The Suffix

So there's this kid I call "The Suffix" because I am sure that someday after he is grown, I'll hear his name on the news with a suffix like "the Nighttime Strangler" or "the Dismemberment Killer."



The Suffix is in middle school, and he's sweet enough when he likes you and when he is not being violent. He's very intelligent. He has some organic mental illness and he was also horrifically abused (by someone long out of the picture, thankfully) when he was very young. As a result he's spent significant portions of his formative years in in-patient psychiatric care. He takes a slurry of psychotropic meds to control the symptoms, but even medicated he has violent outbursts in which he damages property and occasionally people.



I genuinely like The Suffix, though I never turn my back on him. I like most of my mentally ill kids, and they usually like me because I am familiar with what it's like to be in a malfunctioning brain. I also feel a lot of sympathy for The Suffix's mother, who is often in the way of his physical and verbal acting-out. (I worry that one day I'll drop by and find The Suffix wearing his mother's skin.)



Last time I saw The Suffix, I tried asking him some questions designed to elicit statements of empathy--you know, how do you think so-and-so was feeling at this point, things like that. He did not answer any of them in a way that showed insight into the mind of others, instead reporting on what the others in the examples were doing and what his opinion about it was. He's already displayed the MacDonald Triad, as well as being involved in various minor thuggery and shoplifting.



I wish there were a program of empathy-skills training for kids like The Suffix. Like I said, he's very intelligent (an honors student) but I fear his brainpower will be wasted behind prison walls, and this sweet and charming boy will, without some major intervention, be just another chapter in a criminology book someday.