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Kids with very challenging traits

A search for do serial killers start with animals gets this:
Yes
Yes, many serial killers often start with animal cruelty. Research indicates that serial killers frequently torture or kill small animals from an early age, which can be a precursor to later violent behavior towards humans. Notable serial killers, such as Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy, have recounted animal torture as their first acts of violence. However, it's important to note that not every serial killer begins with animals, and not every animal abuser becomes a serial killer. This suggests a complex relationship between animal cruelty and future violent behavior. 

If you merely search for serial killers and animal cruelty, one of the hits is The MacDonald Triad. Arson and persistent bed wetting past age five are the other two parts of the triad.

My kids were extremely difficult but neither was ever cruel to animals and I inadvertently cured them of any interest in arson by enthusiastically sharing my mild pyromaniac tendencies with them and letting them play with candles BUT requiring them to safely and thoroughly clean up afterwards.

It wasn't long before playing safely and responsibly with fire was of ZERO interest to them and they had better things to do.

As for animal cruelty, my oldest was horrified at the kids at school crushing the shell of a living snail and tormenting it. It's an incident that contributed to us pulling him out of school to homeschool because he was coming home in tears daily in part because the other kids were simply awful.

I never know how to approach this blog because I spent the entire childhoods of my two kids scheming to have them not end up in jail and I succeeded. Neither has a criminal record.

So I don't know how to tell people convincingly that my kids grew up to be decent people but it was never guaranteed that they would without sounding like they are really monsters and I'm white washing it.

Let's start here: In the nature VERSUS nurture debate, I'm firmly in the "nature AND nurture" camp. Babies are not even half baked little humans and they LEARN most social stuff. Unlike some animals, very little is "instinctive" for humans.

So my sons aren't monsters and I'm not white washing anything, but I did have very challenging children and I did worry about them a great deal and it wasn't easy to get them to turn out okay.

As noted previously, I've had people act like I'm a verbally and emotionally abusive mother for LEARNING to clearly communicate with my kids by saying things like "The trash is overflowing. YOU need to take the trash out NOW." because if I merely said "The trash is overflowing." to the son who was assigned that as one of his chores, he would agree that the trash is overflowing and continue playing video games -- much to my consternation because I was clear he wasn't being defiant or uncooperative or intentionally bad, yet pointing out the problem wasn't getting the results I expected.

So with that completely ridiculous accusation for such a mild statement, I was never willing to say publicly that when he was four years old, one day I told him that if his plan was to forever rely on ME dealing with certain things for him, that wasn't going to work because he was likely to outlive me, so someday I simply wasn't going to be available. 

He told me he would follow me into the afterlife or something, refusing to acknowledge that I could possibly get away from him even in death. Years later, he told me that scared the hell out of him and it's why he tried as hard as he did for some of the things that came especially hard to him.

To my shock, one of my best friends once told me that kids like mine are fairly often beaten by their parents who are at wit's end and no longer know how to cope. That was never my impulse. 

I would sometimes go hurl myself on my bed and cry, not knowing what to do, but I felt crystal clear that beating difficult kids was extremely likely to teach them "You can get away with violence if you are an adult or bigger than someone." And this was highly likely to come back to bite me in the long run because my sons were highly likely to eventually be bigger than me.

And they are both taller than me now that they are adults.

I think perhaps my son summed up something extremely important when he told me that other adults would loom threateningly over him and try to intimidate him into "behaving" (AKA doing what they wanted) but never actually used their size advantage over him and in contrast, I never threatened him but did actually use my size advantage.

When he was an infant and strapped to my chest because I rarely used a stroller, it soon became clear that if he could reach it, he would grab it and chaos would ensue. My arms were longer than his. I could grab things off the grocery store shelves without him getting within reach and it soon became habit to handle it that way and just not let chaos ensue without having to wonder about punishing an infant or some nonsense.

I was bigger than him and stronger than him and could physically pick him up and carry him if I really needed to neutralize him and stop what he was doing.

Yet, I respected his boundaries if at all possible, such as described previously on this blog when he was two and wanted to climb the ladder himself.

You're the adult. You're older, bigger, know more about how the world works and are legally responsible for what the child does. 

And if you are threatening and intimidating a small child rather than figuring out better solutions, you aren't thinking about raising a future adult. You are engaging in extremely short sighted behavior you will regret.

Or as Quai Chang Caine says to someone on the Kung Fu TV series: If you plant fear, fear will grow.

You reap what you sow. He careful what seeds you plant emotionally and mentally in little people you KNOW will get bigger.

Especially little people with challenges and difficulties that can magnify the issues caused by bad parenting.

Footnote 
The AI search result lists five sources. I didn't read the sources myself.
www.aetv.com

www.psychologytoday.com

www.psychologytoday.com

www.independent.co.uk

www.discovermagazine.com


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