Yes i just read about that, it is VERY DISTURBING! I can't believe he did that! And they can't press charges!:mad: What kind of parents does he have, they should get sued!!! You know, my bf told he heard somewhere that a way you can tell someone will be a serial killer is if a kid likes to kill animals for fun. :thumbdown

So many serial killers started out killing animals when they were a child. I can't even fathom that. Most kids that age love animals. It's so very very sad.

I saw this on cnn, too, and found it deeply disturbing. As a parent, I can't imagine not knowing where my 7 year old is, but I also can't imagine having one who displays this type behavior, either.

I believe this all goes back to an old question of "nature or nurture"? Are serial killers created, or born?

I feel sorry for this child's parents - there are so many things I wonder about with them. Are they aware of this child's predeliction for violence, does he show any other signs of a killer in the making (playing with fire, wetting his pants, violence with playmates), could they possibly be afraid of him?

I tell ya' - I have a lot of questions for God one day.

How sad:(

I am not an expert, I'm just someone that's 2 semesters away from a masters degree in clinical social work (with a psychology background). I don't pretend to know all that there is about mental health and I certainly don't know a lot about children, developmental stages, etc.

That was just my opinion and I am respectful of anyone that agrees or disagrees with what I said. I do agree with you in that any child that does horrible things should place some responsibility (not necessarily blame) on their parent(s). Especially at such a young age, a parent should have control and know enough of where their child is and what his behaviors/mental health status is.

That said, having worked with very troubled kids, that had very scary criminal records and lots of "bad" disorders, there's only so much anyone can do sometimes. Sadly, that includes the child his or her self, the parents, and any others involved. I've watched kids that were out of control, their parents were actively trying to work through things (which is sadly rare with problematic children, more often then not the parents are not just ambivalent they are actually problematic and cause even more issues) and the only thing to stop the child was police involvement. (And then sometimes the police were only able to help with that specific outburst.) But again, it's all very individualized to each person. I've generalized a lot and feel the need to make sure that I make it clear that there was very little information provided in the article. I made some assumptions in my original opinions and could be well off the mark just from that. But I also don't know the entire story to make any real assessment.

Someone that truly has Antisocial Personality Disorder has little hope. There's very little that can be done to stop them and there's very little that can be done to "help" them. Many times the most effective things are imprisonment and restricted care such as hospitalization. Actually, someone that has APD and it's a severe case would think just as much of hurting and torturing an animal as they would a person. So in the scheme of things who's to say this child hasn't already started to harm other people. Signs of APD are childhood torture/mutilation of animals, harming of peers, and setting fires. He seems to fit at least one of those three, who knows if he has done any of the others.

I guess the biggest thing I feel the need to voice, is that a person with a severe personality disorder such as APD cannot control their actions. If asked about doing the acts they do a person may respond to the effect of "I knew I was doing it but I couldn't stop". And a full blown psychopath does not know the difference between right and wrong. And talking about people like Dahmer and Bundy, people with such disorders are capable of deceiving the people around them and not "slipping up" until they do. There are people with disorders that I personally title "insanely smart" since they are able to manipulate and deceive people so amazingly.

But again, that's all my opinion and I'm not yet an expert on any of this, so I take full responsibility that any of what I've said may not be fully accurate.

Edited to add: While not a great resource, for anyone that wants to know a little bit about APD and what I'm talking about you can look here: Antisocial personality disorder - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I see that basically we agree. This is a very sad situation, there are no 'winners' here. Most of all the child losses. However, the parents are responsible. I'm not placing blame but responsibility for this incident on the parents. Like I said I wonder if the parents had noticed him missing and were looking for him, we don't know that, the report doesn't say. Or how far do they live from the zoo. Just how long was this child alone without parental knowledge or supervision. We don't know these things and that would help a lot to tell if the parents were/are trying to do everything they can.

I'm not passing judgment, or trying to place blame, that is not for me to do. But I wonder how a 7 year old child can be gone from someones care, be it parent, sitter, day care, etc for a minimum of 30 minutes. My concern is if he is not being cared for properly that he gets whatever help is available. And if he is being watched after and cared for that the parents get as much help as they can, because it's got to be exhausting dealing with this type of child 24/7.

Yes, absolutely! A parent should be held responsible when their 7 year old leaves the house and does something bad at an odd hour. They should know where he is and should have control but clearly this is an unusual situation so who really knows what was going on. The worst part is we can discuss who's responsible or not but it's happened and now it's a matter of getting past this horrible incident! :(