I agree that “The Gift of Fear” is a wonderful book and everyone should read it. But I must say that every time I have worked with a sexual predator (in a correctional setting) they were articulate, kind, inoffensive, and I found myself wondering what on earth they could have done to end up in such a bad place (before I knew they were sexual predators.) This is why I do trust my gut, but I also don’t trust my gut when somebody I don’t know seems so nice and kind and I’m willing to take a little risk and go outside my boundaries because I’ve got such a good feeling about them. Particularly if they’re male. That’s how Ted Bundy got all those girls in his car. A true sociopath is charming as hell, and gets people to do all sorts of things they wouldn’t have otherwise.

The highlighting of CU was refreshing. 

And stop reading things into my posts that aren’t there. My point stands, that if among children, extreme behaviour could be an accurate indicator of sociopathy, then it’s way closer to 100% than 1%.

And it is not necessarily an indicator of sociopathic behaviour, which is uncommon, while sibling rivalry is common. I never attacked my sister, I broke her piano on one occasion but I was verbal for the most part, and my sister is no sociopath despite her outbursts.

My point, which you ably demonstrate, is that labeling people as sociopathic or psychopathic is extremely attractive to some people even with no basis for doing so.

And children who have childlike behaviour, or conversely adult-like calculation, can too easily be stigmatized if an official designation by a standard diagnostic that too easily assigns an incorrect meaning to that behaviour.

Do you know how exhaustively researched is, yet even for adults the designation is very rare? There’s reason.

And I usually read the Times on the iPhone app, which I pay a monthly fee to access, and it doesn’t show user comments at all.

It seems that the Times clearly knows its future is online, and yet it continues to either botch or make really bizarre mistakes along the way.

You are “normalizing”. If only the parents… then the kid would be normal. Because all kids are normal. Because otherwise it would make you uncomfortable. And that would mean… something… something…

Edit: I am myself from the adoptive/foster parent community, and I see this (parent blaming) soooooo often from other adoptive/foster parents… people who really should know better. Somebody is writing about their children grieving hard for a first parent they never met after being babies… hey, it must be the parents fault, they must have talked too much about the first parents. Or somebody is talking about how their children are mommy shopping… it must be the parents who are just looking for red flags where there are none. Because… everything is normal… _my_ child is normal.

I’m pretty sure “treating him like a baket case” is about parents who are very worried about their child and trying to get help for him. I would not be surprised if he heard that from a therapist talking above over his head by asking the parents “So… which one of you does he have a stronger bond to?”.

Unfortunately families often get help, even after years of begging for it, only after something actually happens. Early treatment, like the article says, can make a huge difference… getting proper help is often not as easy as it sounds.

IMHO, it’s peculiar how these horror stories often involve parents with psychology degrees. Which sort of 9-yr-old can shout “No, Daddy! I have a greater bond with you than I do with Mommy!” during tantrums? A 9-yr-old doesn’t even know what an emotional bond *is*, let alone be aware of his own specific ones… unless this sort of terms has been thrown around him for way too long, way too early, by anxious, over-analysing parents calling on armies of psychology professionals to treat their children as guinea-pigs. Once you start down that path, smart kids will inevitably react in “manipulative” ways, saying whatever the pros want to hear just so that they can be left alone, and basically by freaking out. Michael might have “natural” problems, I’m not denying that, but I’m pretty sure his parents didn’t make him any favours by treating him like a basket case so early in his life.

Which historically has been everyone else other than themselves and their cronies and even they frequently ended up getting it too.