Risk Factors and Behaviors
Signs That a Child and Family Need Help
By Dr. Charles Fay
- Any disruptions in first-year-of-life bonding and attachment
- Lack of guilt or genuine remorse when child hurts others
- Fire setting and other destructive behavior
- Cruelty to animals
- Chronic arguing with parents, teachers, and other authority figures
- Lack of positive friendships with same-age peers
- Hyperactivity
- Perceives self as a victim
- Chronic refusal to do chores
- Hoarding of uneaten food
- Outbursts of severe anger when adults set and enforce limits
- Encopresis and/or enuresis
- Chronic lying in the face of the obvious
- Suicidal or homicidal statements (Take all of these seriously!)
- Abusive, violent parents
- Parents who belong to gangs
- Tobacco and other drug use, as well as association with peers who use these substances
- Obsession with violent movies, music, video games, internet sites, etc.
- Violent, gory, or suicidal content in drawings, school writing assignments, etc.
Children who display one or more of these characteristics…
- should be closely supervised
- need their parents to remove weapons and other dangerous items from the home
- are screaming out for love, limits, and professional help
©2001 Charles Fay, Ph.D.
Permission granted for photocopy reproduction.
Please do not alter or modify contents.
For more information, call the Love and Logic Institute, Inc. at 800-338-4065.
