Home Do you believe a child can be, well....

[TravelingGal]

Evil? Like rotten through and through?

jsm''s last post on the spanking thread got me thinking...are there children who are just beyond any sort of discipline? Or do you believe if they are rotten, it''s because they were brought up that way? A mixture of both?

Can a kid really be horrible INNATELY?

 

[Tacori E-ring]

I think it can be a combo of nature vs. nurture or just plain nature. Some people are born (I believe) with different brain chemistry. Even the best parenting cannot change that. My cousin actually started a not for profit for parents with difficult children. She had two biological children and two adopted children. Unfortunately both adopted children had behavioral issues. One was even in and out of jail. Both bio kids are completely well adjusted children. They were all four raised the same. She helped other parents dealing with the shame and frustration of dealing with their children. Good parents who loved their children.

 

[Porridge]

Yes, I think it''s possible. But I don''t really know.

Have you read "We Need to Talk About Kevin"?? Basically an entire book based on this subject. Interesting reading, thought provoking.

 

[elrohwen]

It''s nature vs nuture and nuture doesn''t always win. It''s fairly well documented that adoptive kids have more behavioral problems then biological children within the same family (on average). If they were born to rebellious teenagers or into bad situations, there is some DNA that''s passed down there that can''t be avoided and sometimes that DNA leads them to be more difficult and rebellious themselves.

I know a few adoptive kids who caused their parents far more problems than the biological kids. For the most part they all turned out just fine in the end, but they were certainly a challenge growing up. The parenting was the same between adoptive and bio kids (and the parents I knew were awesome), so genes had something to do with the difference.

Kids with ADHD are also far harder to raise, but that''s not necessarily the parents'' fault. Once again, nature is at play.

So yes, I think some kids are genetically pre-disposed to be difficult. Evil? Not so much, but there are absolutely some kids who give their parents tons of problems that aren''t related to parenting.

(And I''m not saying that adoptive kids are "bad" kinds in anyway, just that it''s not only about how the kid is raised that determines their personality).

 

[decodelighted]

I think so. Maybe its reincarnation where the slate doesn''t get *entirely* wiped clean? Or maybe its hard-wired genetic evil? I have no idea. Nature vs. Nurture ... I imagine many more kids are f''d up by the "nurture" part (or, rather, bad stuff that happens to them along the way -- not necessarily by their parents).

Wait ...

Evil = Nature
Eeeeevviiilllll = Nurture

**shrug**

 

[iheartscience]

I think some kids are definitely more difficult than others. I''d say I was probably one of the more difficult ones, although I wasn''t really that bad!

I do think some people can be born evil. Most sociopaths display that behavior early on, torturing animals, etc. Although some well known sociopaths had some sort of traumatic event (the Unabomber was in quarantine as a child and was apparently never the same once he came home), so I guess they weren''t necessarily born that way...

 

[Kaleigh]

Yes I do. There are kids that kill and torture animals, almost with glee. They lack any kind of empathy gene.


But the one's that are most dangerous seem to have a chemical imbalance of the brain.

Of course the whole picture needs to be looked at, abuse, parenting etc...

I hate to label a kid as evil.

 

[oddoneout]

Yes I''ve met many. Most of them I think it was due to terrible parenting though.

 

[kama_s]

Date: 4/28/2010 5:36:13 PM
Author: Porridge
Yes, I think it''s possible. But I don''t really know.


Have you read ''We Need to Talk About Kevin''?? Basically an entire book based on this subject. Interesting reading, thought provoking.

This is the exact book I was going to suggest when I opened the thread. Definte food for though.

 

[ksinger]

Date: 4/28/2010 5:24:14 PM
Author:TravelingGal
Evil? Like rotten through and through?

jsm''s last post on the spanking thread got me thinking...are there children who are just beyond any sort of discipline? Or do you believe if they are rotten, it''s because they were brought up that way? A mixture of both?

Can a kid really be horrible INNATELY?

Yes. I do. One of my mother''s sisters was, for lack of a better word, evil. Although in these more enlightened times, we would say mentally ill. She was (in a time long before the clinical definition) a classic case of narcissistic personality disorder. I will not go into the details, but they were pretty awful, the things she did. Did she kill anyone? No. Commit crimes? No. Leave a huge wake of emotional destruction among her parents, siblings, and then her own children? Absolutely. And if you read the literature, you will come across one of the characteristics of narcissists, that one of the ONLY things that will keep them from their constant mental abuse of others, is...the threat of physical violence. (Just thought I''d put that in there since we discussed spanking.) Leaving them and their sphere is the suggested course of action. Don''t try to fix them, just LEAVE. Get AWAY. I know after many years of pure hell from my aunt, my cousin (then a teen) finally lashed out to her mother, and kicked her. After that, mom backed down and was much more careful in what she said, but it took that from my cousin to get mom off her back. My cousing later spent many many years in therapy herself, coming to grips with what had been done to her.

I guess it''s not as bad as the true sociopath, but narcissists leave a huge path of human wreckage in their wake.

Oh, and there were 5 kids in my mom''s family I might add, and all turned out just fine, although all were damaged to greater or lesser degree by the one.

 

[somethingshiny]

I don''t know that any child is born evil. I don''t think God creates evil and by saying a child is born that way implies that He created it that way.

I do think empathy is one thing that cannot be taught in any way though. If someone lacks empathy, I can see that being construed as evil, especially after time.

The only "evil" people I''ve known were definitely nurtured that way.

Brain chemistry, DNA and the like could have effects on behavior. But, IMO, if the child is nurtured appropriately s/he can get past that and become an acceptable adult. The brunt of the work lies with the parents. A parent has to see a problem, decide to find a solution, and work until the situation is resolved. I think parents of "evil" children eventually just give up because they think it won''t help, aren''t sure what the problem is, don''t have support, etc.

 

[lyra]

I feel like my sister is evil. She has borderline personality disorder and is a narcissist. She is not like other people, she is incapable of caring about anyone else, including her children. She has said and done some awful things. But generally, I think the extreme cases are a result of brain chemistry, mental illness, and developmental issues. If this is the case, all the great parenting in the world cannot "fix" the situation, and the child does not grow out of it.

 

[yssie]

There was a criminal minds episode about a child sociopath - was it last night? night before, maybe?



I reckon a complete inability to feel emotion is about as evil a thing as can happen to someone, child or adult. Other than that, though, I don't think any child can be "evil" - I think some are born more difficult than others, but I do think with a lot of work any child who is capable of feeling love, guilt, remorse, etc. can be nurtured into a "good" adult.

 

[Allison D.]

Date: 4/28/2010 6:58:25 PM
Author: somethingshiny
I don''t know that any child is born evil. I don''t think God creates evil and by saying a child is born that way implies that He created it that way.

I do think empathy is one thing that cannot be taught in any way though. If someone lacks empathy, I can see that being construed as evil, especially after time.

The only ''evil'' people I''ve known were definitely nurtured that way.

Brain chemistry, DNA and the like could have effects on behavior. But, IMO, if the child is nurtured appropriately s/he can get past that and become an acceptable adult. The brunt of the work lies with the parents. A parent has to see a problem, decide to find a solution, and work until the situation is resolved. I think parents of ''evil'' children eventually just give up because they think it won''t help, aren''t sure what the problem is, don''t have support, etc.

I don''t think it implies that God created a child evil; God creates mankind as a whole, but individuals are created through pro-creation between a man/woman.

That said, there can be chemical/hormonal/genetic differences in children that do impact behavior to a great enough extent that ''nurture'' won''t necessarily ''fix'' it. I disagree that a nurturing parent is necessarily the whole solution for a kid with AHDH, for example. One of my friend''s kids has it, and he literally cannot sit still. He also cares little about consequences; we joke that the kid is teflon in that consequences seldom modify behavior for him.

They, of course, have sought help/treatment, and while medication does help curb some of the issues, it is not the be/all, end/all.

This isn''t to say he''s "evil", but he IS a handful and can sometimes lack empathy.

 

[ksinger]

Date: 4/28/2010 6:58:25 PM
Author: somethingshiny
I don''t know that any child is born evil. I don''t think God creates evil and by saying a child is born that way implies that He created it that way.

I do think empathy is one thing that cannot be taught in any way though. If someone lacks empathy, I can see that being construed as evil, especially after time.

The only ''evil'' people I''ve known were definitely nurtured that way.

Brain chemistry, DNA and the like could have effects on behavior. But, IMO, if the child is nurtured appropriately s/he can get past that and become an acceptable adult. The brunt of the work lies with the parents. A parent has to see a problem, decide to find a solution, and work until the situation is resolved. I think parents of ''evil'' children eventually just give up because they think it won''t help, aren''t sure what the problem is, don''t have support, etc.

That kinda knocks out the concept of original sin though, doesn''t it? ( I know, I know, I promise this won''t become a religious discussion, but the evil, debased nature of humans IS pretty central to several tradtions after all)

Moving on...

While I think truly "evil" in the scary movie traditional sense is rare, I completely disagree that evil only comes from nurture. Regardless of one''s religious leanings or attribution of the causes of evil, a sociopath is not nurtured but born, whether you think him mentally ill or possessed by demons. Stunted. Surely that would fall under T-Gal''s characterization of "just rotten to the core"?

And real evil can be subtle. It''s not usually a Hitler caricature, but more insidious than that. Surely you''ve read about the Stanford Prison Experiments? Or Milgram''s experiments with authority? In the Stanford experiments - that had subjects chosen for normalcy and good solid character - every one of those ''good'' young well-balanced college men went damn near mad with abusive violence. I''ve heard people confidently proclaim that THEY would never do something like abuse another because THEIR morals or religion or whatever would prevent it. THEY would never shock someone to the point of death because a guy in a white coat said they had to, but (the Milgram experiments at least) those experiments were repeated over, and over, and over, all over the country, and even out of the country, with the same results: the vast majority of people, even those deemed properly brought up, WILL do horrible things to other people.

So perhaps we need to discuss the nature/definition of evil first?

 

[Pandora II]

Yes - and I''ve met one. He was the most angelic looking little boy.

He was adopted at 5 weeks old (by which time his biological father had beaten him so badly he was paralysed down one side for many months) by a couple with 3 biological children and 2 adopted daughters. They lacked for nothing - love, money, time, attention - and this kid was beautiful, everyone wanted to play with him and hug him etc (I''m not very into kids and yet I always used to sit him on my knee for a cuddle when he was little).

He was the truest definition of devil child though. He did terrible things as a small child that got progressively worse. I believe he is now in prison as his adoptive mother was finally unable to get him off through expensive lawyers etc - and this is the same woman who he attacked and tried to rape when he was 19...

 

[Mara]

Date: 4/28/2010 7:50:53 PM
Author: Pandora II
Yes - and I''ve met one. He was the most angelic looking little boy.

He was adopted at 5 weeks old (by which time his biological father had beaten him so badly he was paralysed down one side for many months) by a couple with 3 biological children and 2 adopted daughters. They lacked for nothing - love, money, time, attention - and this kid was beautiful, everyone wanted to play with him and hug him etc (I''m not very into kids and yet I always used to sit him on my knee for a cuddle when he was little).

He was the truest definition of devil child though. He did terrible things as a small child that got progressively worse. I believe he is now in prison as his adoptive mother was finally unable to get him off through expensive lawyers etc - and this is the same woman who he attacked and tried to rape when he was 19...

All I could think as I read this was... ''apple didn''t fall far from the tree''... horrible.

I like to think it''s nurture vs nature, but I don''t know.

Whenever we used to think about having a child, I would always think...gee, there''s no guarantee on how the kid will turn out. You just do the best you can. A little scary.

 

[LtlFirecracker]

Date: 4/28/2010 5:24:14 PM
Author:TravelingGal
Evil? Like rotten through and through?


jsm''s last post on the spanking thread got me thinking...are there children who are just beyond any sort of discipline? Or do you believe if they are rotten, it''s because they were brought up that way? A mixture of both?


Can a kid really be horrible INNATELY?

Of the 100''s of kids I have seen, there are 2 that really stick out in my mind that were out of control, had not regards for the rights of others, and were very difficult to discipline...and they were only 2 years old!!!! One of them had been kicked out of 3 daycares and the mother had brought the child to the ED because she was going to loose her job if she could not get help. He was horrible. If I told him not to do something, he gave me a look and kept doing it, he hit his mother, tried to break our equipment.....lets just say I was on the phone with psych begging them to see this patient soon because he really was that bad...

While I usually believe that children are good natured, and a bad child is a combination of temperament and poor parenting, those 2 children made me wonder.....

 

[Kaleigh]

When I was student teaching in Ohio, I had a kid named Justin. Oh he was such a terror. He drove my up a wall and then some, but tried in my naive way to break through that wall and get to him.. He was evil to the bone.

I met his parents shortly afterwards.....I was like ok, this makes sense, it''s the parents to a degree...

The parents were going to move.

Before Justin left, he dropped off a letter to be delivered to me. I wasn''t teaching full time, just a student teacher.


It was to the point.



Thanks for caring Miss Lisa,
Your friend
Justin.

To this day I think of him...

 

[JSM]

Date: 4/28/2010 5:24:14 PM
Author:TravelingGal
Evil? Like rotten through and through?


jsm''s last post on the spanking thread got me thinking...are there children who are just beyond any sort of discipline? Or do you believe if they are rotten, it''s because they were brought up that way? A mixture of both?


Can a kid really be horrible INNATELY?

I have to laugh because I think I gave the wrong impression (sort of). As a child DH was beyond discipline, IMO, in part because he had NONE when it counted (before things got out of control). I do think that more structure and discipline in his life would have helped his attitude and life path. Some of it was also innate, because that is (was) his personality. He was a terrible kid! I personally think that much of it was acting out due to his home life, but that story is far longer than anyone cares to hear.

I do believe in evil. Not the terror child evil, but sociopath evil. It absolutely does exist, and sometimes no amount of wonderful parenting can change it.

 

[swimmer]

Date: 4/28/2010 9:38:48 PM
Author: Kaleigh
When I was student teaching in Ohio, I had a kid named Justin. Oh he was such a terror. He drove my up a wall and then some, but tried in my naive way to break through that wall and get to him.. He was evil to the bone.


I met his parents shortly afterwards.....I was like ok, this makes sense, it''s the parents to a degree...


The parents were going to move.


Before Justin left, he dropped off a letter to be delivered to me. I wasn''t teaching full time, just a student teacher.



It was to the point.




Thanks for caring Miss Lisa,

Your friend

Justin.


To this day I think of him...

Wow, how powerful. A real testimony to your efforts Kaleigh.

In teaching more than 1k high school students and being an administrator for thousands more, I can think of only 2 that had such dead eyes and flat, empathy-free affect, that I wondered about the very nature of evil. Their faces still haunt me. The vast majority of the time when teachers meet the parents we have the "tree doesn''t fall far from the apple" experience. We meet the student/apple first you see. And usually the truly deep issues are clearly fueled or even created by parents (I''m not talking about minor infractions here, more like trying to blow up the gym actions). But occasionally the parents seem like really great people trying their hardest with a situation that is out of their control. Then again, by adolesence the confounding factors of hormones, environment beyond parental input -like friends- and drug use can really make it hared to figure out where the root of the problem lies.

I can''t speak to younger kids, but occasionally see scary stuff at the grocery store!

 

[ilovethiswebsite]

I think that generally, there is always an interaction between nature and nurture such that even though a child with a certain temperament may be predisposed to be more difficult, the child''s upbringing (caregiving) will play a role in whether or not their genetics (or inherent nature) expresses itself. For example, a child who is born with difficulty reading other people''s emotions, and has a parent who doesn''t spend the time teaching the child about emotions and appropriate social behavior, may be more likely to become a sociopath compared to a child who has parents that do teach him about emotions and appropriate social behavior.

 

[somethingshiny]

Re: Original Sin. I do believe that every person is born with original sin. I do not think original sin indicates "evil" but "sinner." I do believe that every person born has the ABILITY to be evil but I''m just not sure if a child is flat-out born evil. I''m really on the fence about the whole thing.

A child with ADHD or a behavioral issue isn''t evil by any means IMO. A child who blows up a frog with a firecracker isn''t evil. Maybe my definition of "evil" is just worse than the commonly accepted?

The most evil person I''ve known is my mom''s cousin. I do believe he had mental issues that went unaddressed and was abused as a child himself. He set fire to his little sister''s playhouse while she was in it. That''s evil for sure, but I still can''t say he was BORN that way. I think it had more to do with the way he was raised.

The "dead" look in some people''s eyes isn''t there at birth, it shows up at least a little while later. Again, I''m just not sure.

 

[ksinger]

Date: 4/28/2010 10:30:52 PM
Author: swimmer



Wow, how powerful. A real testimony to your efforts Kaleigh.

In teaching more than 1k high school students and being an administrator for thousands more, I can think of only 2 that had such dead eyes and flat, empathy-free affect, that I wondered about the very nature of evil. Their faces still haunt me. The vast majority of the time when teachers meet the parents we have the ''tree doesn''t fall far from the apple'' experience. We meet the student/apple first you see. And usually the truly deep issues are clearly fueled or even created by parents (I''m not talking about minor infractions here, more like trying to blow up the gym actions). But occasionally the parents seem like really great people trying their hardest with a situation that is out of their control. Then again, by adolesence the confounding factors of hormones, environment beyond parental input -like friends- and drug use can really make it hared to figure out where the root of the problem lies.

I can''t speak to younger kids, but occasionally see scary stuff at the grocery store!

Yeah, the DH has seen a very very few of those ''dead eyed'' ones too, and they actually scare him a bit, and this is a man not easily creeped out.... Like you he would say that the vast majority of baddies are apple/tree variety, but those few...wowza.

 

[brazen_irish_hussy]

I do think it is usually nature/nurture but there are some born bad. In FBI studies on serial killers, almost everyone has both different brain wiring (sociopaths, who are less able to feel anticipation of consequences, have diminish frontal lobes which affect empathy and impulse control and may have an over developed reward area of the brain) and were abused as children. The combination is what makes them so troubled.

However, this does not always hold. Ted Bundy was not abused by anyone''s accounts, including his own. By the age of four though, they had to keep him separate from his sister after he filled her bed with knives. Jeffrey Dahmer came from a family that was by all accounts normal and healthy and he was REALLY screwed up.

Sorry to be morbid, I look at dead people for my thesis and eventually a living, so I get to see what people do to one another and have a different level of comfort with it than others.

 

[Mrs Mitchell]

Date: 4/28/2010 5:24:14 PM
Author:TravelingGal
Evil? Like rotten through and through?

jsm''s last post on the spanking thread got me thinking...are there children who are just beyond any sort of discipline? Or do you believe if they are rotten, it''s because they were brought up that way? A mixture of both?

Can a kid really be horrible INNATELY?

You still having trouble with Amelia''s playdate, honey?

Seriously, I don''t know. Intuitively, I want to say no. I want to say that isn''t possible. Except that I have a child who was pretty much born smiling. She''s good natured, happy, relaxed and confident. I''d love to say that''s because I''m just the greatest parent, but the truth is, she came out like that. All I''ve done is not squashed it!

So from my very small and not exactly random sample, I can conclude that I have seen personality traits appear in my daughter from birth. If I''m right, it isn''t possible to say that negative traits can''t exist in the same way.

When I worked in social services, I''ve seen children removed from the most unbearable abuse and neglect in their family homes, children with nothing going for them on any level, who have been harmed from the day they were born. Yet many of them were truly sweet natured children - damaged, confused, badly behaved, but basically good little people who wanted to please. If it was all about nurture, I don''t think they would have been that way, necessarily.


Now, if you asked my mother, she''s say YES, YES and Yes without hesitation. She was a primary school teacher and she maintained that every so often, a wrong ''un was born and that nothing anyone could do would make a difference in the end. She said she saw literally thousands of young children in her career, and three stand out in her mind as having a streak of purest evil on a different level to your regular badly behaved kid or difficult kid. It wasn''t even that they were out of control or beyond discipline, because they were smart enough to conform in many ways. There was just something different, something else about them that made everyone in a school uneasy.

 

[ksinger]

Date: 4/29/2010 4:07:18 AM
Author: Mrs Mitchell

Date: 4/28/2010 5:24:14 PM
Author:TravelingGal
Evil? Like rotten through and through?

jsm''s last post on the spanking thread got me thinking...are there children who are just beyond any sort of discipline? Or do you believe if they are rotten, it''s because they were brought up that way? A mixture of both?

Can a kid really be horrible INNATELY?

You still having trouble with Amelia''s playdate, honey?

Seriously, I don''t know. Intuitively, I want to say no. I want to say that isn''t possible. Except that I have a child who was pretty much born smiling. She''s good natured, happy, relaxed and confident. I''d love to say that''s because I''m just the greatest parent, but the truth is, she came out like that. All I''ve done is not squashed it!

So from my very small and not exactly random sample, I can conclude that I have seen personality traits appear in my daughter from birth. If I''m right, it isn''t possible to say that negative traits can''t exist in the same way.

When I worked in social services, I''ve seen children removed from the most unbearable abuse and neglect in their family homes, children with nothing going for them on any level, who have been harmed from the day they were born. Yet many of them were truly sweet natured children - damaged, confused, badly behaved, but basically good little people who wanted to please. If it was all about nurture, I don''t think they would have been that way, necessarily.


Now, if you asked my mother, she''s say YES, YES and Yes without hesitation. She was a primary school teacher and she maintained that every so often, a wrong ''un was born and that nothing anyone could do would make a difference in the end. She said she saw literally thousands of young children in her career, and three stand out in her mind as having a streak of purest evil on a different level to your regular badly behaved kid or difficult kid. It wasn''t even that they were out of control or beyond discipline, because they were smart enough to conform in many ways. There was just something different, something else about them that made everyone in a school uneasy.

Yes, and it really is people like that who probably contribute the most to our concept of Evil, which is different than a normal person doing wrong or harmful things. There is a distinction. Like your mother said, there really is nothing anyone can do for those people. Luckily for us all, that kind of Evil is truly rare, but yes it does exist, and it really is most disconcerting, especially to us moderns who think that if we only DO something - that elusive "right thing", we can change anything. The ancients would have scoffed at us.

Wow...waxing philosophical pre-coffee? I must be insane. Or.....EEEEVIIILLLLL!!!! Muwhaahaha!!

(Ok Ok....i''m going already!)

 

[janinegirly]

I do believe a child can be evil and incorrigible. There are children who have killed who have seemingly just no sense of wrongdoing. I''m talking about the rare cases where it did not seem to be at the direct influence of an adult. The Bulger case in the UK comes to mind.

I do also feel it''s a mixture of nature and nurture, but the dark side of me believes sometimes nature carries a bigger role than we like to admit. It''s not something you want to think about. But certainly those brought up in a violent, destructive environment with no example of unconditional parental love and nurturing are most likely to display these disturbing personality traits.

 

[Shoopy]

Date: 4/29/2010 4:07:18 AM
Author: Mrs Mitchell

Date: 4/28/2010 5:24:14 PM
Author:TravelingGal
Evil? Like rotten through and through?

jsm''s last post on the spanking thread got me thinking...are there children who are just beyond any sort of discipline? Or do you believe if they are rotten, it''s because they were brought up that way? A mixture of both?

Can a kid really be horrible INNATELY?

You still having trouble with Amelia''s playdate, honey?

Seriously, I don''t know. Intuitively, I want to say no. I want to say that isn''t possible. Except that I have a child who was pretty much born smiling. She''s good natured, happy, relaxed and confident. I''d love to say that''s because I''m just the greatest parent, but the truth is, she came out like that. All I''ve done is not squashed it!

I haven''t commented on this thread for this very reason. I also have a child that is just like your A. How she manages to stay like a ray of sunshine with two very serious and boring parents baffles me

Anyway, it''s hard for me to imagine that an "evil" child is one that was born that way rather than one that was made that way given their circumstances.

 

[somethingshiny]

I''ve been thinking about this a lot over the past day and I think I''ve finally figured out my own opinion on it.

To me evil is a choice. Yes, some are born with bad wiring, reduced frontal lobe, etc. These are definite causes of poor decision making, unable to understand consequences, disregard for life, etc. There is a reason for wrong doing besides that the person just WANTS to do it. It doesn''t make it any more forgivable, but to me it indicates they weren''t BORN evil. Their evil behavior is just a side effect of another condition.

I think Evil is a purposeful choice to be destructive knowing that it''s wrong and fully understanding the consequences.