I don’t think it’s fair to label and troubled kid as “bad.” Clearly he was difficult and his parents were ill prepared to deal with that. As parents, when you are a tempermentally bad match for your child, you are the adults and you have to change to fit the needs of said child, not the other way around. I don’t like to see a child labeled negatively from the very start. It just seems mean spirited to me.

I am familiar with a couple similar situations. In both of those cases, the troubled kid is the eldest. I wonder if it’s possible that those parents adjusted their methods for the later children (I didn’t know either long enough to see for myself). Not to blame anyone — I’m currently raising my first child and I’m keenly aware of my lack of expertise. Parents I know with more kids often say they treat the younger ones differently, either because they are busier or they have learned from the first. I’ve also seen studies that suggest first-borns may be more financially successful, but later-borns are often more happy, which might indicate changed parental emphases over time.

There have been studies that show that propensity for empathy and for learning from your past mistakes are hard-wired into people’s brains. If your kid is born with a lack of these traits, then no amount of good parenting is going to turn a “bad” kid into a “good one”. However, if your kid does have these traits, then good vs. bad parenting can affect how your kid turns out. So it’s both nature and nurture, but I think nature is the dominant factor. I feel so sorry for the parents of bad kids who are so harshly judged by others. My younger brother turned out to be one of these bad kids, and I assure you, my parents did everything right. It’s genetics.

I’m a strong believer in tmerperment being inborn. I know that my most difficult child is the oldest. Over time, she’s developed in to a lovely teenager though (probably less difficult than your avergae teen.) Yeah, she’s still as bullheaded as an ox (it runs in the family. :/ ) but her cleverness and persistence and have served her well in academics, athletics, and music/art. That being said, her father and I had to learn very early on that she did not respond positively to traditional forms of punishment as discipline. I often speculate that she was the sort of child who had the potential to be completely ruined by the wrong the wrong type of parenting, in fact, we have friends in whose home the same scenario has played out far differently. The other child has been, imo, abused (hit with belts, etc…) and she is out of control as a teen. This sounds mean, but I think this kid is going to get pregnant just to escape from her family, the only question is when. Oh, her two younger, easier brothers are delightful, just like in our family. This ended up being quite rambling, but my main point is that it’s harder to parent tmperamentally difficult children in effective ways, but it still has to be done. No one benefits by just calling the kid a “bad seed.” In fact, if you spend your entire childhood being told that you’re rotten, why wouldn’t you attempt to escape via drugs?

Speaking of colossal jerks, I think anyone who would refer to a kid as a “dud” shouldn’t be working with children, period. Sad to say, being a parent hasn’t seemed to have taught you anything. That “dud” is someone’s precious baby, the same as yours is. Sorry you don’t “get” that. My guess is that you’re neither a very good teacher nor person.

Sandy, I’m just wondering if your old and dear friend knows that you’ve used her child as an example of a child who is inherently bad? It seems like a pretty hurtful thing to do.

So I have this 13 almost 14 year old step daughter and she is always lying, steeling money, and very selfish. She has been this way since she was 5 at least. I am at the last straw. She steels from friends, family, and even the people that love her the most. We have tried everything in the book with her to get her to stop doing all these bad things and to get her attitude undercotrol and nothing is working. It is getting more and more rediculus and she has 4 other syblings that I do not want to start acting like her and one already is starting to so I am getting really scared about that. What should I do?

I doubt that’s his picture up there.