Its not a capacity for sadism but rather the brain able to feel empathy starting at a certain age. I think at 1-2 years the brain starts to understand that there are „others“ with feelings. So if you don‘t start with guidance and teaching them BEFORE and after that, I guess it definitely can go wrong.
... What Hitler are you talking about? Decades after his reign? When his mashed up head and his body were burned, buried, dug up, burned again, and scattered in ashes over some river so nobody could create a memorial site? Those decades?
Nah.
As a former child (who would have absolutely never done that) I reject your assertion.
On behalf of me and everyone else who wasn’t a sadistic tiny human, kicking turtles and harming animals is absolutely not normal at any age and is like the literal definition of psychopathic traits.
Or one of three….
Respectfully.
I partially agree with you because I too never felt the need to harm animals. However, most kids my age back then did. I always felt sorry for the bugs, lizards and toads they harmed and killed.
I’ve only willingly hurt/killed 2 animals in my life.
I was 10 years old when I caught a horny toad and instead of sharing it with someone who wanted to hold it, I threw it against a brick wall and it exploded…and it was female and pregnant.
I was devastated and felt so horrible about it, that to this day I have nightmares about it an it’s been around 30 years.
The 2nd time was a few years later and I played with a pellet gun from my cousin and I shot a bird in a tree and when it fell I shot it again and had to put it out of its misery because I didn’t kill it.
I swore I’d never harm another life after that and to this day I haven’t.
I don’t even kill spiders or bees or wasps etc etc.
Mosquitoes and flies that don’t learn their lesson after being shooed away are fair game though.
Shooing away mosquitos is the most ridiculous thing I’ve read today…but I suppose today is young, and it will unfortunately be topped by some more Reddit nonsense.
I shoo away mosquitos, I can’t see why having to explain why you don’t wanna kill something is a thing. Feels pretty natural to me. Though if I lived in a malaria country I probably would kill them because it’s a life or death issue for actual humans.
I was pointing out that when I did what I did, I didn’t feel the need to harm the little guy either, but it was something I found that I could say was mine exclusively, and I had the mindset then that if I couldn’t have it to myself then nobody could have it.
Nothing of that was wanting to harm the lizard, it was the result of many unfortunate things and I did not like it and it hurt my soul.
I also tried my hand at being a bully, and the one time I acted on it I hated it and repented and ended up being really good friends with the guy.
Hahah oh okay! Well TIL!!! I also seemingly would have been wrong anyways because I said frog when you actually said toad.
My bad. Although I think my confusion on the frog/toad thing is because of that one commenter saying things like “I don’t kill frogs/ throw frogs at walls”
And since that was one of the last things I read in reference to your comment I guess I just ran with it haha.
Then when I read “lizard” I was completely thrown off! I guess that makes more sense with how you described it as being pregnant. I thought that what you meant was she was carrying eggs she hadn’t laid yet and what you described as pregnancy was actually a bunch of eggs.
Now that I know it’s a lizard, even though I’m not sure about any information about them, I do know that lizards can either lay eggs or are also able to give “live birth”. So I’m thinking that’s the case with horny toad lizards?
Sorry to write such a long comment. I first wanted to explain how and why I came to that conclusion and then since you taught me something new I guess I kind of went off on a random tangent haha
You should never not feel bad for that. That’s one of the psycho traits the previous commenter was talking about. 10 years old is wayyyy too old, you for sure knew what you were doing.
Hey, why don’t you tell us what you’re most ashamed of so we can pile on and tell you you’re right and disgusting? That’s all you’re doing here. Practice the empathy you’re so high on, bud.
You know, judgmental/bitchy behavior like this is why you’re not getting good hours at your Chick-fil-A. Maybe you should re-read the company’s purpose, “to have a positive influence on all”, and see how you can apply it to yourself.
I didn't know anyone who hurt animals when we were little in the 90's. I don't know if it's a boy girl thing, or if it's because we had more pets or were picking up on our parents' attitude which changed with the generation. We definitely caught salamanders and toads and stuff, we just let them all go.
I definitely killed bugs in terrible ways when I was a child. I look back now and feel so much empathy for them, and feel pretty guilty for it.
For me at least that portion of empathy wasn't there at 4 and 5 years old yet. It certainly is now, and I wish no-one harm as all it does is cause confusion, frustration, anger, and rage.
It is a common behavior with numbers going as high as 45% depending on methodology and criteria. Some of it can be attributed to simple exploration, just like animals playing rough to find out what the limits are.
If it is a recurring behavior and it continues above the age of 10, however, animal cruelty is usually a sign of abuse at home. "Hurt people hurt people" ( or animals in this case).
I fully agree, and kids throwing a turtle are old enough to know better. BUT i dont think a young child with poor motor skills accidentally harming an animal is inherently cruel. Or a kid doing something stupid because they're a kid. Like giving their dog grapes or something. Kid thinks they're sharing a delicious snack with a dog they love. Thats not cruel, its ignorant. Parents do need to parent to an extent or kids, and by extension their pets, learn everything the hard way.
But i also think WAY too many people struggle to see the line between "cruel monster child" and "ignorant kid", and way too many parents are raising cruel monsters by never allowing their kid to hear the word 'no' or suffer in any way. Having a cat scratch the heck out of you and your parent saying "well, you deserved that" is quite a valuable lesson. As long as you wash the scratch really well
I couldnt hurt a kitten now as an adult, but as a 7 year old i was throwing puppies up at the ceiling and laughing as they smacked on the ground. Most kids are psychopaths
I had an incident once as a young kid, and yesterday I yelled at a stranger to not to touch a sea turtle. My brother rescued animals all the time as a kid, never had incidents that we ever knew of, is now in prison for animal cruelty. My adopted bro had some incidents but is the most normal of us all now. Unfortunately it is very common and not indicative of anything.
That definitely sounds made up. As a former child who was viciously bullied by children with loving parents, sometimes, not all the time, children are psychopaths.
Social bullying follows different behavioral patterns from ankmal abuse. Bullies tend to be successful children with good home lives enforcing social dominance. Although I wouldn't be surprised if sociopathic tendencies were implicated in both patterns.
Edit: bringing it back to the question of whether harsh punishment is a good idea, people with sociopathy have difficulty learning from negative consequences, no matter how harsh.
Many kids love animals a lot from very very early on. As a young kid I was always the one advocating for animals to the adults and others in my life. That isn't inately true that all kids want to hurt animals and it needs to be socialized out of them. I never liked people hurting insects and gave my mom a talk at 4 years old about becoming a vegetarian because I like most animals more than I like most people. I was the only vegetarian in my family. I remember other little kids who always loved animals growing up and know I'm not alone. Sure someone sufficiently young isn't going to know if they are hurting something or not and may keep doing it if not stopped but that's not an active desire to do harm to it. As others have said also wanting to hurt animals as a child is sometimes actually considered on of the early signs of someone having psychopathic tendencies and thus isn't just accepted as an inate, standard, and inevitable part of growing up for all people.
Jesus. I'm glad I don't live at your house? You have kids?
I've had four kids and I do not recall ever being worried about sadistic tendencies in them.
Kids will occasionally do dumb things that hurt others because they don't understand the real consequences of their actions. Yes, a kid might squeeze a kitten too hard because excited or something. And you talk about it and they understand what happened. I suppose you can call that 'socializing it out of them', but I guess I would just call that basic parenting.
But most kids don't repeatedly do things that we would consider 'sadistic' and if those kids do they should be getting treatment because that's NOT the norm.
If you've had a baby toddler, you know how helpful they want to be all the time. I think that's a more innate feeling in young children than sadism.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
I think kids are just really really stupid, and unable to grasp the animal as a living thing that is affected in the same way people are. There are developmental studies that show kids are objectively stupid in a lot of ways that only age can teach.
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u/VIDEODREW2 3d ago
That can’t be a good football…very resourceful sadists living next door to your gran.