This is what serial killers can teach us about parenthood.
By: Josneym Vargas
Tags: Life Lessons, Parenthood, Serial Killers, Parenting

Photo by Joshua Lewis on Unsplash

Raising a kid can be a scary thing. No matter how many courses or advice you have on the issue, nothing in the world prepares you for the amount of responsibility that represents taking care of a newborn child. Not only providing them with food and shelter is enough, but also we must understand and meet their psychological needs during their formation.

In fact, it has been proven that during the first five years of childhood, children develop the foundation of the personality that will companion them for the rest of their life. Ignoring these aspects, especially if the child has underlying psychopathic traits, is the first step towards disaster. A childhood filled with abuse and neglect is usually pointed as the trigger and reinforcement of the negative aspect of psychopathy that yields in the vast amounts of serial killers in America.

Of course, this doesn’t mean all children are ticking murder bombs that explode if we try to correct them for something they did wrong. But, if we aren’t aware of our acts and their effects on our siblings, our inability to balance love and discipline will definitely cause harm to them. It is one thing to raise a warm-hearted child knowledgeable of its duties, and another different one creating an abusive spoiled brat. And everything starts with us.

Children are behavior copycats.

Many serial killers, like Richard Ramirez, Ted Bundy, and Phillip Jablonski grow having a violent misogynist and substance abuser masculine figure. Because children are sponges trying to learn everything, they became modeled by those negative figures after years of exposure, repeating later the same abusive pattern. And sometimes going even further. Once an abuser tastes the sweetness of power over someone else, they will fall to the impulse of unleashing all the bitterness they once swallowed.

Abuse doesn’t necessarily have to occur on them directly to learn it. Having an ineffective work/ family balance and drowning our real problems with alcohol and drugs will only keep building frustration. Once our boiling point is reached, we vomit it against the first unaware who make us explode. As the child gets continuously exposed to that kind of behavior, he/she will understand that this type of reaction is acceptable, being replicated once they become adults.

Psychopathy is not a curse.

It has been estimated that 3–4 percent of children are born with an antisocial personality disorder popularly known as psychopathy. Despite the notorious connotation, this doesn’t mean they are a lost cause and need to be immediately locked down. In the book, The Good Psychopath’s Guide to Success authors Andy McNab and Kevin Dutton explains that psychopathic traits like charisma, coolness under pressure, fearlessness, focus, impulsivity, and reduced empathy aren’t inherently bad by themselves unless they became dysfunctional and applied in the wrong contexts.

An example of both sides of the coin is Gary Hednik, a serial killer that kidnapped and captivated several women for his deluded fantasies, who was also a successful stock wizard. The fearfulness and lack of empathy that their victims suffered give Hednik the mental resilience to turn a $2,500 investment into $500,000 in the span of a few years. If he wouldn’t commit those crimes he could be one of the big names in the current war between hedge funds and GameStop Reddit supporters.

Always keep both eyes on them.

Responsible parents know where and what their children are doing. But with a hard economy nocking our doors, we spend too many hours focused on the wrong matter, while taking for granted the wellbeing of our children, without further question.

The case of Milwaukee Cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer is an atypical one because he did grow in a loving and caring family. However, his parents were oblivious to Jeffrey‘s fascination with dead bodies. When he asked his father, a medical doctor, how to melt a body (a freaking red flag). Instead of asking the why and going further on his son’s request, he just gives him the recipe. You don’t need to be an FBI criminal profiler to understand that something wrong is happening but is easy to excuse and deny its existence, which leads us to the next point.

Is not what we say, but what we kept that can kill us or others.

Why a joyful child suddenly becomes shy or aggressive towards someone else? That is the kind of question only a psychological evaluation can give us light over any possible trauma or a condition our child is suffering and unable to understand.

Having a psychological assessment doesn’t mean they have something wrong, but instead, we are looking to prevent it. Knowing that our child is being molested, having a psychopathic and narcissistic personality disorder, schizophrenic traits or a depressive episode can help us understand their condition.

By teaching awareness of their situation and how their actions impact others, we’re giving them the tools to improve their situation and become a happier and competent person.

As caring parents, we must understand that this is a process filled with many trials and errors. Small mistakes won’t misshape the life of our child. But neglecting the effects of our actions will indeed harm them. If we want to make them a better person, we should start becoming better role models and associating with more positive figures to create a nurturing environment. After all, it takes one monster to raise another.