Is My Kid a Psychopath?

and other questions I have asked Google this year

We live in a terraced maisonette above a block of 24 garages. Living up a set of stairs has always been a challenge with small children, but we have managed well enough by keeping the buggy in our garage. In fact it has likely worked too well as we seem to have grown a collection of buggies, one for each occasion, which is great for me as I can pick whichever is best for a particular day.

Usually I bring my youngest son with me to the garage, which is directly beneath our house. I carry him through the car park to open the garage door one handed and pull the chosen buggy out. I then strap my youngest son in, load it up with the many bags we are likely to be taking out with us, and close the garage door. While this is all happening my eldest son will wait for us on the pavement that borders the car park or he will run about on the grass, instructed not to go near any cars - moving or otherwise. It is a safe, quiet area and as long as he stays away from the car park he is fine. At four years old he is old enough for me not to worry about him too much.

One day we were getting ready to go out and he was playing on the pavement with his cars. I hadn’t paid much attention to what toys he had brought out with him but usually it is a car, a digger, or a truck. He loves to role play sequences where the digger will carry loads to the dump truck or the car will drive along the road, stories that will usually keep him entertained for hours, especially when there is mud or sand is involved.

I saw him crouched on the pavement with the toys on the ground and I sighed thinking he would be covered in mud by the time I got to him, but I considered it a price I had to pay, as I often do, for his safety. If that is what it takes for him to stay on the pavement and away from the car park then so be it.

Once I had locked the garage door and made my way over to the pavement with the buggy, my eldest son had stood up, his car in his hand and was waiting to get into the buggy.

I picked him up to sit him alongside his brother and noticed some worms on the pavement. On closer inspection, though, it seemed like it might have once been one worm, now shredded into pieces.

“Did you do that to the worm, sweetheart?” I asked, my voice bright.

“No.”

“Oh, okay.” I saw in his hand he was holding a dark green London cab, decorated with the infamous logo of the 2012 Olympics. “Did Taxi car do it?”

“Taxi car did do it.”

“Oh, okay. Well, we don’t hurt creatures do we, sweetheart?”

“No.”

In that moment I thought back to something that happened a few weeks before. We were on the green that borders the train track not far from our house, playing by a tree. I saw a ladybird scuttling away on the ground and called my son over.

“Look, sweetheart, a ladybird!”

He bounded over, excited.

“Wow!” he said. Then suddenly he stamped his welly boot down on the ground. I looked down. The ladybird was dead.

I remember my mouth dropped open as I tried to work out what had happened and what I should say next.

“Gone now?” he asked.

“Yes, it’s gone.”

This was the second time in the period of less than a month where I found myself questioning who my son was and how he was behaving. Or indeed, what on earth was I doing wrong?

I thought of the things people say in true crime documentaries. That they knew a serial killer was a serial killer long before they committed any crime. That they knew something was ‘off’ when they had noticed them as a child torturing snails in the back garden.

Before we set off with the buggy I put the question to Google: “Is my kid a psychopath?”

Now Google was very kind, and understanding and explained somewhere although I can’t remember where exactly now, that children may explore out of curiosity and when they are young, doing things like tearing up worms is completely normal. (You should worry, though if they torture something bigger, like a cat or a beloved pet - that is a cause for concern.) I couldn’t help but worry though that something else was at play here, that he was somehow showing his colours as a bad kid.

That in my parenting efforts, I had done something wrong.

He isn’t bad, of course, he is four, or he was three at the time, and concepts like death and life even are completely out of reach for his brain at the moment, it seems natural that he would want to explore. He is curious and to my knowledge hasn’t torn up any animals since. But despite Google’s reassurance, I was ashamed, so much so I didn’t mention it to my partner until I had sort of accepted it a few weeks later. When I told him, I joked about it, I tried to make it light, worrying that he too would have similar doubts.

It made me wonder what other questions have we put to google about our children or that we have relied on some sort of reassurance that we aren’t doing the worst job ever?

Here are some of ours:

“Why can’t you give Vicks to under 2s?”

“How to stop a two year old from hitting”

“How to stop child hitting - 4”

“When to worry about nose-bleeding”

“Signs of concussion”

“How high is too high to fall?”

“Is a lump a good sign?”

But know whatever the questions, whatever we go to google with looking for reassurance, that kids are kids and we aren’t doing a bad job, even if it feels like we are 99.9% of the time.

If this post resonated with you, I would love to hear your thoughts. Please do join me in the comments.

Do you have any funny questions you have asked Google about your kids/parenting journey?

Do you worry about your kids’ morality?

Please tell me I’m not alone and that other children have killed a bug or two…

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