B word again, or how he brought a knife to school and threaten to kill somebody, or how he got into a fight again, etc. Every day, unless he got detained, he would create some trouble in school. Every one seems to have a general opinion of him that he would end up in prison some day, and now I do too. But before I actually got the experience to babysit him for those two hours, I tended not to take all those "gossips" seriously enough. I thought "Well, he is just a kid, for goodness sake! Kids cannot be evil, unless they are made to. He is probably just misunderstood. It must be his parents' fault for not raising him right. I am sure I will be able to find a common ground with him if needed. I am pretty much non-judgmental, laid-back kind of person. The child just probably needs some love and affection. Etc, etc, etc" I have to say that he was very smart in school, a straight A student. And then my babysitting day had come. His dad called me and asked if I can watch him for few hours; so I agreed. I told my daughter "We are going to babysit Cyle today" and her first words were "Hell no!". And so we went. He was quiet for about first 10 minutes, and then all the hell broke loose. To say that it was like a roller-coaster ride is to say the least!! It is even hard to describe, everything was like in a haze. After playing quiet with his Nintendo for about 10 min and totally ignoring us, he finally threw it aside and wanted to show me his room. There he showed me his numerous inventions: beeming lamps, electric wires, moving mechanics, etc. I was truly astonished because they all looked pretty complex. I praised his intelligence on which he smirked sarcastically "What do you think! I am not like all the rest of you dumb idiots!" Then he went on playing the war game with my daughter. They were running around, he was screaming and yelling, I had to hush them every minute in fear the neighbors would call the cops for all this noise, but he never stopped. He lived in the middle of the apartment building with very thin walls. I tried to interest him with drawings, books, the Nintendo, all to no avail. After getting exhausted with running around and screaming, he would grab his Nintendo to play and we would have a minute or two of peace, and then he would throw it away again and continue running and screaming again. And it was not like a playful sort of scream, kids often scream when play, but his was a scream of total rage! Like rage and anger kind of scream. All that for about an hour, non-stop. After being tired of reasoning him and threatening him with neighbors calling the police, all to no avail, I finally totally lost it and threatened him with a physical violence if he won't shut up and sit still for an hour. He got lost. "Oh, thanks God!" I exclaimed and dropped onto the couch totally worn out. The next second he appeared right in front of me and the next thing I saw was a gun pointed right at me! He started to scream and groan like crazy "I'll shoot you!!!", "I'll shoot you!!!", "I'll shoot you!!!!" What was I supposed to do? I pretended like I am watching the TV and told him to move to the side because he is blocking the view. Seeing that I am not reacting, he disappeared again. Then he appears again, stands in front of me, starts taking his shirt off and says "Do you want to see me naked?" I said "No, thanks. What did you do with the gun?" he told me he hid it and won't tell me where. I figured the gun probably wasn't real or his dad would have hid it away from him. It was about an hour left, and he started to run around the place and screaming like a nut case again playing his war game. I then offered to play a spy game where they would hide and keep quiet until I find and capture them. So I sat under the table, counting to 20 while they were trying to hide. When I went to search for them and I tried to search as long as possible trying to win more quiet momemnts, I saw that they hid in his room and he locked the door! I started to bang on the door and tell him to open it because it is not safe to keep it locked. After few bangings like that I heard my daughter's scream "Cyle is trying to see my underwear!!" I started to kick the door and scream that I found the gun and will shoot the lock off and then him right there. He unlocked the door right away and ran to the other bedroom and locked himself in there. After some time his dad came back. He got out and started to act like a sweet angel and giving me these pleading looks not to snitch on him. I told his dad (which he definitely already heard millions of times about his son) "Cyle is very difficult around people". His dad's response? > "He is only good around those he respects!"

Well, now about two years later, Cyle's behavior seemed to change. Well, there are less incidents of him getting in trouble in school. Now it is almost the end of September, and nothing so far. I don't know, he must be on some kind of meds that seem to work. Also, his dad got re-married, and his new wife has a son who is one year older than Cyle and is a very, very rough boy who grew up in a bad area. Also, he did not grow over the summer at all! He must be twelve now, but still looks like a very, very scrawny 8-year old. This is strange because his parents are pretty well built. And that was my two-hour experience with a kid from hell.

"He is only good around those he respects!"

That is nasty. Dad abused you after you looked after his kid...

Yes, his comment was tottally out of line. And that is after I babysitted his son totally for free! I thought we are neighbors and supposed to help each other out when needed, so I didn't charge him anything. At the time I didn't even react to his comment because I was too much in a shock like state to even comprehend it. But then when thinking back about it, I think he was just in a state of denial and got defensive about his son. He probably just grew tired of it I mean he is a parent and I am sure it was probably hard for him to hear that his son is this or that and is a mental case on the every day basis for years. We all have the need to feel proud of our children, and he probably feels as a total failure as a parent so he got defensive. I don't feel mad at him at all, but very sorry for his situation. I remember one time when all the neighbors were at the community swimming pool, Cyle was there too. He had this plastic bucket with him. And he would draw the water from the pool into the bucket, then spit into it several times, and then throw this water at all of us! And he did that over and over again until his dad finally restrained him. He just doesn't bond with people at all. I have never seen him smile or laugh about anything. Unless it was a rage kind of laugh. I wonder how his new wife survives it all. But I am pretty sure Cyle is on some kind of meds now that work. I think these meds also prevent him from growing, because he didn't grow at all over the summer and even shrunk down in size./ Very sad.

Hello Forest Flower, I would love to find out what kind of meds that might be because psychiatrists have tried so many on my son and none have helped.

I spent a couple of days with my daughter and her husband this weekend. I always enjoy being with them and playing with my grandchildren. We got on the subject of B and the fact that he is in detention at the moment. My son-in-law is like most men (gotta lovem), they want to fix everything. And they usually don't know all the facts or haven't lived through whatever it is they think they have the answer for. For hours I found myself trying to explain to him what I've been through for the last 13 years and everything that we have done to try to help him. He had the same attitude that most people have- that it has to be something that WE did or didn't do because there has to be some way to cure this. It is so common that people think they could do it better; that the child is just misunderstood or hasn't received enough love and attention. Even I have a hard time accepting that there may be no hope in this life for him to be a normal, compassionate person. So I understand, I'm just so tired of defending myself to others. See, I'm already abused daily by the boy, then I often get additional abuse through these types of comments from friends, family, professionals, and even myself because I feel inadequate. I also sometimes feel that when I have to keep explaining why he is in detention again, I am continuing the trauma when I could forget about it for a little while and have a moment of peace.

Hello Exhausted

Oh how I know what you are dealing with.! I could have written those words. What does surprise me is it is your son in law who must have been around when B was growing up who doesn’t see the reality. He must have seen your parenting skills and he must have heard first hand from your daughter how things are and her experiences..
It just shows how little even those close to us see and understand about what is really going on, these are the people who care but what about others who automatically presume there must be a reason a child goes off the rails? I wonder what your SIL would say if you asked him and your daughter to take B for a week? I know you wouldn’t do that because you have grandchildren to consider but he probably truly believes he could make a difference. Maybe he can for a while as B makes the most of the opportunity to con someone, they then think the child has a good side and it just has to be given a chance to appear.
The mistakes people make are thinking a reason can be found to explain these kids’ behaviour and therapy and medication will correct it. Medication may help some symptoms like putting a sticking plaster over a gaping wound but it doesn’t help the underlying condition.
They also believe that by speaking directly with the kid they will open us and speak about their thoughts and explain how they feel but don’t see the kid knows exactly what they want to hear and will fulfill each person’s requirement. It is a great opportunity for the kid to get sympathy, blame the parents and manipulate.

It got to the stage with me that if I heard one more time “all kids do that” I could have swung for the person, the frustration of them not really taking in what you tell them and then making you feel that you are being overbearing. I was seen as the wicked stepmother, partly because the kid fed people that perception but mainly because people expect any kid to resent a step parent. How on earth can people think that in your situation? B has been your child since birth. You have spent years trying to get help for this boy and no-one has been able to offer any…maybe because nothing can be done. Like all people, a person has to want to change and kids like B are not introspective and see that life would be so much better if they slotted in.

The biggest mistake of all it to think the kid will ‘grow out of it’ ….of course some badly behaved kids do but we are not dealing with just a badly behaved kid, we are dealing with Conduct Disorder. Even my partner took many years to accept that not only would the penny not drop but that there was no penny to drop with his kid.

All the time he was in denial, I was battling to get recognition of the kid’s problems. There was no professional help available, no medication apart from something to stop the bed wetting….which made no difference.
Of course I started to think that it was me, if I wasn’t around the kid would be OK. I questioned myself about what sort of person I was to think a kid was psychopathic. I doubted I was seeing what I was seeing, was I imagining things, surely no child could do those things. I wondered whether I was going mad. Most of all I remember the feeling of intense dislike (least emotive word to express my feelings) for a child which went against all my natural instincts.

The people who should have known better worked against us. The kid’s gran and uncle, who he stayed with often, knew there was something very wrong with the kid but primarily blamed me and then my partner for following my lead. Of course the kid didn’t show his true colours with gran as she was a soft touch and he could get all sorts of things from her. He used her mercilessly for gain and she supplied everything he asked for like she was buying his love. She just didn’t see that not because she didn’t want to see, she just didn’t get it. She could never see that it wasn’t love, it was projection on her part.
We asked her to follow our instructions when he was with her but she did the opposite and even told the kid not to take notice of us. What a trade off, him being away from us for a week to come back worse than ever and with his gran’s approval.

She blamed rejection for his problems, she believed too many so called rejections had made the kid insecure and unloved, what she didn’t see is the kid had done all the rejecting. She was the ‘give them plenty of hugs and sweets and they would be fine’ brigade. He rejected his mother from birth and would never settle with her so my partner took over his care from the start. When I hear lack of bonding causes problems in later life I always consider which party doesn’t bond and what reason. Psychopaths are not capable of bonding and I firmly believe the genetic component gives the propensity to psychopathic behaviour. It develops over time and psychopathic children learn the trade.

I remember the feeling of waking up every morning thinking through the coming day and what the kid was going to do that day. Being on your guard and constantly preparing ahead to avoid situations was exhausting. I had to second guess all the manipulations, cons and tricks and nasty things that were on his agenda. It was though he had a list of misdemeanours and would sort out a few for every day then drop those and go back to others on the list. Of course all the time the list was getting longer. By the time he left for the school bus we would have had at least 6 or 7 items ticked off that day’s list.

Trouble is where do you send these kids that are your own children? My partner was so reluctant to send him back to his mother. They divorced when the kid was 19 months. I thought it was the best place for him because she would have no house rules and she wouldn’t have to endure some of his issues. She has plenty of her own! In the beginning he blamed her poor parenting for the kid being like he was. She sent him to live with my partner when he was age 6 because he was destroying her new marriage and she couldn’t cope with his behaviour any longer.

I thought our only way out would be that the kid would be taken into custody or into care. It may have happened but we will never know, when he went back to his mother at age 14 he cut all contact with his father. He knew we had seen right through him and he couldn’t con us any longer, he had to find new pastures. Fortunately he was too puny to be violent so we didn’t have to deal with rages, all his aggression was very covert. He was very physically immature so we didn’t even witness hi going through puberty.
I have been doing some research on children being exposed to too much testosterone in the womb because I was trying to find out if violent children who have rages are affected by this. There does seem to be a correlation. Professor Simon Baron-Cohen has done some interesting research. Some of the findings are to do with Autism but there again some symptoms of Autism have similarities to psychopathy such as lack of empathy and bonding, the brain working is a different way and not making eye contact. I am in no way suggesting that the two conditions are related, just that if too much testosterone can influence brain development for one condition it could be the cause of others.

If only we could educate more people and try to get them to accept our kids are who they are and it’s not because of anything we have done or not done.
It’s good to hear you say you can enjoy the time without B around….if only others would let you! I hope I can give you some reassurance that B’s behaviour is out of your hands, there is nothing more that you can do.

Regards
Jan

Hi Jan, My son-in-law and daughter are still very young (still in their 20's). My daughter really does remember how B was growing up, she had to restrain him sometimes too while he raged and spit and threatened. A couple of summers ago, they had him come stay with them for a few days. He is usually good in a new place for awhile until he gets a little discipline. (He gets more sympathy that way, people don't see the problem). He had hid some of his pills in places that the babies could get them and my daughter had spoken harshly to him about it. He threatened her with a kitchen knife and she had to lure him outside, lock the door, and call my son-in-law to come home from work. She reminded him of that in our discussion the other night. But in his mind, that still doesn't change the fact that he thinks there is a solution for his behavior. Of course he expressed his love to me and said he was just trying to help. It doesn't help though. The only thing that helps is either avoiding the subject when I don't want to think about it or just listen when I need to vent.

B has been suspended twice in the last 2 weeks for loosing control at school; calling his principal F-ing retard, telling the superintendent she is dumb, yelling at my husband to shut up and he is going to punch him. He isn't trying to cover up who he is anymore. He is telling us that he is going to call the police and tell them we are beating him up so we will go to jail. He tries to convince others that we are. He even told his Psychopath.O. after his last suspension, but they know him and don't believe him. Someone will though, and then what? B has determined that we are the problem and that he needs to get rid of us along with his little brother with Autism he hates. He states over and over that he wants my husband to die of a heart attack soon. His special Ed teacher told me yesterday that he had been confiding in her about his feelings. (I guess he doesn't expect me to die of natural causes because he thinks he needs to help my death along.) He told her that he could run over me with the car or kill me in my sleep. I shouldn't be shocked...but I am...and frightened. I asked her to write this for me to share with the court.

I was rejected by Children's Hospital for the brain scan. They said he has to be in crisis at the moment. I'd like to know what they consider a crisis!