Is there a name for this?

I have a grandson that is 11 years old, I'll call him Billy. For the past month I have been noticing certain things he has been saying that is starting to make me concerned. He has one brother that is 8 and 2 sisters that are 2 and 4. First I thought it was just jealousy, but the more I hear it the more it sounds like this is a problem.

He makes statements like this:

1. We are driving in a car with all the kids, and he says "How long would you blame yourself and feel guilty, if the girls' door opened and they fell out in the street while you were driving and they got hit and died?"

2. The very next week he says, while driving: "If the girls were not wearing their seat belts and we got in a crash, would they go thru the windshield?"

3. The younger boy I will call Fred. The school called last week and said Fred was having a seizure at school, so we got there as they were putting him in an ambulance. I picked Billy up from school, and he had already heard about what happened, and he started quizzing me, about "how his mother took the news, was she upset, did she cry when I told her, was she driving and had to pull over to keep from having an accident?", was she upset, and on and on, until I told him we re not going to talk about it now and I left it at that.

4. When ever anything bad happens he will wait for you to pull up and run out to you to tell you the "bad news" first, before anyone and watch your reactions.

5. Today when getting in the car, I told the girls to get in on the passenger side, because there was a teenager running up and down the street on a little moped, and I didn't want them in the street. Billy then proceeds to call the girls out in the street to get in from the street side when he just heard me tell them NOT to get in that side of the car. I got the girls and put them in on the passenger side.

It is like he gets pleasure telling bad news and watching someones reaction to it or enjoys watching someone hurt or in pain. There are a lot more incidents, but I think you can get the gist with just these.

Is there a term for this issue, I thought it might be sadism, but so far it doesn't involve sex or violence. We can't be the only one with this issue. Is this something to be concerned about?

I don’t have children myself and I don’t have a lot of experience with children, but maybe I can offer some insight.

It is always hard to read a child’s mind and try to understand their intentions. In his mind, he might be trying to gauge an idea of right and wrong and consequences of situations gone wrong. Maybe he has a curiosity for understanding death. I remember a period when I was a young kid, I questioned life and I remember looking at my body and wondering why I had one and what would happen if it were gone. I remember I kept pestering my mother with questions, “Why am I alive?” and “What if I wasn’t here tomorrow?” Although these questions may be considered mild to what your grandson is saying, it is an example of how adults may misconstrue questions to mean something totally different.

Regardless, I would approach this situation with caution, because curiosity or not, there is a sure sign that he is letting the wrong kind of thoughts consume his mind. Has anyone tried to talk to him about what he says? Have they tried to grasp a better understanding of his actions or questions by actually asking him why he is doing what he is doing or why he is curious?

My next thought is maybe he sees an opportunity for attention through negative situations. Some kids are desperate for some form of attention from their parents and sometimes they do bad things to get it. Sometimes that is the only attention a child gets, sadly!

I’m not sure to what extent this has played out, but if his behavior continues and your efforts do not help the situation, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to seek counseling for him.

Is it possible that he has been exposed to some kind of violence (eg on tv) that has caused him to 'obsess' for want of a better word about death because he doesn't quite know what to make of it? Perhaps sit with him and ask him next time he says something like that why he suggests such things, but not in a way that will make him feel ashamed. Or perhaps ask next time he questions that sort of thing in the car whether or not he has ever seen that sort of thing before and what his feelings of it were (for example if he asks about others falling out of the car and dying and how you would feel, ask him how he thinks you would feel if that happened, or ask him how HE would feel if that happened).