A little psychopathic nightmare

My childhood was not one that is fondly remembered by anyone except me

This won’t be an all inclusive psychopathic child post, and I have to remind everyone that is reading this that you cannot identify psychopathy in children ever. It can only be identified in an adult whose brain is done growing. A child that is born a psychopath is a psychopath, but cannot be identified as one until they have a fully developed brain. More a bit of an idea of what I was like to contrast the reddit post addressed in the first two posts. This is the third in that series. For the first two, please see here;

Examination of an old man's confession

and here;

A Second Look

Let’s close this post out with a little more insight to what an actual psychopathic child might be like. A bit of a palate cleanser for all the dark that Reddit post brought about. 

Let’s do a list, shall we?

Psychopathic children are;

Extremely willful

Defiant

Independent

Terribly dishonest

Brutally honest

Little thieves

Unempathetic

Devious

Punishment immune

Manipulative

Little liars

Big liars

Are selfish

Unconcerned with your ideas of behaving well

Do not share

Have NO fear of anything

Basically, psychopathic children live in their own world. They are disconnected from the swirling of emotions that neurotypicals frequently have, and they have terrible impulse control. I want what I want when I want it. This is still true, but I am far better equipped at controlling those niggles that say, Ooooo!!!! Want!!!

As a child, this was not my forte. I stole things, lied about them, manipulated people, and said terrible things to them because I had no idea that they were hurtful. I was constantly, and I mean constantly into everything. There was nothing that was safe from me, and my mother thought she was pretty clever. 

Lock the Christmas presents in the trunk already wrapped? No problem. At night, I snuck to her purse, flitched her keys, got a knife and the scotch tape, snuck into the dark garage, turned on the light, scaled the car, popped the truck climbed into it, took the knife, slit the tape on the Christmas wrapping until I could figure out what was inside, and then carefully rewrap the gifts, and recovering the scotch tape that I slit with one exactly the same size. Then I would put them all back, climb out of the trunk, close it quietly, shut off the lights, return the keys, and go back to bed. 

Patience was not a virtue for me… at all. This is just one of many things that I did, and by the way, I was four when I did that. I was already well-polished on what I had to do to get away with things. I never got caught for the presents thing, though I told my mother about it years later (cue groaning). If you end up with a child like me, you have to learn to be very calm, find my currency, learn to negotiate with a moving target, be more clever than I was, know how to pick your battles, and know that punishment is going to have zero effect on that child. 

Psychopathic children are very difficult, but not for the reasons that people tend to think. They have this whole idea in their heads that we are stark raving lunatics with nothing but causing other people harm on our minds. The only thing on my mind as a child was entertainment. I didn’t care what sort of entertainment, just stuff to do. 

All of my behavior was focused around what I wanted at that moment. Learning to shift my focus from something bad to something good was the key to my parents' communication with me. It also helped that they insisted on teaching responsibility through a rewards system. I got X when I did Y. They were unfailingly consistent, and it taught me that I could trust that so long as I did what they wanted, I would get what I expected out of it. I mucked it up a ton of times, but, there you have it. Psychopathic children aren’t evil incarnate, but they are balls of fearless energy that isn’t at all bothered by your constant use of the word “NO!”, and in fact find it a bit funny. No, but I’m gonna do it anyway. 

I was a devious little nightmare that is lucky to have survived her childhood. I was so much of a handful that my mother would take photographs of me while I was sleeping so she could remind herself that there were times… that I was still.