I remember researching spanking 10 years ago, which took me to statistics on sociopaths, and how they're made.
At that time, the news was: Children are born what they are, and we can make more or less of that through parenting choices.
We can't make them smarter, or change their DNA, but we can model how to put off gratification, and positive habits/coping strategies/study habits/etc. We can model the skills they need to make better choices, or not. Certainly the children who have positive role models have a better shot than those who have negative or damaging role models, and the biggest indicator of how children will turn out, at that time, was the age of the mother when she gives birth the first time. The younger the mother, the worse all her childrens' chances for doing well.
Also at that time, the general rule of creating sociopaths was a formula of placing children into so many foster homes so many times in the first so many years of their lives, disrupting their ability to bond for life. I guess they call that Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD now), and at that time I had a friend knee deep in poop and blood with a step son who was bent on killing her younger infant daughter while smearing crap all over the house, and eating it on occassion. Trying to beat his sister's head in with a rock, then moving to knives, then to scissors, then to breaking glass to make sharp weapons when all sharps were removed or kept out of his reach was traumatic, esp as there was very little support and help for my friend during this time. Her ss ended up institutionalized, but his PD mother got him back soon enough, and my friend just had to say no to having him in her presence again. We know for a fact this beautiful strawberry blond blue eyed child will be out there in the dating pool at some point, and that it's just a matter of time before he does something terrible that can't be undone, and we hope it doesn't happen to someone we know. How dreadful to live this way, but eventually frustration that nothing can be done to protect society from these people wears you down into apathy, and you become more aware, but what can you do? We can't brand children who exhibit violent sociopathic, and we can't necessarily get them help either. Even if we do get them help sometimes there's nothing that will change their path, nothing. I'm betting that the majority of identified violent recidivist offenders in our penal system exhibited symptoms as children, and you don't have to wonder how that just squeaks through without notice. The system doesn't have a plan in place to address them. The sytem is broken and dealing in the business of triage, with the worst cases getting too little attention in a system set up to give the children back to dysfunctional parents/caretakers, bc there's no funds/system in place to do better than they are right now, and the system is failing miserably.
Another friend at that time was struggling with 2 same age adopted children from Russian orphanages (a boy and a girl), and there was definite symptoms of RAD in both children, but the boy was overtly violent, and unable to bond in more obvious ways that the little girl. As I talked with the mother, and spent more time with her, I realized she wasn't all that stable either, and I have to say I'm disappointed that I didn't do more to help her and her children, but what was I going to do? Report her to CPS? I didn't see that would be at all helpful, frankly, but I did see red flags,and I did think about helping, and I was hampered by the lack of help and solutions, as I'm sure the majority of people witnessing similar situations are hampered every day, but what are our choices if we want to help, and not just make things worse? I see CPS as a weapon to be wielded by people who don't meet the required level of abuse that would call for a child to be placed in foster care. I also see foster care as likely to do more damage than the FOO situation. The mother ended up moving away and I lost touch with her sadly, which haunts me still,but I had my own dragons to slay, which is true about everyone. Push comes to shove, the best I could do for her was suggest she take her son, with his black eye, to daycare knowing daycare workers had a duty to report...... to not hide the injury, even though she felt her son would say it was her, and not her husband who delivered the black eye. What was I to do, I still don't have a good answer for that question. How are things going to get better, if we don't DO something positive every time we have the chance, and with no good choices, what do we choose among so many
bad choices. That the choices are all bad makes it more probable we'll end up choosing apathy out of frustration, IME.
Anyhow, 5 or so years ago a psychiatrist told me that it's very easy to create a sociopath.... all you have to do is put a child in a family where the parents have parenting skills at opposite ends of the spectrum..... one very lenient, and the other very punitive for example, etc.
All in all, I'd say that there are unlimited chances and possibilities factoring in to a child's ability to overcome challenging DNA and their FOO circumstances, none of which seems to be in control of the child, and I still can't separate out empathy for the less damaged, over the more damaged PD's, born
or made, or created by good intentioned parents who simply don't know any better, but certainly don't fit our definition of abusive parents, or by overwhelmed Russian nuns who don't have the time, resources, or ability to cradle and nurture every orphaned child in their care, and so the children are dileivered into adoptive homes (if they're lucky) with flat heads, bc they've never been picked up in their first months of life. And, what does having an ill shaped skull do to an infant's brain, do'ya think?
IME, living with abuse and dysfunction is an aggression building exercises, just like soldiers throwing each other out of mud pits in boot camp. When I reflect on the most aggressive people in my life, I can trace back their most challenging behaviors to abuse in their childhoods, and I can tell you these people are doing 1000s of times better for their own children, than their abusive parents did
for them. It's difficult when you look at the parenting that was modeled for them, and the fear/abuse/terror they sustained systematically year after year from birth. The abuser was shielded by family members, and enabled to harm, and what share of responsibility do those enablers deserve over the sick, broken addicted abuser they raised,and the abuser they raised, and so on? The
cause isn't the one abuser we're identifying/suffering/housing in our prisons in the moment, obviously, IMO. The cause is something
much deeper, and it'sunderstandably easier to focus on building more and larger prisons, and punishing the least intelligent/broken/mentally ill members of society who get caught, while allowing the people who contributed to their mental illness to continue offending without pause, but I don't think it's going to be part of anything better should we manage to turn the tide.
Run on sentence, anyone?
Lighter
