posted
Warning: Both of the following links contain potentially offensive language.
In Monday's news post Gabe, the artist of Penny Arcade, comments on the CNN article about teens beating and killing homeless people that we've been talking about on another thread. Gabe's post is over the top, reacting to the the quote from one of the boys that the killing was like playing a violent video game, and saying that the articles about cases like this one try to lay blame on video games but never question the lessons the child should have learned from their parents, or address the possibility that the kid might just be crazy, and the games had nothing to do with it. The post is below two posts by Tycho, you'll have to scroll down a bit if you go read it.
Today, Gabe's post started with this:
quote:Yesterday I made a post about the teenagers that murdered the homeless guy and then blamed it on violent games. These kids have given the media their angle and just like all the other cases where games are mentioned no one will ever look any further. No one will ask what their family life was like, what their parents were like, what the kid was like before all this happened. Games did it and that’s the end of the story.
In my post I took the absolute extreme opposite approach. I laid blame completely on the parents and that was intentional. Penny Arcade is a satire site and people come here to laugh or get angry and that’s what we try to provide. I will admit that deep down as the father of a two year old I also want to believe that I as a parent can shape my kid into a decent human being. If I don’t believe that then…well I just have to believe that right now.
With that said I’m perfectly aware that the reality of the situation was somewhere between the two extremes. I know full well that violent games did not create this killer and I also know that his parents did not make him a murderer. Nothing outside of a comic strip and a goofy blog is ever that simple.
The sad truth is that the reality we’re talking about here would probably never actually see the light of day. The media will tell the story they want to tell regardless and that story will be about violent games. The parents of these kids will be lucky to get two lines in an article about the crime. If they tell a reporter that their son hardly played games or that he was f*****d up long before they bought a Playstation do you really think that will make it into the final article? You’d never see that side of the story, not in a million years.
He then goes on to say that he had received an e-mail after his post from Monday, from a Penny Arcade reader who also is the stepmother of one of the boys in the article. With her permission, he posted the entire e-mail.
quote:We tried absolutely everything we could think of to get him to behave like a normal human being… we tried groundings, negative reinforcement / punishment, positive reinforcement, counseling, and anything and everything the counselors suggested. We tried to get him interested and involved in extracurricular activities, like hockey, drama, music, art, anything, but he got himself kicked out of every group he was in with his “make me” attitude. When we would ground him, we took away everything. No TV, no computer, no phone, no leaving the house, no snacks or junk food…. Everything. When he was grounded, he was only allowed to sit in his room and read or draw. He was actually a pretty good artist, and we tried to encourage him to spend his time working with his talent. He would just sit there and take it… the groundings had absolutely no affect on him at all. Most of the time, he didn’t even remember why he was being grounded. At the end of it, we would ask him if it was worth it to have everything taken away in exchange for what he did… he usually just shrugged. He could be grounded for weeks, or a month at a time, and then the very next day would do something to get back in trouble again. Most kids get grounded or punished a couple of times, and then they want to avoid having to go through it again… not this kid, nothing seemed to phase him.
And we’re not talking the usual teenager stuff, like coming home late, or refusing to do the dishes. We’re talking stealing cars, setting fires, drinking, getting picked up for drugs, beating up handicapped kids at school (yes, really) stealing things out of our house… all with this “I’ll do whatever the f*** I want” attitude.
We had absolutely no idea what else we could do. We already had him in counseling, and we did everything the counselors suggested. We tried rewarding his good behavior (what little there was) to try to get him to see that when he behaves like a normal human being, things are good and people enjoy being around him. Nothing phased him at all.
He then started telling people at school that they abused him. They were investigated multiple times, until he left their home and went to live with his mother, where things got even worse. She tried to get the police to jail him when they picked him up, but they just brought him home. She tried to get a restraining order against him, because he threatened her and brought loaded weapons into the house, as well as drug dealers and gang members, and she couldn't get one because he was a minor.
quote:The night that he and his friends murdered that poor homeless man, the mother said that he was acting particularly cocky. Then he threatened to kill her. We had absolutely no idea of what he had done until they found the man’s body. He was immediately waived into adult court (at 15) and sentenced to 15 years. We were all absolutely sick with grief for this man.
We were also sick with guilt… “What could we have done differently?” was a constant question in all of our heads. After the kid was sentenced, all the cops, counselors, social workers, and people at the school that had been dealing with him contacted us and his mother and apologized for not taking us seriously. They are all trained to take all accusations of child abuse seriously, and as a part of that they blindly took the kid’s side for everything, and dismissed us as “the lying abusers”. Many of them told us that they wished they would have taken our pleas for help seriously. Everyone thought we were exaggerating about how f****d up this kid was.
The entire post is here, and is really worth reading.
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
I read it, and I wish the news channels and papers and such would dig into stuff like this. I hate the "let's blame some scapegoat and be done with it" thing.
Posts: 1960 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
One very messed up kid, that is certain. Makes me wonder what his parents' divorce was like. (Mostly because I worry about how my kids have been affected.)
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
You might be interested in this part, rivka:
quote:If you want to add another element to the “nature vs. nurture” idea, this boy has a brother. Both boys were raised in the same house, with the same values. The brother has developed into a kind, considerate, responsible, and independent young man. He is currently working his butt off right now to save up money to go to school for architecture. The only thing I regret is that we spent so much time and energy dealing with the bad kid that this boy missed out on having a normal family life with a normal sibling relationship.
The people picked out by the criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder (which is only diagnosed in people at least 18, but it seems where this young man was headed) do not seem to have bad experiences early in life that can be picked out as reasons (not poverty, not divorce, not even having been abused) that are consistently correlated. It seems, at least in many of them, just to be something they were born without, like that part of the brain doesn't function.
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
I thought it was believed that there were several environmental triggers (like divorce and abuse) of that disorder?
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
There is nothing that seems to be a consistent correlation, other than genetics, as far as I understand. There have been reports in the literature, but there is nothing consistently replicated throughout multiple formal studies (AFAIK). It does seem that acting out in younger kids ("Conduct Disorder") is at least somewhat correlated with some environmental factors, such as abuse, and Conduct Disorder does put you at risk for APD (again, only diagnosed at 18yo or older). But of those kids who go on to fit the criteria for APD, genetics seems to be the only consistent correlation. At least, that is my understanding of the literature.
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
And it is not my area, so I could easily be wrong. I will read up on recent reviews and meta-analyses tonight.
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Edited to add: Here is the abstract of a recent review on the topic in one of the most well-respected journals in the field, the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry:
quote: J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2006 Mar-Apr;47(3-4):262-76. Blair RJ, et al
"The development of psychopathy."
The current review focuses on the construct of psychopathy, conceptualized as a clinical entity that is fundamentally distinct from a heterogeneous collection of syndromes encompassed by the term 'conduct disorder'. We will provide an account of the development of psychopathy at multiple levels: ultimate causal (the genetic or social primary cause), molecular, neural, cognitive and behavioral. The following main claims will be made: (1) that there is a stronger genetic as opposed to social ultimate cause to this disorder. The types of social causes proposed (e.g., childhood sexual/physical abuse) should elevate emotional responsiveness, not lead to the specific form of reduced responsiveness seen in psychopathy; (2) The genetic influence leads to the emotional dysfunction that is the core of psychopathy; (3) The genetic influence at the molecular level remains unknown. However, it appears to impact the functional integrity of the amygdala and orbital/ventrolateral frontal cortex (and possibly additional systems); (4) Disruption within these two neural systems leads to impairment in the ability to form stimulus-reinforcement associations and to alter stimulus-response associations as a function of contingency change. These impairments disrupt the impact of standard socialization techniques and increase the risk for frustration-induced reactive aggression respectively.
Here, "psychopathy" is roughly equivalent to APD.
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
APD is a carefully defined term, whereas "psychopathy" and "sociopathy" are not as tightly defined. They also are used colloquially as well. So, depending on who uses the terms and in what contexts, they may or may not be equivalent.
This is why the standardization of definitions and criteria has been emphasized in the more recent versions of the DSM. it helps to know what it is we are talking about, and whether that is the same. In the above abstract, I believe they are trying to pick out the same set of people as who are picked out by the APD criteria, roughly.
(I say roughly because I recall there is some controversy in the literature about the APD criteria, anyway, as the APD criteria include a requirement of diagnosable CD in prior childhood. However, there are adults who would otherwise be considers "psychopathic" or "sociopathic" who fail to meet the CD childhood criteria; i.e., they would be diagnosable with APD otherwise. I am not sure what to make of this, and I'm not sure what the experts in the field make of this.
Regardless, this young man sounds like he is out at the extreme end of CD, moving into an APD diagnosis, and that is not the sort of kid just created by a painful divorce experience, as far as I know. (although that can be a very traumatic experience for a kid, it doesn't seem to be enough for this level of inhumanity, as it were)
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
APD seems to have genetics as its highest predictive correlate. That isn't exactly what you said, but it is a fair summary of what I said.
I don't think there is a consensus on what it exactly is, but there is a lot of research on identifying risk factors.
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
I've heard the numbers 1 in 25 people thrown around quite a bit in relation to both ADP and sociopathology. Do you(CT) think that's a realistic assesment of the prevelance of some sort of sociopathic disorder in the general population?
Posts: 499 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
I don't know enough to know what I don't know in this area, much less offer an opinion on a matter of fact here. That seems high to me, but that's a guess, not speaking from specific knowledge.
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Just checked. eMedicine lists APD at about 3% of the general male population, 1% for women. That sounds more reasonable (but again, I am measuring against my best guess), and eMedicine is a generally reliable peer-reviewed resource.
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
So about 4% of the general population? I find this subject fascinating. I've read many pop psychology books on it, and am starting to get my grubby little hands on more substantial articles and books addressing it. Thanks for the link. I'll enjoy going through it. Posts: 499 | Registered: Mar 2004
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I was under the impression that "psychopathy" was not a diagnosis, but a colloquial umbrella term for any kind of disconnect with reality.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
I know Rivka. I was checking to see if you were on your toes. Apparently you are maintaining your ever vigilant crusade against mathmatical incorrectness. Good on you. Carry on.
Posts: 499 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
Dont be silly. One should never be sorry for spreading the joy of correctness in this world. It's why I make it my duty to make silly mistakes every now and then. It highlights the importance of fact checking. I'm so self-sacrificing.
Posts: 499 | Registered: Mar 2004
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Edited to add: Aha! Icarus, I wonder if you could be thinking of "psychosis," which is indeed a broad term referencing a break with reality. Different word with different referent set, though.
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
There's nothing like this kid in my family, but it's funny to me sometimes to look at how different my siblings and I are from each other. There are four of us, and we really couldn't be more different while still being law-abiding. It isn't how we were raised - that was the same. There are three boys that could be very different families, they all look and act and choose so differently. I don't know how much genetics does influence behavior, but it has to be a whopping amount.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
That's really tragic for the family. They tried to help their kid, but they couldn't. Is there anything one can do to help a kid with that sort of pathology?
Posts: 3060 | Registered: Nov 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Phanto: That's really tragic for the family. They tried to help their kid, but they couldn't. Is there anything one can do to help a kid with that sort of pathology?
That is currently the million-dollar question.
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
I have a friend who grew up with a psychopathic brother who abused him constantly. It got so bad that my friend, at age 11 or 12, actually tried to seriously hurt his brother in an Ender-like way to make it stop.
The brother still managed to function in society, if for no other reason than the fact that it worked out better for him to do so. My friend actually had an interesting story about when the two of them were both late adolescents. My friend came home after a night out with his friends, and starting regaling his brother with stories of his exploits. His brother suddenly stopped and made a weird realization. "You mean ... you DO STUFF when you're not with me?" As they talked, it came out that his brother had simply never conceived of the idea that my friend had his own life. He apparently lived in a completely solipsist universe, where he was the only "real" person, and everyone else was just a prop.
Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
Wow. This kind of thing frightens me because my oldest has exhibited that same kind of resistance to punishment-- nothing was working at all and he was just doing things with no explanation or reason. He was not doing anything horrible, though, just refusing to do his work in class, humming loudly, and, when angered, being disrespectful to his teachers. I think the worst thing he did was tell one of his teachers that her insistence that he not read comic books in class was "idiotic."
When I latched on to the latter behavior and asked him why he doesn't ever treat me like that, he said, "because you'll spank me if I do."
So I'm thinking great, the only thing I've taught my kids to respect is someone who can beat them.
Talk about feeling like a squalidly bad parent.
Fortunately, in my case, I seem to have found the key for my kid-- immediate feedback. Apparently the disconnect time of waiting for the good (or bad) consequences of his behavior was enough to prevent them from working. Now, I've got his teachers e-mailing me the same day if he acts out in class and, if he doesn't, he gets a reward when I get home with a bonus weekend reward if he behaves all week. Apparently that fits in his attention span or whatever you want to call it, because his grades are way up and his behavior has been much more in line.
But for a few weeks there I was seriously frightened at the way my son wouldn't respond to any form of discipline outside of immediate threat of corporal punishment. I think I'd have a serious breakdown if it had gone on for much longer.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
I'm really glad this woman spoke up and that PA ran the email. I already posted that I resented the "video game" comment seemingly dropped in the article, but then again I could not say for certain there was no correlation. Video games right now pretty much fill the same niche as the, "temporary insanity plea" used to. I hope it it starts getting thrown out as soon as possible in court, its a ridiculous defense IMO.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
It is so sad that the police would not even take the mother seriously when she was pleading for protection from her son.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
It should be noted that just as the news article may be biased against video games, this parent may also be biased from her perspective - in fact, probably even more so.
She does say that she more or less has reached the point of "hating" the kid. We can only really speculate about exactly what has been the relationship he had with his parents over his life so far, but I think it is at least possible that the feelings that developed in that relationship over time may have undermined any and all attempts to help the kid.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Tresopax: It should be noted that just as the news article may be biased against video games, this parent may also be biased from her perspective - in fact, probably even more so.
She does say that she more or less has reached the point of "hating" the kid. We can only really speculate about exactly what has been the relationship he had with his parents over his life so far, but I think it is at least possible that the feelings that developed in that relationship over time may have undermined any and all attempts to help the kid.
You had me until, "- in fact, probably even more so."
I was under the impression from the other thread and the news article that this kid was, "middle-class, no history of bad behavior or criminality, suddenly does this"
From the in laws email it sounds like this kid was bad news for a long time.
Penny Arcade is read by many people but it isn't a nationally recognized media outlet.
I think the news article stands to gain more from making the story something it isn't then this step mother has to gain from writing PA in response to their critical article on her performance as a parent towards a child that has not been hers for some time now.
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