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Can kids be psychopaths?

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I was in a facebook group that supports people who are trying to go no contact with toxic family members, because I do have quite a few toxic people in my family.  A woman posted that she was “no contact” with her 14 year old son. She placed him in a facility for violent behavior and said he was a clinically diagnosed psychopath.  I’ve heard people talk this way about their kids before. They will pick mental health diagnoses that seem the most insulting and say their kids are clinically diagnosed with these things, mainly psychopathy.  But a quick google search will tell you that individuals aren’t given this diagnosis until age 18. It’s not even an actual diagnosis- the correct diagnosis is antisocial personality disorder.  It’s likely this kid was acting in self defense against physically abusive parents, and had now been abandoned.  All of the comments were in support of the mother. As soon as I posted these three screenshots from Google, I was kicked out of ...
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Kids Deserve to be in Public Spaces

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 This post was shared via  Jordanna Lamb .  Children are allowed to exist in public spaces.  They are allowed to dine out with their families.  They are allowed to use public transportation.  They are allowed to go grocery shopping with the family.  You are entitled to a child-free lifestyle, but not a child-free existence. Children will inevitably be present around you.  They require exposure to social settings in order to learn how to navigate them effectively. Children are young individuals just trying to figure out this life thing.  People often forget that they themselves were children at one point. They were loud, disruptive, annoying at times.  They cried in public, they threw tantrums. That’s how we learn, that’s how we grow. Children will not learn if they are never given the chance to experience it for themselves. Then there was this comment: The only place I’ve ever had to do this was at my old workplace, The Children's Museum...
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Infant Survival Swimming

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A while back, I blogged about The Judah Brown Project .  Listening to Judah’s mom educate about infant survival swimming has gotten me thinking about it quite a bit. As a mom and someone who worked with kids before motherhood, everything about ISR seems counterintuitive to what I was taught. As a young person working in a daycare, the extent of any water play we were ever allowed to do was running through a sprinkler. We were taught that a child can drown in an inch of water.  And  they can! But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that many times the things I was taught as a young person were wrong. Floatation devices give kids a false sense of security in the water.  We were taught that they are absolutely necessary, though!  It’s weird to think of something that we were taught was so necessary and life saving could actually give a child a false sense of security and therefore lead to their death. This is what happened to Judah Brown.  ISR is not without co...
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Missing children who might be alive

  When news broke in 2009 that a 29 year old woman named   Jaycee Dugard   had been found alive after being missing since she was 11, I thought it was wonderful. I also thought it was a fluke. When it comes to missing children, we are always told that they die within about 72 hours of going missing. Everyone tells me that “statistically” they do. I have not found solid statistics about this, though.   Four years later in 2013,  three young women  were rescued from their abductor’s home in Cleveland. Just like Jaycee, they were all assumed to be dead. Their rescue was major news, because it was three of them instead of just one. The Cleveland abductions were what led me to discover several more individuals who were found alive after being missing for a considerable period of time. Some examples are Shawn Hornbeck, who was missing for over four years when found alive; Elizabeth Smart, missing for 9 months; Steven Stayner, missing for 7 years when found alive,...
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Empowering Abilities

  Yesterday I purchased an ebook called   Empowering Abilities by Jeanine Leech . It’s a very easy read and goes through the basics of special education advocacy for many different diagnoses. You can also check out   Jeanine’s Website  I am not the biggest fan of the school system, but it does exist, and advocacy is needed for kids who struggle. I was one of those kids- I struggled in school immensely. I was diagnosed as being ADHD when I was 43, and suddenly my entire life made sense. But I graduated from high school in 1996- too soon for the no child left behind act. Even with the no child left behind act, children with disabilities and differences face a lot of discrimination from teachers and school staff.  In my opinion, an ideal world would consist of every man, woman and child everywhere just following their passions and interests all day. Yes, this would lead to learning and income earning! But for now, I’d like to do a deep dive into what “would have be...
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The Judah Brown Project

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  On a 90 minute drive last week, I listened to   this episode   of the Suffer the Little Children Podcast. The host, Laine, took a break from talking about child abuse to talk about water safety. She interviewed a woman named Christi Brown who is the founder of   The Judah Brown Project . It was named after her son who died at age 3 in 2016 from an accidental drowning. Photo of Judah Brown taken from the Judah Brown project webpage linked above  Similar to car seat safety, it seems like so many recommendations have changed since I started working with children and since I had a small child. We used to swear by “floaties”! But as it turns out, floaties in pools tend to give children a false sense of security.  She talked about teaching infants as young as 6 months old “survival swimming”, which I had seen videos of before, and it gave me an anxiety attack!   Here  is an example of an infant survival swimming lesson. Please don’t try this at h...
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Threatening is emotional abuse

  Two days ago, I was at a convenience store. A woman was trying to get her young child to use the restroom. The child, who looked to be about five or six years old, insisted he didn’t have to go. The mother got visibly enraged and told him, “You better go in and try right now, before I start popping!” By “popping”, she meant she was going to physically hit him if he didn’t go to the bathroom.   The importance of listening to kids when they verbalize their bathroom needs is a topic for another day, but her statement about “Popping” was actually a threat. If anyone told you or I they’d physically hit us if we didn’t have to go to the bathroom, we could press charges for threatening. Threatening a child is a  Textbook form of emotional abuse 
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