Can You Call a 9-Year-Old a Psychopath?

[laundry_queen]

45. Here's what I see.

And really, unless you've lived in a dysfunctional family, it's really difficult to spot. SO many families 'look' normal on the outside but AREN'T. I spotted many red flags, but I don't think most people would see those things as being of any consequence. The parents are basically reinforcing their son's bad behavior, and enabling their other sons' to trigger the behavior in the oldest child. The whole dynamic seems fucked up to me (read downthread where I talk about scapegoat/goldenchild which is a common dynamic in dysfunctional families).

I also disagree that the child gets sent away for being 'bad'. Basically banished from the family. Why isn't the family in intense therapy? Even if, by chance, the family is TOTALLY normal, there is always room for improvement on how they deal with their children. Not every kid is the same and some parenting that seems 'normal' and works fine on most kids might not work on other kids. It most certainly wouldn't hurt the parents to try to change their parenting to help that one child. Instead, they seem to just want to blame the one child for everything and that they are not also doing heavy duty therapy (at least they don't say they are) or taking ANY responsibility says more to me than anything else in the article.