Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children

Jonathan Kellerman's "Savage Spawn; Reflections on Violent Children" will now become the text I initially refer to Teaching colleagues, Administration, and Support Personal including Guidance Officers, Behavioural Advisers, and Speech Language Pathologists etc, when I wish to highlight concerns about some of the "Kids at Risk" I work with. Although I may not concur with his thoughts on the effect of violent media upon our young, I love the straight-forward "no nonsense" approach he brings to the discussion and presentation of research on kids with Psychopathic tendencies. The citations in his Bibliography will be particularly helpful for further exploration, and his inclusion of the work of people such as Yochelson and Samenow, also heartened me. I would love to read / see / hear where his headspace is nowadays.

This is a short, easy to read book. The author, a child psychologist and best-selling mystery author, pulls no punches in his opinion: Violent juvenile offenders need to be locked up for the better part of forever. If you want a book that details hideous crimes, skip this. Kellerman is not interested in glorifying gruesomeness. The book is exactly what the title says: Reflections on violent children. I read it because I love Kellerman's fiction work, and because I trust his point of view both as a psychologist and as a man with a fine moral compass. As to the causes of violence in children and teens, he does a good job of detailing the most recent and accurate thought in the nature vs. nurture debate. And he is not without compassion, but he takes into account the protection of society first, then the welfare of youthful offenders.

Do you have to shootup a school to ruin lives?? My greatgrandma's family around 1910, had a very large farm in our state, the kids grew up with a ton of money. The kids were idle, spoiled and spent all their inheritances on booze, and lavish partying hunting trips--ending in squalor later in life. When an older family member died, or passed his farm onto his caretakers, since family didn't want to get dirty with helping, the other family members would spy from the nearby hilltops with binoculars, seething with hatred. Funerals were nice times for family thieving trips where family antiques were stolen. My greataunt was buried in her mother's wedding dress, ending decades of fighting over it. My grandparents were overly lax with their children, and allowed them to be very violent with each other. Grandma would sleep a lot and socialize, letting the children roam unsupervised. My mom was the oldest, and assumed a lot of responsibility. Her sibs were super-spoiled, and never grew up, always trying to extort their parents even in extreme old age. My aunt's oldest boy, she spouted everywhere that he was a GENIUS, and never controlled him. He was spoiled, bullying & violent towards his sibs and us cousins. Occasionally, he would go too far, and his dad would beat him, but other than that, ignored or indulged. My aunt indulged all the kids and herself so much with goodies and junk-buying that the family was always in financial and health crisis. Dad ran off. The violent cousin dominated the family, they lived in fear of him, he bullied the mom and sibs. We even think he sexually bullied his brother and sister, as there is a lot of rage and dysfunction. Still the mom spouts that he is a genius----even though he is now 43, chronically jobless, porn-addict, drugger, married to a pretty-coke-hound, has 4 female children, showered with the youngest girls until atleast age 7 (as reported by his sister), has custody of grandma and is cleaning her out while keeping her on happy pills. He did the exact same with his paternal grandma as well, charmed his family's way in with her, and liquidated the household and finances. We have reported it, but grandma's on so many happy pills, the authorities think she's fine. While grandpa was alive, the protector of the $$, even though he was in his 90's, he was hit up repeatedly by his children and grifter grandkids. He would say no, but these same relatives would always be too busy to bring food or help out, but kept us from hiring extra help. The Drs said his cancer & diabetes was accelerated by malnutrition. The minute he was dead in his bed, they jumped in the car and tried to empty the bank accounts. Grandma was easy pickings. I also live in an area where many Billy-Bobs are spoiled by their indulgent parents, and they are going through the exact same things, with the children becoming sociopathic and predatory, ranging from 20's-60's and still grifting, beating up wives,

Jonathan Kellerman, best known for his psychological fiction is actually a highly qualified child psychologist.In the non-fiction examination of Violence in Children or "Savage Spawn" as Kellerman titles his work, readers are offered a no nonsense overview of some of the salient issues at play when discussing the contribuors to childhood violence.Having worked with Juvenile Delinquent Adolescents in a residential treatment center for five years of my career, I feel that I have some good insights into the issues Kellerman addresses. Kellerman is appropriately realistic in the need to acknowledge that there is no causation that can be attributed to only nature or only nurture in the causation of male childhood violence. He believes, and I agree, that we have to factor both of these causative contributors together in order to get some insight into violence in kids.I am reluctant to be particularly ready to dismiss the psychiatric role in the prevention and treatment of violence through the treatment of faulty neurotransmitters in the brain. The reality is that millions of people have been helped by the new class of drugs known as SSRI's. Further, Jonathan Kellerman's truly subjective bias against the psychiatric profession on a wholesale scale is somewhat inappropriate on a professional level and actually inaccurate when dismissed completely in the extent in which Kellerman takes his argument. Interestingly or perhaps more ironically, Kellerman is an obvious supporter of treatment of kids with the drug Ritalin -- a psychiatric drug -- which is particularly controversial, certainly overprescribed and questionably effective in a large majority of cases of children under its influence. However, Kellerman has clearly recommended this drug for many of his young patients and often cites his observations of its effectiveness. I support Kellerman's practical advice that what we do not need to see are blue ribbon commissions to study childhood violence. He accurately represents the fact that much is known about problems in children and monies could be better utilized in direct education for kids and even more importantly, parents. We don't need to wait for violence to intervene with children. Early intervention when warning signs are obvious is a very realistic and far underutilized approach to preventing the escalation of patterns of violence in children.There is much to be said for Kellerman's points about family environments which indirectly give children a poor culture for the development of appropriate values. In working with Juvenile Offenders, I often found that the healthiest members of a kid's family was the kid himself -- the one who got into trouble and was removed from the home! They got out of extremely dysfunctional situations that aren't always apparent to the casual observer. My own experience with troubled kids left me with far more empathy for them and an often overwhelming impatience -- even anger --