From a point of view of understanding psycopathy, I'm sure neurotypicals can think of friends who are fun and amusing or even impressive, or temporary very good friends on travels, or whatever, and who we like and find fun and admire, but once they go they go, and it's no big deal. One only needs to extend that common familiar feeling and imagine that that also applied to everyone else one is close to, everyone in ones life, to understand how it feels for a psychopath. (I myself have deep and draining bonds, and also have had innumerable temporary likes and loves. It's not that hard to get ones head around.)
I thank you for the honesty. Your mother should win a parenting award, but I think having you be a successful adult is a big one.
The movie “Let’s Talk About Kevin” really disturbed me. I thought it well done, but now that I see some of your points I understand it not to be as good as I thought. The way that Kevin just tortured his sister, defied his mother just for the joy of it (shouldn’t have experienced that, I understand) and all the killing, without emotion, especially that of his family, was disturbing. I have learned that psychopaths, although not like NT’s, DO have blunted emotions, so that seemed wrong, too. Correct me if I have misrepresented the psychopath (knowing that everyone, NT, psychopathic or otherwise are each their own person and generalizations are a slippery slope).
We certainly have emotions. The lack of emotions is a myth when it comes to psychopathy, but one that has been perpetuated for a long time now it is hard to put down. We lack SOME emotions, the rest are present, but very muted in volume.
Athena, I understand saying that psychopats don't have emotions is not accurate and it doesn't even make sense as you are living humans. Still, when I say psychopats don't have emotions is more of a shortcut info referring to most impacting emotions that NT's feel, such as love, attachement, fear, resentment. I guess these differences are the more stark in our brain variants.
Also, as a curiosity, what do you say about Kevin Dutton's book ,,Wisdom of psychopats" where the co-writer, diagnosed psychopath Andy McNab talks several times about feeling fear in his missions? Do you think he's talking about same kind of fear that an NT would feel being a case of psychpathy on the lower end of the spectrum?
That may be true, but it truly means "no emotions" to most people, which is incorrect. I spend so much of my time correcting misinformation that people think is factual about psychopathy, and the "no emotions" one is very prevalent. I have had to answer "why do psychopaths bother living if they have no emotions". They have the impression that psychopathy means just existing without any interest in anything or anyone.
As for McNab, I would need to question what he is defining as "fear", as I find many people misdefine it as the emotional and physical responses to fear. I went into detail here;
and my guess is that McNab is confusing adrenaline responses for fear because they are often described in conjunction with one another, when in reality they are very separate.
I don't think I would have survived my childhood. I am pretty sure they would have drowned me in the bathtub. They had to find a way to communicate with me that worked, because otherwise I was an element of chaos without relent or predictable direction.
Sounds like my oldest son. I doubt they would have drowned you though.
I thought that mine would be the death of me, or maybe himself. At the age of 2, my mom was watching him, for some reason and when I got home he told me he fixed my watch, I'm like thinking no, my mom first said don't be mad, I knew it was never going to work again. She said he took it apart and then, he said he put it back together and only 2 pieces didn't go back in.
I don't really know how many pieces didn't go back in, but I guess he was at it for hours and did put it back together. How could I be mad? He was 2 and thought he did something nice for me. So I thanked him and then asked him if next time he would ask me before fixing my watch for me. Plus he put it back together, at two yrs old, pretty bright is say.
He also was going to make me breakfast one morning at there age of about 3. He was always doing something. Not always so cute though. He was abused, I believe by his foster parents, so he was in trouble A LOT. he was very smart but didn't care if he got into trouble, he lit fires , he stole things, missed school, but rarely got into fights, he did seem to find trouble though. He was also a premie , so I'm not sure how much of that played a part. He went to therapy, but would refuse to talk, most of the time. I later found out he was sexually abused by his cousin, so I'm sure that has no good effect.
I loved him dearly, I tried everything short of giving him up, he was my baby after all, but with a that I can relate to parts of the old man's story. There were times I wanted to beat some sense into him, but honestly spankings had no effect on him, plus I couldn't beat my own child like that woman did, which is why I can see that this story might be based on some truth but it is probably exaggerated quite a bit. Or it could be told from a child's point of view, like maybe this guy was discribing his own life in some fantasy child like way. Children don't see things the same way adults do.
My son would tell very huge lies about things I supposedly did to him that never happened an out right lie for sympathy from others, as he got older he found that if people felt sorry for him they would also do more for him. He wasn't destructive at home though, I mean he didn't brake things. he had a lot of friends, so not really antisocial.
When my youngest was born he just got angry and would hit him when I wasn't watching.
There were good times too, We liked to go fishing, something he got really good at and I taught him to play chess I learned the if he lost, he would try harder the next time, he got pretty good at that too. There's more, so much more, good and not so good too.
He had a wonderful laugh was talented at his profession and could be so open and insightful.
I can see someone skipping some details as raising a super hyper, troubled child can be over whelming, but you're right this story seemed too cold to be real. The mother, well I can see her going nuts over him hurting her baby, as he was almost an adult, but I think it would not have lasted that long, not do I see dad not caring at all. I understand frustration, I really do but even if I lost my temper the police would have been called, and I wouldn't have wanted him dead. I just don't see doing nothing and living in the basement either. But who knows everyone is different. I mean it's possible, but doubtful.
This is exactly how I would imagine a parent with a challenging child to write about that child. The undercurrent of love is unmistakable, but you can detail all the places that he struggled, and where you struggled with him. This is the voice that I would expect from a parent, not the one in the story.
Because then I would never get them. My parents would rather throw them away as a lesson than to allow me to keep what I took prematurely. Sounds harsh, but it was a very good way to teach me delay of satisfaction.
Oh! Well that would be harsh if parents did that for the average very small child, but I'm sure yours did what was best and necessary for you. Amazing that at such a young age you were in a way already learning impulse control, I think many kids would not have thought ahead to consequences and bothered rewrapping everything.
Indeed, they recognized that it had to be dastic for it to have any effect on me at all. My currency in that situation was the presents. If I stole the currency, they currency vanished. If I didn't, I got that payoff. However, as you can see from the post, to me there was always a way around the requirements for that payoff.
I can relate to a lot of that, except for being a nightmare, I think. I was a nightmare only in my family’s eyes, what I did objectively wasn’t extreme. In the cultural environment I was raised in while there was no problem with violent and risky behavior (as long as it wasn’t really life-threatening) in children, “Let kids be kids”, in the context of family children and especially girls were expected to look up to their parents like to gods and be obedient. I was a very disobedient child, didn’t have unconditional respect or devotion to my parents, they by default were no different to me than any other people and until a certain age I was open about that and these alone were a shock to them.
I don’t remember any of that myself, but it’s a family meme that when I was 3 or 4 I once told my mom after she showed me her new heels I was curious about that when she died I would take all of her shoes. It wasn’t really nice from me, but she wasn’t offended by that, she didn’t think anything of that either, though she remembered that well. I was a wild child too and a child without a company for the most part, because other children were afraid to join me in what I wanted to do or were too afraid of the consequences. I couldn’t care less about being called a disgrace of my nation, I have only a few times gotten myself in a real trouble, though not really a legal trouble (but that can be because in the country I grew up in children under 16 are not prosecuted, and even after for that you need to commit a serious crime), but most of these times were when I was already a teenager.
Probably, but it wasn’t like parents completely ignored that behavior, they didn’t, but the attitude to it and what they did about it was a little different.
“Mom, why can’t It cross the railways when the train is coming?”
“Who told you, you can’t? You can, but only one time, because you will be smeared all over them”
It wasn’t considered abnormal, was rarely punished and most of the time I was just told safety rules or how my parents were unhappy with me doing something again, because the principal called them and having to see him was the last thing they wanted after work. But that is outside the family, when it comes to family relationships, the expectations for a child’s behavior are different.
That's a fair approximation of myself as a child. I had 20 acres with a pond on it and a large dog so I spent a good part of my time being a literal wild child. I lived the "if you can't run with the big dogs stay on the porch" lifestyle
You make me wish I had more of what you had, in a way... :D As for me, I responded very differently, I'm an empath and I score low on the psychopathy scale. I have dealt with anxiety and depression instead. Instead of courage, I deal with despair and self-doubt to the point of it sabotaging all kinds of good outcomes. Fortunately even now later in life I'm beginning to understand and in small ways address the thoughts and issues with bias toward action and attention to my current environment rather than my thoughts. It is also helping me make huge strides with my EQ.
The way that man spoke about his supposed child is horrifying.
My child is autistic, highly intelligent, and has a severe brain chemical imbalance that is treated with medication. At almost 10, she's growing into a wonderful person and I enjoy being with her. Before her imbalance was discovered our lives were not so nice.
She had some issues with eye contact and sleeping from the beginning, but being an autistic man myself and her primary caregiver, I wasn't sure what to expect, as she is my only child. I expressed concern to her doctor, but they said wait and see. She started showing significant signs of separation anxiety and we were assured this was normal and would pass, we did everything we could to comfort her, even sleeping with an arm in her crib and thus getting little sleep ouselves. We also had to keep her in mittens from the time she was a few weeks old or she would claw up her face and arms with her finger nails, she has a small scar on her nose to this day from when she slipped a mittens off before I could get to her and scratched her nose bloody. I was horrified seeing her damaging her face, so became extra watchful of her mittens from then on.
Starting at around 1 her anxiety over any separation reached a peak, I couldn't
even use the bathroom without her freaking out. She would throw up from her anxiety and I started leaving the door open so she could hear me talk to her. Around this time, she also became aggressive, and destructive. We took her to doctors, specialists, everyone, trying to understand this drastic shift. They told us to try going out and coming in again to help her see we weren't going anywhere and to redirect her when she became aggressive.
I was home with her 24/7 so I knew she was being loved and treated well, but her behavior continued to escalate. At 2, I was reading her a story, showed her the picture and asked what she thought and was promptly punched in the eye. By 3, she started refusing to sleep, tearing her room apart, screaming, and biting, hitting and kicking. Her doctor prescribed a low dose of melatonin to help her sleep, which took the 3 hour time down to 30 minutes.
Around 3.5 she started screaming as if in pain and nothing we did could console her. We rushed her to a gi doctor asap. She was diagnosed with reflux and the medication eased her pain. Her aggressive behavior though grew more intense. From 3.5-6.5 I was bitten, kicked, hit, screamed at, and chased with anything she could pick up on a daily basis. She even tried to stab me with a letter opener once. We took her to every therapist, doctor, and specialist we could find, nothing helped and many times we considered finding a care facility for her, but we were determined to keep her home because we love our daughter and wanted her to grow up with her parents.
Through all this, I never stopped loving my child. Walking around with black eyes, bite marks, and my nose broken 3 times, I never stopped loving her. Finally at 6.5 she was diagnosed with the chemical imbalance, and was given medication to correct it. By this point she had developed extreme phobias of things she'd done thousands of times before and was experiencing paranoid delusions. I fought tooth and nail to get her that medication.
After a few weeks on the medication, it was like she was a different child. Her anxiety drastically decreased and became manageable with therapy techniques she had refused before. Her aggression faded until it became a rare occurrence. She started showing genuine joy more often than we'd seen in years.
What we went through as a family was harrowing and if we'd been unable to help her, I would have placed my daughter in a care facility and visited every day, but never would I have stopped loving her.
For anyone to be as cold as that man was about his supposed son, it would have to be as you said either fiction or written by a malicious abuser. No decent parent could talk about their child like he did.
This. This is why I am inclined to believe that the story if not a true one.
How you describe your daughter is what I would expect from a parent. Through all the trials and hardships, the love and concern is very evident. How you speak about what you have had to go through to get her to the best life possible rings of a parent's love. The focus is on her, and what you could do to make her life better. You clearly love her, and are willing to do whatever is necessary for her.
I certainly hope it's fiction because if by some slim possibility it were true, this is a man and woman who should not have been allowed to interact with society. They're dangerous and abusive and obviously lack any desire to change.
Thank you, I appreciate your kind words. I'm thankful to say she consistently tells me she feels loved and doesn't remember much before the medication, which doctors said is likely due to the chemical imbalance, so she doesn't seem to be negatively impacted by the stress of her early years.
A cute kid. Reminds me of my younger sister, except I ws a teenager when she was a nightmare, so I did not have the patience and tact to deal with it. Now she's a teenager and I'm an adult and she's one of my favorite people. Still a nightmare to some people, but a lot more fun.
No, my mom was quite capable. What made it far more easy however, was that she left off all the decorations, so I didn't have to deal with anything shy following the lines that were folded into the paper. I was a very precocious child. The gift thing was probably the least eyebrow raising thing I did.
Did you care about making friends?
I never felt the need, but once I had them I found they could be entertaining. I just didn't care if I kept them or not.
From a point of view of understanding psycopathy, I'm sure neurotypicals can think of friends who are fun and amusing or even impressive, or temporary very good friends on travels, or whatever, and who we like and find fun and admire, but once they go they go, and it's no big deal. One only needs to extend that common familiar feeling and imagine that that also applied to everyone else one is close to, everyone in ones life, to understand how it feels for a psychopath. (I myself have deep and draining bonds, and also have had innumerable temporary likes and loves. It's not that hard to get ones head around.)
That is a pretty good comparison I would guess.
I thank you for the honesty. Your mother should win a parenting award, but I think having you be a successful adult is a big one.
The movie “Let’s Talk About Kevin” really disturbed me. I thought it well done, but now that I see some of your points I understand it not to be as good as I thought. The way that Kevin just tortured his sister, defied his mother just for the joy of it (shouldn’t have experienced that, I understand) and all the killing, without emotion, especially that of his family, was disturbing. I have learned that psychopaths, although not like NT’s, DO have blunted emotions, so that seemed wrong, too. Correct me if I have misrepresented the psychopath (knowing that everyone, NT, psychopathic or otherwise are each their own person and generalizations are a slippery slope).
Sweet when asleep - all parents think that! :)
We certainly have emotions. The lack of emotions is a myth when it comes to psychopathy, but one that has been perpetuated for a long time now it is hard to put down. We lack SOME emotions, the rest are present, but very muted in volume.
Athena, I understand saying that psychopats don't have emotions is not accurate and it doesn't even make sense as you are living humans. Still, when I say psychopats don't have emotions is more of a shortcut info referring to most impacting emotions that NT's feel, such as love, attachement, fear, resentment. I guess these differences are the more stark in our brain variants.
Also, as a curiosity, what do you say about Kevin Dutton's book ,,Wisdom of psychopats" where the co-writer, diagnosed psychopath Andy McNab talks several times about feeling fear in his missions? Do you think he's talking about same kind of fear that an NT would feel being a case of psychpathy on the lower end of the spectrum?
That may be true, but it truly means "no emotions" to most people, which is incorrect. I spend so much of my time correcting misinformation that people think is factual about psychopathy, and the "no emotions" one is very prevalent. I have had to answer "why do psychopaths bother living if they have no emotions". They have the impression that psychopathy means just existing without any interest in anything or anyone.
As for McNab, I would need to question what he is defining as "fear", as I find many people misdefine it as the emotional and physical responses to fear. I went into detail here;
https://athenawalker.substack.com/p/fear
and my guess is that McNab is confusing adrenaline responses for fear because they are often described in conjunction with one another, when in reality they are very separate.
Do you think you may have been very different of your parents had raised you by punishing you in some way. Instead of finding your currency?
I don't think I would have survived my childhood. I am pretty sure they would have drowned me in the bathtub. They had to find a way to communicate with me that worked, because otherwise I was an element of chaos without relent or predictable direction.
Sounds like my oldest son. I doubt they would have drowned you though.
I thought that mine would be the death of me, or maybe himself. At the age of 2, my mom was watching him, for some reason and when I got home he told me he fixed my watch, I'm like thinking no, my mom first said don't be mad, I knew it was never going to work again. She said he took it apart and then, he said he put it back together and only 2 pieces didn't go back in.
I don't really know how many pieces didn't go back in, but I guess he was at it for hours and did put it back together. How could I be mad? He was 2 and thought he did something nice for me. So I thanked him and then asked him if next time he would ask me before fixing my watch for me. Plus he put it back together, at two yrs old, pretty bright is say.
He also was going to make me breakfast one morning at there age of about 3. He was always doing something. Not always so cute though. He was abused, I believe by his foster parents, so he was in trouble A LOT. he was very smart but didn't care if he got into trouble, he lit fires , he stole things, missed school, but rarely got into fights, he did seem to find trouble though. He was also a premie , so I'm not sure how much of that played a part. He went to therapy, but would refuse to talk, most of the time. I later found out he was sexually abused by his cousin, so I'm sure that has no good effect.
I loved him dearly, I tried everything short of giving him up, he was my baby after all, but with a that I can relate to parts of the old man's story. There were times I wanted to beat some sense into him, but honestly spankings had no effect on him, plus I couldn't beat my own child like that woman did, which is why I can see that this story might be based on some truth but it is probably exaggerated quite a bit. Or it could be told from a child's point of view, like maybe this guy was discribing his own life in some fantasy child like way. Children don't see things the same way adults do.
My son would tell very huge lies about things I supposedly did to him that never happened an out right lie for sympathy from others, as he got older he found that if people felt sorry for him they would also do more for him. He wasn't destructive at home though, I mean he didn't brake things. he had a lot of friends, so not really antisocial.
When my youngest was born he just got angry and would hit him when I wasn't watching.
There were good times too, We liked to go fishing, something he got really good at and I taught him to play chess I learned the if he lost, he would try harder the next time, he got pretty good at that too. There's more, so much more, good and not so good too.
He had a wonderful laugh was talented at his profession and could be so open and insightful.
I can see someone skipping some details as raising a super hyper, troubled child can be over whelming, but you're right this story seemed too cold to be real. The mother, well I can see her going nuts over him hurting her baby, as he was almost an adult, but I think it would not have lasted that long, not do I see dad not caring at all. I understand frustration, I really do but even if I lost my temper the police would have been called, and I wouldn't have wanted him dead. I just don't see doing nothing and living in the basement either. But who knows everyone is different. I mean it's possible, but doubtful.
This is exactly how I would imagine a parent with a challenging child to write about that child. The undercurrent of love is unmistakable, but you can detail all the places that he struggled, and where you struggled with him. This is the voice that I would expect from a parent, not the one in the story.
I agree the story was way too cold
Oh boy. But why rewrap the presents instead of taking them and playing with them?
Because then I would never get them. My parents would rather throw them away as a lesson than to allow me to keep what I took prematurely. Sounds harsh, but it was a very good way to teach me delay of satisfaction.
Oh! Well that would be harsh if parents did that for the average very small child, but I'm sure yours did what was best and necessary for you. Amazing that at such a young age you were in a way already learning impulse control, I think many kids would not have thought ahead to consequences and bothered rewrapping everything.
Indeed, they recognized that it had to be dastic for it to have any effect on me at all. My currency in that situation was the presents. If I stole the currency, they currency vanished. If I didn't, I got that payoff. However, as you can see from the post, to me there was always a way around the requirements for that payoff.
I can relate to a lot of that, except for being a nightmare, I think. I was a nightmare only in my family’s eyes, what I did objectively wasn’t extreme. In the cultural environment I was raised in while there was no problem with violent and risky behavior (as long as it wasn’t really life-threatening) in children, “Let kids be kids”, in the context of family children and especially girls were expected to look up to their parents like to gods and be obedient. I was a very disobedient child, didn’t have unconditional respect or devotion to my parents, they by default were no different to me than any other people and until a certain age I was open about that and these alone were a shock to them.
I don’t remember any of that myself, but it’s a family meme that when I was 3 or 4 I once told my mom after she showed me her new heels I was curious about that when she died I would take all of her shoes. It wasn’t really nice from me, but she wasn’t offended by that, she didn’t think anything of that either, though she remembered that well. I was a wild child too and a child without a company for the most part, because other children were afraid to join me in what I wanted to do or were too afraid of the consequences. I couldn’t care less about being called a disgrace of my nation, I have only a few times gotten myself in a real trouble, though not really a legal trouble (but that can be because in the country I grew up in children under 16 are not prosecuted, and even after for that you need to commit a serious crime), but most of these times were when I was already a teenager.
Your country sounds like a place that might have been a little too lenient of a playground for the likes of me when I was a child.
Probably, but it wasn’t like parents completely ignored that behavior, they didn’t, but the attitude to it and what they did about it was a little different.
“Mom, why can’t It cross the railways when the train is coming?”
“Who told you, you can’t? You can, but only one time, because you will be smeared all over them”
It wasn’t considered abnormal, was rarely punished and most of the time I was just told safety rules or how my parents were unhappy with me doing something again, because the principal called them and having to see him was the last thing they wanted after work. But that is outside the family, when it comes to family relationships, the expectations for a child’s behavior are different.
That's a fair approximation of myself as a child. I had 20 acres with a pond on it and a large dog so I spent a good part of my time being a literal wild child. I lived the "if you can't run with the big dogs stay on the porch" lifestyle
I know exactly what you mean.
You make me wish I had more of what you had, in a way... :D As for me, I responded very differently, I'm an empath and I score low on the psychopathy scale. I have dealt with anxiety and depression instead. Instead of courage, I deal with despair and self-doubt to the point of it sabotaging all kinds of good outcomes. Fortunately even now later in life I'm beginning to understand and in small ways address the thoughts and issues with bias toward action and attention to my current environment rather than my thoughts. It is also helping me make huge strides with my EQ.
It is never too late to reevaluate our function in the world. I do this as well. It is very useful.
The way that man spoke about his supposed child is horrifying.
My child is autistic, highly intelligent, and has a severe brain chemical imbalance that is treated with medication. At almost 10, she's growing into a wonderful person and I enjoy being with her. Before her imbalance was discovered our lives were not so nice.
She had some issues with eye contact and sleeping from the beginning, but being an autistic man myself and her primary caregiver, I wasn't sure what to expect, as she is my only child. I expressed concern to her doctor, but they said wait and see. She started showing significant signs of separation anxiety and we were assured this was normal and would pass, we did everything we could to comfort her, even sleeping with an arm in her crib and thus getting little sleep ouselves. We also had to keep her in mittens from the time she was a few weeks old or she would claw up her face and arms with her finger nails, she has a small scar on her nose to this day from when she slipped a mittens off before I could get to her and scratched her nose bloody. I was horrified seeing her damaging her face, so became extra watchful of her mittens from then on.
Starting at around 1 her anxiety over any separation reached a peak, I couldn't
even use the bathroom without her freaking out. She would throw up from her anxiety and I started leaving the door open so she could hear me talk to her. Around this time, she also became aggressive, and destructive. We took her to doctors, specialists, everyone, trying to understand this drastic shift. They told us to try going out and coming in again to help her see we weren't going anywhere and to redirect her when she became aggressive.
I was home with her 24/7 so I knew she was being loved and treated well, but her behavior continued to escalate. At 2, I was reading her a story, showed her the picture and asked what she thought and was promptly punched in the eye. By 3, she started refusing to sleep, tearing her room apart, screaming, and biting, hitting and kicking. Her doctor prescribed a low dose of melatonin to help her sleep, which took the 3 hour time down to 30 minutes.
Around 3.5 she started screaming as if in pain and nothing we did could console her. We rushed her to a gi doctor asap. She was diagnosed with reflux and the medication eased her pain. Her aggressive behavior though grew more intense. From 3.5-6.5 I was bitten, kicked, hit, screamed at, and chased with anything she could pick up on a daily basis. She even tried to stab me with a letter opener once. We took her to every therapist, doctor, and specialist we could find, nothing helped and many times we considered finding a care facility for her, but we were determined to keep her home because we love our daughter and wanted her to grow up with her parents.
Through all this, I never stopped loving my child. Walking around with black eyes, bite marks, and my nose broken 3 times, I never stopped loving her. Finally at 6.5 she was diagnosed with the chemical imbalance, and was given medication to correct it. By this point she had developed extreme phobias of things she'd done thousands of times before and was experiencing paranoid delusions. I fought tooth and nail to get her that medication.
After a few weeks on the medication, it was like she was a different child. Her anxiety drastically decreased and became manageable with therapy techniques she had refused before. Her aggression faded until it became a rare occurrence. She started showing genuine joy more often than we'd seen in years.
What we went through as a family was harrowing and if we'd been unable to help her, I would have placed my daughter in a care facility and visited every day, but never would I have stopped loving her.
For anyone to be as cold as that man was about his supposed son, it would have to be as you said either fiction or written by a malicious abuser. No decent parent could talk about their child like he did.
This. This is why I am inclined to believe that the story if not a true one.
How you describe your daughter is what I would expect from a parent. Through all the trials and hardships, the love and concern is very evident. How you speak about what you have had to go through to get her to the best life possible rings of a parent's love. The focus is on her, and what you could do to make her life better. You clearly love her, and are willing to do whatever is necessary for her.
I certainly hope it's fiction because if by some slim possibility it were true, this is a man and woman who should not have been allowed to interact with society. They're dangerous and abusive and obviously lack any desire to change.
Thank you, I appreciate your kind words. I'm thankful to say she consistently tells me she feels loved and doesn't remember much before the medication, which doctors said is likely due to the chemical imbalance, so she doesn't seem to be negatively impacted by the stress of her early years.
A cute kid. Reminds me of my younger sister, except I ws a teenager when she was a nightmare, so I did not have the patience and tact to deal with it. Now she's a teenager and I'm an adult and she's one of my favorite people. Still a nightmare to some people, but a lot more fun.
Good that she grew up
No, my mom was quite capable. What made it far more easy however, was that she left off all the decorations, so I didn't have to deal with anything shy following the lines that were folded into the paper. I was a very precocious child. The gift thing was probably the least eyebrow raising thing I did.