Researchers say that a child's violence against animals often represents displaced hostility and aggression stemming from neglect or abuse of the child or of another family member. Animal cruelty committed by any member of a family, whether parent or child, often means child abuse occurs in that family.
Most commonly, children who abuse animals have either witnessed or experienced abuse themselves. Developmentally-related motivations for animal cruelty may include curiosity, peer pressure, forced abuse, and animal phobias.
Kids are diagnosed with CD when they intentionally hurt people or animals, destroy property, steal things and/or defy rules. Some kids with CD are said to have callous-unemotional traits. That means that they are cold and don't seem to care how they harm others.
Preschool teacher Eric Wilson, psychologist John Duffy, and pediatrician Schultz all say that children hurting animals intentionally isn't normal — it's also behavior they rarely see.
Some common motivations for acts of animal abuse are:
as a form of amusement or “shock value” (common with youth) unmanaged emotions resulting in behaviors directed at animals (anger/rage) prejudicial behaviors towards a particular species (example: “cat haters”) retaliation towards an animal or person.
Callous-unemotional traits remained stable from childhood into adulthood and are predictive of adult antisocial behavior and psychopathy. Cruelty to animals may be one of the first symptoms of conduct disorder, often evident around age 6 ½.
While we do not know exactly what your dog recalls from his abuse, we do see evidence of those memories in the dog's maladaptive behaviors. These mistreated animals are showing responses to the abuse that are conditioned.
There may be cases where some kids with ADHD really shouldn't have a pet. Kids with severe impulse control issues or who are aggressive can harm an animal without meaning to. This doesn't mean these kids should never have a pet.
Using violence against an animal, depriving it of food, water, or company, and forcing it into overcrowded and unsanitary living conditions are morally wrong for the same reasons why doing these to a human would be wrong: it causes the being great suffering and distress.
Maltreatment can cause victims to feel isolation, fear, and distrust, which can translate into lifelong psychological consequences that can manifest as educational difficulties, low self-esteem, depression, and trouble forming and maintaining relationships.
The sociopathic personality first develops in early childhood or adolescence and is classified under the diagnosis of “conduct disorder,” which then develops into “anti-social personality disorder” (both of these are listed in the DSM). One of the early signs of a conduct disorder is often cruelty to animals.
These findings add to a growing body of evidence showing that fearful experiences can have long-lasting effects on wildlife and suggesting that post-traumatic stress disorder, with its intrusive flashback memories, hypervigilance and anxiety, is part of an ancient, evolved response to danger.
They physically abuse pets.
If a narcissist's dog has urinated on the carpet while the narcissist was out, the narcissist sees it as a personal affront—even though the narcissist left the dog alone for 12 hours. The narcissist then hits the dog and calls it names. The dog learns to fear the narcissist.
Trouble controlling emotions and impulses
Children may hurt animals unintentionally due to difficulty with impulse control, anger, or aggression. This is not an excuse for the behavior, but it is possible for kids to overcome it with education and support from mental health providers.
Acts of cruelty to animals are symptomatic of a deep mental disturbance. Research in psychology and criminology shows that people who commit acts of cruelty to animals do not stop there—many of them move on to their fellow humans. Murderers often start out by killing and torturing animals as kids.
Pets and OCD – Fear of Intentional Harm
Similar to obsessions in other forms of Pure-O OCD, these violent obsessions often evoke a preponderance of Pure-O OCD mental rituals. Fear of being a serial killer or sociopath and taking action to harm, murder, or kill your pet. Fear of becoming possessed and killing your pet.
Research at the University of Lincoln, UK, found that dogs, “can recognize emotions in humans by combining information from different senses.”[1] Your dog recognizes when you're sad or in pain by facial recognition and body language, but the most interesting sense they use is smell.
There's no doubt that animals can experience pain and distress as a result of being used in experiments - but there also are many other causes of suffering that must be acknowledged and dealt with.
What is animal cruelty? Animal cruelty involves gratuitously inflicting harm, injuring, or killing an animal. The cruelty can be intentional, such as kicking, burning, stabbing, beating, or shooting; or it can involve neglect, such as depriving an animal of water, shelter, food, and necessary medical treatment.
The spontaneously hypertensive rat (SHR) is the most well-characterized and commonly used animal model of ADHD [4,23], since it is the model that exhibits neurobiological and behavioral features of this neurodevelopmental condition and so that best fits the criteria for ADHD diagnosis [23].
Adults diagnosed with ADHD often blame themselves for their problems or view themselves in a negative light. This can lead to self-esteem issues, anxiety, or depression.
Spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) were found to be the best characterized and also currently the most appropriate model of ADHD [45].
Will My Dog Forgive Me For Hitting Him? While hitting an animal is never the right thing, most dogs are very forgiving and are good at moving on from a one-off incident. Dogs live in the moment and don't tend to bear grudges. However, some factors may influence whether he can carry on as normal after being hit.
Free-living wild animals regularly experience intensely life-threatening predator encounters and are frequently physically traumatized as a result.