Forensic psychologist Nigel Latta advises parents on everything from how to stop bed wetting to how to stop your child killing cats - and worse. Here, the Beyond the Darklands presenter gives his controversial advice on how to not raise a criminal.
KEY POINTS:
There are (at least) two people you shouldn't ask for advice when it comes to raising kids who won't become criminals. They would be George and Augusta Gein. George was reportedly a violent alcoholic who was often unemployed. Despite this the couple stayed together because Augusta Gein was
devoutly religious and so refused to divorce him. Instead she moved the family to an isolated farmhouse to restrict contact with the outside world and then proceeded to spend the rest of her life teaching her two sons that all women (herself excluded one can only assume) were whores, prostitutes and in league with the devil. Sex was dirty, according to Ma Gein, and was only for procreation.
Her youngest son, Ed, took these lessons to heart and in the 1950s, once the rest of his family were dead, he would go on to murder at least two women, and exhume a large number of recently deceased women he thought looked like his mother and then use various bits and pieces of them to construct articles of clothing and macabre little knick-knacks, things like soup bowls made from human skull caps, and socks made from human skin.
Ed Gein makes complete sense when you look at where he came from. If your old man is a violent drunk, and your mum is a religious nut who isolates you from the world and then fills your head with poison, it isn't too much of a stretch to think that one day you might end up drinking soup from a human skull and wearing socks that smell bad for all the wrong reasons.
But what about the rest of us? What about the normal mums and dads who aren't violent alcoholics or misguided fanatics? How do we make sure our kids don't grow up to become criminals?
The first thing to decide is whether we are born bad, or it's our parents who mess us up. I've spent most of my career grappling with this issue, because I work at both ends of the spectrum. In any given day I might be helping one family with strategies to get their completely normal 3-year-old to sleep through the night, then see a completely abnormal 10-year-old who is killing cats and generally scaring the bejesus out of anyone who comes across him. Later it might be a 13-year-old girl who spends her weekends riding in stolen cars with boys, and then I'll end the day with a 16-year-old boy who is stressed because he's doing six NCEA subjects and can't figure out how to fit in drama classes.
It is not out of the ordinary for my day to begin with toilet training and then end with attempted murder.
It's important you know that because a lot of the advice parents get these days is opinion dressed up as fact. Everyone claims to hold the high ground. Not me. I'm just a guy sitting under a tree who's seen some stuff and has some stories to tell. No more, no less.
In the documentary series Beyond the Darklands we looked at six criminals and how we thought they came to do the things they did.
Offenders like Taffy Hotene and Bruce Howse clearly were products of the dysfunctional environments in which they were raised. This in no way absolves them of responsibility for their crimes though, because we are all responsible for our choices. Lots of people have terrible lives and don't kill people.
One of the most controversial things I said - although I never actually used these words during the series - was that I believed some of them, offenders like William Bell and Terry Clarke, were effectively born bad. They were born with the capacity for evil hard-wired in.
A number of people struggle with this idea. I've heard people say that they believe all children are precious. I agree. I also hear people say that all children are born innocent. I agree with that too, since by definition children are born with no prior knowledge of the world.
I've also heard it said that all children are born equal, and that it is the world which makes them good or bad. This is the point where I peel off and start to shake my head.
Sadly, we are not all born equal. Not even close.
Augustinian monk Gregor Mendal was the first to ponder whether features of the humble pea might be inherited. His work, in 1857, began a process that has resulted in the mapping of the human genome, and, among a number of other remarkable things, hairless cats and cloned sheep. We know now that genes determine our eye colour, and whether we can roll our tongues.
But can we inherit evil?
In 1991 Paul Bailey abducted and murdered Kylie Smith in Owaka. She was 15, a much cherished daughter, a shining young person in every sense of the word.
Bailey on the other hand, was a recidivist offender with a long history of petty crime, cruelty to animals, alcohol and drug use, and sexual offending.
He was a predator in the truest form of the word and, in my opinion, he was also a psychopath. That term's a little overused - and largely misused. The defining feature of the psychopath is that they effectively have no conscience - no little voice telling them what they are doing is wrong - and they have no empathy or concern for the suffering of others. They have no mercy, and no compassion. They are empty of almost all feelings, and because of that they are able to act in ways that seem incomprehensible to the rest of us.
Was it something in their early development that made them that way? Are psychopaths only made through abuse or neglect which somehow damaged them?
Many people believe that if only someone had shown them more love, then the Paul Baileys of this world may not have ended up monsters.
The evidence is against that. In a particularly chilling study of 3687 twins, all aged seven years'; researchers found that psychopathic traits were under extremely strong genetic influence. What's more, there was no "shared environmental influence". There is very strong evidence that some children are literally born without the capacity to experience empathy or remorse. They are born without a conscience and this has nothing to do with how they were raised.
What's worse is that while we are getting much better at identifying psychopathic traits, we're still pretty lost when it comes to treating it. How does one treat something that is in the genes when there is currently no magic pill?
So the first imperative in raising a child with empathy and the desire for good is to make sure you have reasonable genes. I've often sat with social workers, lawyers, and police as we've all agreed that the young offender's problems were nothing a well placed condom couldn't have fixed. None of us would say that publicly of course - you'd be mad to in these brave new politically correct times - but privately it's a sentiment many who have to clean up after other people's messes endorse.
Some people just shouldn't be allowed to keep having more kids that they effectively ruin, and then abandon. I think of it as a more pragmatic approach to succession planning.
Okay - so what about the rest of us?
Actually, the rest of keeping kids straight is pretty simple, because for the great majority of criminals, parenting has quite a bit to do with it. It all boils down to three straightforward principles: being nice to your children; teaching them right from wrong; and holding them accountable for their actions. If you can do those three things on a fairly regular basis then you've got as good a chance as anyone of raising kids who aren't criminals. That might seem irritatingly simplistic, but it's true.
Being "nice" to your kids means providing warm and consistent care, because that's what helps brains to grow and little people to form healthy relationships.
You have to teach them right from wrong because you're their parent and so that's your job. The only way they will know right from wrong is if you teach them. It doesn't happen by accident.
The last thing that you have to do is hold them accountable for their actions. If you do that then they learn that their actions have consequences, and they will learn that all-important skill of thinking about what might happen next. You'd be amazed how many kids get absolutely no tuition in thinking about what happens next. You wouldn't be all that amazed where kids like that end up.
Sometimes, though, parents do all that stuff and their kids still end up going off the rails. I've worked with some very nice people, who were very good parents, yet still their kids ended up getting into trouble.
To an extent, it's pretty normal for teenagers to break the law. I did when I was a teenager, and I'm sure many people reading this will have done as well. Limit testing is the name of the game when you're that age. You just hope that your kids won't do anything too stupid, that no one gets seriously hurt or in serious trouble.
It's also true that a few bad friends can be the cause of much parental heartache. There are more drugs out there, and worse kinds of drugs as well, and there are cheaper, faster cars than we ever had.
What modern parents are also up against is a generation who is more connected and socially networked than any the world has ever seen.
They can scheme via text messaging, they can post videos of their stupidity on YouTube, and they can come to all kinds of grief on websites like Bebo.
What can we do about all that complicated, scary stuff?
Be nice to them, teach them right from wrong, and hold them accountable for their actions. Too simple? In fact, many of the difficulties we now face with youth offenders are because we've tried to apply more complex solutions rather than stick with a few simple principles.
It's also important to know when you're out of your depth and require a bit of specialist help. There are no definite indicators for that - we've all got varying degrees of confidence in the water. The best rule of thumb is that if it's getting hard to breathe then best stick your arm up. There's no shame in being pulled into the lifeboat.
If the Geins had brought their wee boy Ed in to see me when things started to go wrong, I would have suggested they be nicer to him, teach him right from wrong and hold him accountable for his actions, among other things. You can't do much about your genes, but it's the safest bet to try to make the most of the ones you've got.
I also would have strongly suggested they start using Durex Extra Safe.