He noticed one with only one eye, approached it from the side with no vision, grabbed it, and proudly presented it to the counselor in charge of fishing...Unfortunately, he seems to have interpreted this new system as “win untraceably,” and then was traced trying to poison another camper by exploiting their allergy. He’s one of two campers out of several thousand I worked with that we had to send home early for behavior issues...Addendum: he harassed and kept catching the poor half-blind fish for the duration of the stay, likely because he got so much positive attention the first time he caught it.
“When Your Child Is a Psychopath” comes to mind… (Remember, 1% adult prevalence.) In addition to the attention, he may just have enjoyed abusing the animal; that’s one of the most striking childhood traits.
I should emphasize that he did not succeed at hurting another kid in his allergy plot, and was not likely to. 1% of kids with psychopathic tendencies sounds rare when you’re parenting one kid, but it sounds like Tuesday when you have the number of kids seen by an institution like a summer camp- there’s paperwork, procedures, escalations, all hella battle-tested. Typically with a kid in the cluster, we focus on safety but also work hard to integrate them and let all the kids have a good experience. His behavior was different enough from a typical violent, unresponsive to punishment kid that we weren’t able to keep him at camp because the standard fun preserving, behavior improving parts of these policies did not work at all on him (very weird, they always work), but the safety oriented policies like boost staff to camper ratio around him, always have one staff member watching him, document everything and brief staff members who will be supervising him worked fine.
I should emphasize that he did not succeed at hurting another kid in his allergy plot, and was not likely to. 1% of kids with psychopathic tendencies sounds rare when you’re parenting one kid, but it sounds like Tuesday when you have the number of kids seen by an institution like a summer camp- there’s paperwork, procedures, escalations, all hella battle-tested.
This is really interesting. This makes sense but I hadn’t thought about this before at all. I’d be interested in a post that explores this in more detail.
It’s strikes me as a little … unthinking to single the kid out for “abusing” a fish when he joined a group of other people fishing.
(Also, why does the fish go back? Is the point not to eat the fish you catch? If it were me, and you’re eating the ones the other kids catch, but throwing mine back, I’d keep catching it over and over too, simply out of principle/spite.)
It’s strikes me as a little … unthinking to single the kid out for “abusing” a fish when he joined a group of other people fishing.
I think this is simultaneously… totally fair, but for better or worse, I think “participating in the socially sanctioned form of cruelty” signals something different than “inventing your own creative forms of cruelty.” (which isn’t necessarily saying it’s better, but, like, I feel like I know what to expect from the other kids and would have to literally watch my back with this one. At least based on the info so far)
A normal kid would catch it once or twice, and then target some other fish, or move on to proper fishing. They would not ‘harass’ the same fish constantly, nor parade it about for attention while alive, before returning it to the pond to torment again. Nor is it necessarily the case that these campers were catching fish in general—like at my Boy Scout camp, it was expected that you wouldn’t catch many fish (if any), and if you managed to catch one worth cooking & eating or worth entering in the camp-wide contest, it would be a topic of conversation. And you definitely wouldn’t release it just to catch it again—you’d either kill it quickly and cleanly, or you’d make a little water pen in the rocks to keep it alive in reasonably non-cruel conditions until you dealt with it. (The lake was stocked, but it didn’t go very far.) The point was more to enjoy the process and unwind in front of the lake for those who didn’t want to rush out & about hiking or merit-badge-maxxing.
Further, you’re ignoring the context. When two people do the same thing, it’s never the same thing. The import of an action is not what it resembles on the surface, but what it reveals about the person. When an angry kitten tries to nom you, it is adorable and amusing and is extremely unlikely to succeed at hurting you; but it reminds you that adult cats can and do send people (like my grandmother) to the emergency room; and it further reminds you of what happened to Siegfried & Roy… (This sort of insistence on the most superficial interpretation possible of an action, and judging every action in isolation without any consideration of patterns of behavior or what it implies about the future, is a classic legalistic trick used to cover one’s tracks.)
This “patterns of behavior,” “what the action reveals about the person” smacks of Richelieu’s “six lines” quote: what you say you’re condemning him for is an excuse, not a reason.
Hastings had a lot of more instances of his behavior to judge him then the isolated incident. The incident is not the reason but the observed behavior in total. This incident is just an example.
Oh definitely. Some fraction of kids are palpably psychopaths, 1% sounds right- this stops being suprising when you’ve supervised enough kids. “Carl” never stopped surprising us.
“When Your Child Is a Psychopath” comes to mind… (Remember, 1% adult prevalence.) In addition to the attention, he may just have enjoyed abusing the animal; that’s one of the most striking childhood traits.
Yeah the combo of the fish + poisoning a camper via allergy??? has me pretty sketched out about this kid.
I should emphasize that he did not succeed at hurting another kid in his allergy plot, and was not likely to. 1% of kids with psychopathic tendencies sounds rare when you’re parenting one kid, but it sounds like Tuesday when you have the number of kids seen by an institution like a summer camp- there’s paperwork, procedures, escalations, all hella battle-tested. Typically with a kid in the cluster, we focus on safety but also work hard to integrate them and let all the kids have a good experience. His behavior was different enough from a typical violent, unresponsive to punishment kid that we weren’t able to keep him at camp because the standard fun preserving, behavior improving parts of these policies did not work at all on him (very weird, they always work), but the safety oriented policies like boost staff to camper ratio around him, always have one staff member watching him, document everything and brief staff members who will be supervising him worked fine.
This is really interesting. This makes sense but I hadn’t thought about this before at all. I’d be interested in a post that explores this in more detail.
It’s strikes me as a little … unthinking to single the kid out for “abusing” a fish when he joined a group of other people fishing.
(Also, why does the fish go back? Is the point not to eat the fish you catch? If it were me, and you’re eating the ones the other kids catch, but throwing mine back, I’d keep catching it over and over too, simply out of principle/spite.)
I think this is simultaneously… totally fair, but for better or worse, I think “participating in the socially sanctioned form of cruelty” signals something different than “inventing your own creative forms of cruelty.” (which isn’t necessarily saying it’s better, but, like, I feel like I know what to expect from the other kids and would have to literally watch my back with this one. At least based on the info so far)
A normal kid would catch it once or twice, and then target some other fish, or move on to proper fishing. They would not ‘harass’ the same fish constantly, nor parade it about for attention while alive, before returning it to the pond to torment again. Nor is it necessarily the case that these campers were catching fish in general—like at my Boy Scout camp, it was expected that you wouldn’t catch many fish (if any), and if you managed to catch one worth cooking & eating or worth entering in the camp-wide contest, it would be a topic of conversation. And you definitely wouldn’t release it just to catch it again—you’d either kill it quickly and cleanly, or you’d make a little water pen in the rocks to keep it alive in reasonably non-cruel conditions until you dealt with it. (The lake was stocked, but it didn’t go very far.) The point was more to enjoy the process and unwind in front of the lake for those who didn’t want to rush out & about hiking or merit-badge-maxxing.
Further, you’re ignoring the context. When two people do the same thing, it’s never the same thing. The import of an action is not what it resembles on the surface, but what it reveals about the person. When an angry kitten tries to nom you, it is adorable and amusing and is extremely unlikely to succeed at hurting you; but it reminds you that adult cats can and do send people (like my grandmother) to the emergency room; and it further reminds you of what happened to Siegfried & Roy… (This sort of insistence on the most superficial interpretation possible of an action, and judging every action in isolation without any consideration of patterns of behavior or what it implies about the future, is a classic legalistic trick used to cover one’s tracks.)
This “patterns of behavior,” “what the action reveals about the person” smacks of Richelieu’s “six lines” quote: what you say you’re condemning him for is an excuse, not a reason.
Hastings had a lot of more instances of his behavior to judge him then the isolated incident. The incident is not the reason but the observed behavior in total. This incident is just an example.
Oh definitely. Some fraction of kids are palpably psychopaths, 1% sounds right- this stops being suprising when you’ve supervised enough kids. “Carl” never stopped surprising us.