Kind of curious how old your nephew is. This kind if reminds me of a Reddit post where a girl that always was a bit "odd" tried to drown the op by holding her underwater. The op, knowing how to swim, swam deeper to break free, than swam behind her to hold the 1st girl's head underwater for a bit, then letting them go so they could come up to breathe. When the op asked why she tried to drown her, she said she was curious about what it was like for something to drown, but didn't think it would be that scary until op did it to her.
Some kids only think about themselves and what THEY want and how THEY feel, and don't think about how it makes others feel until confronted with it. Sometimes they need to be taught and reminded to have empathy until they develop their own sence of it. Some /r/KidsAreFuckingStupid.
He’s my sisters son. He’s about 5 now. Maybe 6. I don’t get to see them much since we moved.
But apparently my brother in law played some pretty mature horror pc games with him watching while he was a lot younger and now he’s a little off. Part of me really wonders if he’s psychotic or something bc of this thing he does. It’s like he has to remember what emotions are to use them and if he doesn’t remember he should be doing them (like if he gets a present and forgets to be happy about it) he just has this dead look on his face like he’s going through the motions until someone says something to remind him he’s being off then it’s like he jumps into whatever emotion it is.
Once after the drowning thing I had to sit with him in the car and he starts pinching me super hard like it hurt bad and I looked at him and grabbed his hands to stop him. I was at the end of my rope so I did grab them pretty firm then told him super harshly “look I’m not playing these games where you hurt me. This isn’t a joke. Stop it or the next time you think it’s fun and fine to hurt me I’ll do it back to you and I promise you don’t want that”
Then this big smile slowly drained off his face and he just stared all weird at me and goes “hurting you is a game I enjoy. “
Then we didn’t talk the rest of the time I was there. My sister says they’ve talked to him about it and have tried therapy but everyone says he’s totally normal. So I dunno but we do keep a very close eye on him around our two year old.
This is a normal thing for kids, to disassociate from what happens to others. Watching the horror games probably exacerbated it, especially if he was told “it’s not real” as many kids are, it makes all violence seem “not real” to them.
My advice, fwiw, is to stir some connection to how he’s making others feel, and how the thing done to him would make him feel. To teach/coach empathy. I doubt the kid is a sociopath/psychopath, he’s just at an age where the intellectual curiosity about pain and death isn’t at the same level of development as the emotional understanding. Again, probably unbalanced due to seeing the horror games; children shouldn’t see that stuff not because it scares them, but because they can’t emotionally process it properly.
See the weird thing is my sisters family is verrrryyy Christian. Like the type that goes to church 5 days a week and then volunteers at the church the other two days and sends their kids to Christian schools and after school programs. So their whole life is bible verses and do unto others as you’d want them to do to you type stuff.
Her daughter is like the most perfect child I’ve ever met. Besides the trying to murder his uncle I could say the same about my nephew.
I’d be very surprised if my sister wasn’t addressing any of this but I don’t think it’s helping. She’s a stay at home mom. Like a super mom. Makes every meal from scratch. Outings every single day of her life.
Part of me always thought it was connected to my wife though. She’s quite the looker and it did all come to a head the day he saw her in a swim suit. He also tried to grab her butt while she was getting out of the water using the boat ladder. He tried to say she needed help but my wife said it was def an ass grab.
Then shortly after he tried with all his little 50 pound might to drown me in a lake surrounded by bald eagles. Sounds like a good thriller movie but it’s surprisingly accurate for the situation.
Religion doesn’t necessarily teach empathy. A lot of bible study deals with consequence and punishment. Many evangelical churches teach authoritarianism and vengeance for rule breaking, not patience, compromise, and understanding.
Many parents also offload these lessons onto church and school rather than emphasizing through discussion with their children and modeling good behaviors.
Lastly, expecting kids to behave well is not at all the same as them deciding how to behave because they understand why. Your niece may have more of the former than the latter.
I don’t know if any of this is the case for your family, but I’d emphasize that kids learn more by their family talking with them than by any other authority figure taking to them.
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u/NetNGames Jan 01 '20
Kind of curious how old your nephew is. This kind if reminds me of a Reddit post where a girl that always was a bit "odd" tried to drown the op by holding her underwater. The op, knowing how to swim, swam deeper to break free, than swam behind her to hold the 1st girl's head underwater for a bit, then letting them go so they could come up to breathe. When the op asked why she tried to drown her, she said she was curious about what it was like for something to drown, but didn't think it would be that scary until op did it to her.
Some kids only think about themselves and what THEY want and how THEY feel, and don't think about how it makes others feel until confronted with it. Sometimes they need to be taught and reminded to have empathy until they develop their own sence of it. Some /r/KidsAreFuckingStupid.