AL - 9-Year-Old Charged With Poisoning Stepmom, Siblings

[Bobbisangel]

You would be 100% correct and, no, it isn't classified as mental illness.

I don't think it is possible for them to change no matter what because they don't have a conscience. They don't "feel" the way in which we "feel". There is just nothing there. They are born that way and nothing can change that.
They are incapable of forming relationships except for their benefit. It is sad but that is the way it is. I would hate for some kid to be put into a program that is supposed to help them change. They are capable of mimicking the leader because that is what they do in life yet they are what they are inside. I would hate for some program to think that the kid was helped and release him/her back out into society to create havoc on their family or others.

 

[Bobbisangel]

There's nothing I'm aware of that can "reform" a sociopath. My son spent nearly 2-1/2 years in a therapeutic wilderness camp that was supposed to help. It didn't. The program was based on peer pressure and logical consequences for antisocial behavior. It was fabulous for the kids that had the ability to change. Our son didn't happen to be one of those. One of the boys in that program murdered his mother while on a weekend home visit. To my knowledge, it was a good, loving family who did everything they knew to help their son.

Parents aren't always to blame. Sociopaths are born, not made. That's not to say that an abusive home won't make a bad situation worse, but experts in the field agree it's far more about nature than nurture. I'm also not saying the 9 year old we're discussing is a sociopath. We don't have enough information to judge at this point.

I'm so sorry about your son and what you have had to live through. I'm sure that you have done everything possible to help your son. It's a shame that there isn't some medication that a person like your son could take that would help but I know that there isn't. No, parents aren't to blame at all. Anyone who would think that doesn't know anything about sociopaths. A sociopath lacks a conscience and there is nothing that can be done about that. That is how they are born and we will probably never understand how that happens.

 

[sherri79]

Yikes! Can you stage a demonstration with a brick and a melon, to let him see that it *can* harm? Maybe drop a brick from roof heighth somehow onto the melon? A normal brick doesn't weigh much, about as much as some coconuts, right? Explain that dropping the coconut from a tree would be worse. And also point out that cartoons aren't reality, and a lot of things done in cartoons would be dangerous/harmful if done in real life. Remind him, blobs of paint can't really die.

lol i explained to him very clearly how cartoon wont = real life. he got it after i talked and talked and talked. what seemed to get through the most... a toy that on tv does cool stuff and in real life just sits there. my point. kids dont think like we do sometimes. my girl at 9 would have got it. my boy.. not so much. i hope this kid just really did not get it. i fear i am wrong. most 9 year olds would not have gotten away with it twice.