How do you teach empathy to someone that doesn't care??

(((RaindropVampire))),

I think you got a lot of good responses here to your question. What I would suggest is to maybe copy this thread and share it with the mother of this child. The worst thing to do is remain "ignorant" and be "afraid" and do nothing to help this child.
She needs to "learn" about what this behavior means and not to think this child is just going to be taken away somehow. There is more knowledge and help out there than there used to be. And this child can be helped more than if she just continues to allow these behavior patterns to grow and even gain control over the family itself.

I wish that had happened in my family, my older brother struggled and there was so little known back then and he was just disciplined heavily and unfortunately it made him worse. I paid dearly for that and it did really disrupt our family environment. Everyone suffered and now there is so much more help so that doesn't happen.

Open Eyes

ASPD is heavily behavioral based but on the other hand, psychopathy is interlinked with possible abnormal brain structures and there have been studies that the psychopathic brain is simply, different.. psychopathy is clinical astonishment in neurology and psychiatry because they are finding something new all the time; though most are based on beliefs/theories of results.

As Shayatancia stated; the majority of psychopaths have ASPD whilst ASPD do not have psychopathy.

The term "sociopath" is far too ambiguous and is not consensual, there are far too many interpretations. I believe "sociopath" relates to: upbringing, experience and environmental roles and its displacement.. I do not believe that sociopaths have an operating conscience but choose to ignore it (that's another interpretation of "sociopathy").

Take a read of the links below explaining abnormalities.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14609889

http://neurologicalcorrelates.com/wo...ght-hand-side/

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...1122230903.htm

Open Eyes printing all this out and giving it to her may help but then do I leave it all in intact and let her know that I'm the one who called CPS? Do I just level and put it on the table that if she doesn't get him help then I will continue to call CPS every time he injures one of the other kids? I'm just so tired and wore down right now I don't know if I can have that fight without causing some real hurt feelings. Part of me just wants to say **** it write them off and forget it. The other part sees how much of this could be helped if someone cared enough to do something.

Photoshop does wonders!! Just cut out the text, copy & paste some of the "white area" so it matches the same shade, then add in the message in the same font/colour without the bit about you calling CPS. That way you might still make a difference & she's less likely to reject it with that little detail right there... Make sure you remove this post, though.

Your relative has a responsibility to her other children too, She just can't keep protecting the bad son. I think getting help for him would be much more productive than just trying to hide his problems. Sound to me like she is not only scared of him but scared of much more! I don't know if calling CPS is the answer though sometimes they make matters worse. I just pray he gets the professional help he needs it would benefit everyone involved. Just my thoughts take them or leave em!

Does he have a father figure in the house at all? Just curious.......

If her fear is that they would take him away maybe you could consult with a psychiatrist or therapist to see how they would asess him and treat him and maybe they could add how they have been successful with other children. Maybe that would ease her mind a little and get the wheels turning that her household could maybe be a happier place. The longer she waits the harder he will be at responding to any kind of treatment. Give her a crap load of info...

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk 2

Well, I understand how you might feel overwhelmed here. I have to be honest that I was in a situation where I was the only one strong enough to stand up to what I was seeing as "child neglect and endangerment". The other people around the situation chose to "ignore" it and think "their problem, not mine".

But I can tell you that my whole childhood (I was the youngest of three) from so very little, I was aware of the "threat of my older brother". And I have terrible flashbacks when I was even in my crib.
I didn't ever think I would be able to have that happen and that I would remember those experiences as they come forward now.

This mother is so focused on this child that she is just not seeing how his threatening presence is going to affect the other children. THEY KNOW and it is already CAUSING DAMAGE. I had that happen in my family, my parents didn't realize how much my brother's unpredictable behavior was affecting me and even my older sister. And my brother's problems turned into CSA for me. I was terrified to tell, because I felt he would Kill me.

By this mother allowing this situation to continue she is teaching the other children that it is "ok" to have to live with such a threat in the home.

Every single time I have a confrontation, there is a part of me that is terrified. I have felt all my life that I had to find some way of "hiding happiness" and that if I was happy, it would only be a matter of time before it would be taken from me. And what I learned from my childhood was that I had to "hide" my real feelings somehow and that I had to learn to "accept" abuse. I also learned that I had to find my own ways of "fixing" my brother and that included giving into CSA. Or, I had to find hiding places and learned to climb trees and sit for hours until my mother came home to get away from my brother. That was my whole childhood, had to find ways to be safe somehow.
That is what children learn when parents allow the threat to continue to be in the environment.

Sigh, what I have been going through the past five years alone has brought back so many years of suffering abuse and being afraid and feeling powerless.

You can tell this mother for me that it is terrible to ask a child to grow up feeling terrified like this because a sibling is so dangerous and unpredictable.

I have had psychiatrists and therapists tell me how intelligent I am.
Well, I never felt that way at all and now I look back at a little girl that ALWAYS WAS AFRAID AND NEVER FELT SAFE. My T tells me about "the gifted child" and WHY DID IT HAVE TO BE SO WASTED?

I just never expected that I would ever relive my past like this with PTSD. And I have been misunderstood ALL MY LIFE. And I never truely talked about MY SECRET ABOUT HOW I DID THINGS TO TRY TO FEEL SAFE around a child that WAS SO DANGEROUS AND UNPREDICTABLE.

Something that was very important to me was taken from me five years ago. And people just don't understand how SO VERY IMPORTANT it was to me. I should just get "over it and deal" and find a way to move on. And I am stuck, something that was "happiness to me" was destroyed. No one gets why I struggle with so much anger, remorse, and feel so violated. I can't even believe I am stuck with a lawyer that is so dismissive and he is old and makes mistakes and I am at the point where I am trying to put together a demand for all my losses. And I have been struggling to do it and I could not figure out why, every time I go near the paperwork, I fall into someplace dark and depressing. I am sitting here writing this and recognizing how deep it really goes for me. I have been in this lawsuit for so many years now and stuck with this lawyer who makes me feel so worthless and all he thinks about is himself and how he is trying to hold onto his profession even though he forgets and shakes so much he can't even grab a piece of paper. I am afraid that I will lose and be told that the "happiness" that I managed to grab onto WAS WORTHLESS and that the people that destroyed it and were careless and so intrusive and disrespectful can just be permitted to be that way, just like my brother. Five years I have been forced to sit with so much trama and how I have to learn to "accept the system" and keep quite somehow. It is so much like my childhood and I see how much the person that hurt me is the one that is "protected".

Well, I don't mean to get into all about me. But "please" stand up for the other children. They just don't deserve to have to live in fear. This mother has to see that instead of just putting her focus on trying to protect this one child that presents so much danger she has to get help and also protect the other children that don't have the ability to understand and protect themselves in this situation.


Open Eyes

I agree this whole family is in need of professional help.
The emotion Fear is running this house and this child has been allowed/taught to hold the keys by abusive/violent behavior.
Before calling this child a monster in the making or incouragable I would have to put the responsability on the parents.
The mother needs help indeed to press a reset button and gain control.
This boy has no boundaries and has not been shown appropriate emotional responses to human behavior good/bad. This boy needs an adult male in his life to teach him how to be a good boy. I'm sure deep inside he is not happy and probably fearful.
Try to tell your friend that social service workers are there to help. Their goals are to keep families intact and will offer resourses and sevices to make families better. Cps is there mostly to protect children from abusive parents.

I also wanted to add that if a mother protects a child that is a potential harm like this and sympathizes with him/her, she teaches the other children to feel as though they should do the same.

I would have to say that as I think back, I can remember my mother struggling to understand how to love my brother. There were always fights between my parents about my brother. And it goes ALL THE WAY BACK FOR ME.

I remember being only three years old and on the swings "trying to enjoy my childhood" when my brother and the boy next door pulled me off the swing and pulled me into a shed where no one could see. And it was my brother who wanted to "share" his "victim" with this other boy. And they took off all my clothes and were staring at me. And all I could think about was if now it would be two boys climbing on me, holding me down and doing what my brother did to me that I had no way of understanding. My whole childhood I was constantly frightened and had to endure way too much. I never felt "safe".

I am just trying to give you "reason" to convince this mother to take action and get help for this distrubed child before the other children have to suffer anymore. Before the other children seeing the mother protecting this one child will learn to feel that they have to somehow do the same.

No child should have to grow up like that. This situation should be handled by professionals that can work with this troubled child and also the mother that is trying to care about this child. There is proof that so much more is known now about troubled children just by what other posters here have presented for you shows that. It is important for this mother to get the right advice in how to help her child that is such a challenge to her and the family.

When I joined PC, I wanted to know "why" I was so misunderstood. And I can't 'BELIEVE" what I am learning about myself. I was a good mother myself, I made sure my daughter never addressed things I lived through. About a month ago she looked at me "so self assured and strong and independant" and said, "Mom, you and I are "polar opposites". And she is right more than she will ever know because I gave her everything I didn't have, and the right to just be happy.

Open Eyes

Somebody has got to do something....the hamster-killer has serious issues. Time will tell what he ends up doing next if there is no intervention. No hard and fast rules, but killing a pet is NOT normal.
Does the kid wet his bed or set fires? If so...well, I think we can expect worse things to come.

Just how much is this mom willing to rationalize?? Scary...

The closest thing to a father figure he has is my husband. My husband is schizophrenic so not always the best person to be around. On good days he's great. On bad days I even try to keep the pets out of his way. He's never been violent he just goes on rants and gets very paranoid. He'll have screaming episodes because he will swear we're trying to drive him crazy. He swears we're talking about him to other people or he'll believe we had a conversation that didn't occur. If he mentions something from the conversation and I'm honest and tell him I don't remember that then meltdown. It's been much better since they put him on Saphris but still not the most stable father figure a troubled boy could have. I think I will print out a redacted version of this thread and let her read it. I will also get some literature for her from my brother's therapist and ask her what she thinks would happen if he went into therapy. That is a good suggestion maybe if she heard from an actual therapist what treatment would entail it would help. But I am going to stick to my guns on the CPS. Any more bite marks or bruises on the the baby and I call. Anymore stitches, bruises(not caused from normal play), bites, broken bones, black eyes etc on his older brother and I will call. Hell maybe I should not make it anonymous next time. Tell them that I'm a family member and tell them all my concerns. Maybe they'd actually do something this time or force her to get him help. Sooner or later she'd have to forgive me.