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

[CakeGrrl]

75. I think some behaviors are beyond the control of parenting.

I believe there are simply 'bad seeds' once in a while - there's simply something wrong in that individual's mental makeup that all the counseling/therapy in the world won't fix.

There have been a number of movie and TV interpretations of the concept. I recall "The Good Son" with Macaulay Culkin as the manipulative, murderous child. In that instance, he was finally stopped by his mother, who realized that he was beyond reasonable efforts to rehabilitate him. It was either him or a number of other lives (including her own) if he wasn't stopped.

I also believe that there are plenty of people who may see signs of that kind of problem in a child or other close relative and simply go into denial about the implications. The idea of spending the time, expending the effort or spending the money to try to deal with it is more than they want to or can handle. The problem is that there's no Hollywood-style, consequence-free remedy to a dangerous situation.