This new Facebook meme scares the crap out of me

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We can best solve problems if we educate the public. But we should not throw people suffering from other biochemical imbalances under the bus. Mentally ill really means doctors have not figured out the imbalance enough to measure it. But as we grow in knowledge, diagnoses keep moving from "mentally ill" to medical like autism.
Most conditions are really physical. We then create "stories" because the brain likes to make sense of the data coming in. That results in patterns of thought needing counselling to reverse. But suicidal thoughts are very often biochemical. Wrong dose on a medication can trigger them. Which is why people need to be safe until balanced.
Plus many people suffer from multiple conditions. So we cannot ignore that some autistic people have other conditions making them prone to violence. Even severe infections can lead to temporary violent behavior in elderly. their guns need to be temporarily confiscated when confused.
So the real education is how to identify those at risk, and keep those at risk safe. People can be OK then change and we need to acknowledge that.
I personally have an extended family member dealing with a child who has autism and violent behavior due to multiple issues. Great family but frustrated by the system.
Saying all kids with autism are nonviolent does a disservice to this child who needs and wants help.

I have zero problem with the line between mentally ill and autism, and I don't think that is the issue parents are concerned about here. (There are many, many kids here with co-morbids and the line is quite blurry.) The two may be distinct, but they are similar enough that we should all stand together.

The problem I have with this mother's story is that she equated her son's behavior to that of a mass shooter. This has repercussions both in her own life and in the lives of those of us who have violent children. Planned, adult violence makes news - but the reality is that it is extremely rare, and there is no way to predict in childhood who will grow up to commit such an act.

This child, in particular, has not grown up yet. We have no way of knowing what he will be like as an adult. Many, many kids who are violent will become contributing citizens as adults. Knowing this does not make their families lives any easier in the short term - but connecting the dots to an extremely random adult act as is done by this mother - it does us all a huge disservice.

I understand this mother is desperate, but it is unlikely that his approach will bring positive attention to either her family or families in similar circumstances. It is much, much more likely that it will create more fear and more stigma. It is far more likely that a story like this will cause society to abandon kids whose needs have not yet been met, rather than offering more support like they should. It is also possible that this story will now follow her son to adulthood, and he didn't understand that when he, at 13, gave her permission.

I am not in any way minimizing this mother's experience. I don't doubt that she doesn't have the resources she needs, and I do know what that's like. I don't doubt that she is living in fear (in fact, on one of the blogs I read, there was a group of Moms with challenging kids on the spectrum who, at a conference, all realized they were experiencing the symptoms of PTSD.) I just wish this story had not come out when it did in the way it did.

It isn't the stigma of mental illness this community rebels against, it is the concept of illness, when applied to ASD. An illness is something that can be cured, once you find the cause, or if not curable, still something that makes you less than you otherwise are. The feeling is that using the term illness keeps people from understnading that ASD is wired in, another way of being and looking out at the world, and it is better to work with it than against it. Approach changes when you call something illness.

I'm pretty sure that everyone who suffers from depression would say that the depression is not a part of their essence, who they feel they are, and that they do desire to cure it. ASD, however, is different. Many are proud of being different, and feel that their nuerological differences carry advantages to offset the difficulties. They don't want to be cured. Therefore it is a difference, not an illness.

Having had bipolar friends, some are very happy with their untreated state even when it meant it came with suicidal swings. Read the OCD blogs. Many Wish people would accept them as is.

I am just asking to realize, I see labeliing people and making assumptions about diagnoses know as mental illness.
So if you are doing this with "mental illness" and many are on this blog,why do you not allow that many people have trouble understanding Autism?

This woman is not creating something to fear. I do not read what you all are reading into it. She asks legitimate question. She fears from what I read into it that perhaps the current approach is not producing better kids but more detached. It seems to her her kid is not getting treated. I hear a concern about our health care system in her blog, not that Autistic kids are violent. So the fear is within you that everyone assumes Austism makes people mass killers. She shared her fear. The public is trying to understand what happened. Beyond the few unreasonable people, most are in a learning mode. We are also dealing with the National budget, Entitlements, Health care reform.

I disagree. This is expressly what she is doing when she says "I am Adam Lanza's Mother." As I said before, she is purposely making a connection between her son and a mass murderer, when there is no reason to assume such a connection exists.

I think she hopes that fear will spur people to action on an issue where I agree action is certainly required. I think she is wrong to do so. I think she is also wrong to talk publicly about a child in this way - not the part where she's telling her story, but the part where she connects her story to such an incredibly horrific tragedy.

I think there are many, many uneducated people who are perfectly happy to follow the dots this woman connected and assume the worst about the mentally ill, the autistic, and challenging children in general.

Article title aside, which I understand she did not pick, I had two concerns reading the article, which may or may not be valid;

1) Her parenting choices. She consistently acted against protocols we recommend for our kids, including the ones with mental health co-morbids. I can't help but feel she unknowingly escalted the situation, and I dislike having it out there that this is just the way it is. All I'm looking for there is some wondering on her part, if with better support she might have known protocols giving her a chance at mitigating the situation. It bothers me that she never, in that one piece, even asks the question.

2) The assumption inherent in some of the phrases that a troubled child has a very good chance of growing up into a violent adult. For the AS community, that is a trigger: ASD children can be VERY physically aggressive, but most won't be as adults. I had a preschool director tell me I'd better get counseling for my son because he scared her. Can you believe it? We actually did get the counseling, and guess who was the problem, according to the expert? Not us or our child. We have good reasons to fear uniformed people over-associating, trust me, so anything that might even have a chance at feeding the prejudice - not good.

Sorry if I over-reached in my response to your analogy, but you put the analogy out there. When people think of ASD as a mental illness, they use inappropriate protocols to treat it. Therefore, I'll fight the characterization. I can only handle one issue at a time. I know ASD, I know depression. I'm not going to speak to anything else.

(Posted from phone; excuse the typos)

Just to be clear, here is the part of the article I take issue with:

Again, I don't disagree that we need to talk about - and take action in helping families cope with mental illness. I also think this analogy is a highly inappropriate way to go about starting the conversation.

The thing is this woman piggy-backed on this tragedy (Yes, I do believe that this is what she did) as a way to say, in essence, "I am not getting help with my son. I badly need help with my son. If you do not help people like my son, then society will pay a serious and bloody price."

I don't necessarily approve of this person's methods for the reasons outlined before. Also as I stated before that does not mean I am unsympathetic to her plight. The thing is, society is not going to be scared into helping kids like her son. Society has many means at its disposal, and the tone she takes does not help her cause if she wants compassionate help.

"Help me and my family or you might have blood on your hands," opens up a whole avenue of "solutions" that is not necessarily what people with challenging kids find helpful. I know I don't. I am not afraid of my son, but I absolutely want anyone who is afraid of his/her child, to get compassionate real help.

Encouraging society to label challenging children as dangerous does not help me and my family. It encourages the powers that be to ignore our childrens's gifts (or even find them to be evidence of danger ahead) and concentrate on keeping them contained and controlled. That strategy would be very bad for most of us. Being selfish, this is what worries me terribly.

I'd like to add that I feel bad for the mom, not just in the challenges she faces but in having had her post go viral, which is not something she expected. She assumed she was talking to a "friendly" auudience, people who would understand why she speaks as she does, and then instead she gets so many others. When I write here, my thoughts are highly tailored to a situation or mood; it is hard to imagine having it all pulled out of context and analyzed. But, hers has beeen and thus needs to be discussed. But if I saw her ... I think I'd just want to giver her a hug.

I hear the exact opposite. She is saying your kid will be safer in school if her kid gets appropriate help. It is your problem. My extended family's kids have been injured by undertreated kids with issues in school. She is saying maybe the system is taking treatable kids and traumatizing them. I have a family member with the same fear. They live with this unspoken fear. let them come out into the light because we all will benefit. This woman is asking for help with her parenting.
Why are we slamming her sharing her fear when even her kid agreed with being public with the blog?

When the system cares for kids with violence problems, it often involves arresting them. When many adolescents go inpatient psych, the parent can't stay with them. As young as age 10 yrs old. Would you leave your sick child alone in a hospital? What would that do to traumatize them? What would it do to your child if they were handcuffed to take them to treatment and see the doctor or therapist? Would your kid really develop free from anger, abandonment issues? Would they grow up seeing you as loving, protecting them, and doctors as wonderful places? How would they see the world?
But what choice do they have? There is no safe place except inpatient psych when they are threatening harm. We need safe options that allow the parent to stay with the child.
denouncing her and Implying mentally ill people are the problem does not solve this and make your child's world safer. It only shuts down an issue that people need to deal with.

Last edited by AaaaCccc on 26 Dec 2012, 9:05 pm, edited 3 times in total.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came
Various versions of first they came for ...

Sorry to come on strong. But I feel not enough are speaking up for this mother, child and challenges.

The path to better understanding for autism does not lie in letting these kids you call mentally ill, who do have an organic imbalance in their neuro chemistry ( that's the point of medication), be under served and traumatized by the increasing use of police in their care.

If we do not speak up for them, I do hear the beginning of some clamoring to lock up autistic kids and that scares me too. We stand together, or individually fall.

I don't see much point in continuing to discuss what a third person wrote, when the only way to make real progress would be to have her and I work it out together, directly, an opportunity we don't have. I understand her goals, but we may as well be on different planets when it comes to approach. Or style ... Hard to put my finger on it because we aren't in contact. Fact is, the article bothered me. That is my feeling, my gut reaction, and I'm entitled to it. If I was spaeaking with her, I could work through it, but I'm not. What I did not want was for her article to be an anthem for life with troubled kids because, put simply, it isn't perfectly expressed. We don't have to work out the answer, we just have to have people looking a little bit critically at it, and for other articles to get similar attention. And that balance occured, so it's time to move on.

I have never been an organizer but if this community cannot even get behind the need for a non police force use with kids back to the old days, to allowing parents to stay overnight, then I have a larger education task and need for action.
I have Asperger's so it takes a lot to bring me to tears. But this did it. I am getting petitions to sign constantly about kids taken away from school in handcuffs for meltdowns, age 6. I personally don't care about the diagnosis. I work in the system and deal with over reactions by staff a lot. I am less directly involved now, but often the violent person would often calm down when short non threatening me in soft voice would make security step away. I am not taking big risks, I am extensively trained in martial arts and fast.
The volume of news stories, family stories of police calls, and then the more personal experience with a child who wishes to remain unknown. I saw what police use, and they were nice, and an inpatient stay did to their psyche.
Adults understand and often in reteospect are greatful for the police and forced incarceration (jail) or inpatient stay.
This forum is a test for me. Will this community care enough to save their own kids, or will this debate like all others break down into emotional lines, picking out details and missing the big picture.

My keypad froze.

So I am older. How my violent schoolmates were handled. If the teen pulled a knife on the teacher, the exmarine physics teacher who was unassuming and acted usually like a clown, would quickly disarm the kid. Then pin them. No more incidents for that kid. No police. Just principals office.

Due to lawyers, we can't do that now.

I would like to see a trained, not armed security in each school
Iike hospitals have. Trained to work with kids the staff can't handle. The uniform gets attention. And good ones joke with the person until they calm down. Not low paid untrained security. Nothing will stop a determined murderer. But the more we can keep kids in a normal setting and let teachers teach, the better off we all are.
But to warn you all, teachers will call them on your kids and all kids. You can either be on the ground floor of stopping this madness with police use on kids, or let public hysteria take over. Your posts and articles sway nothing when it comes to primitive fear in the public. Her post changed nothing. It's like the gun debate. Facts don't persuade.

You can't stop teachers and others now from acting in increasing fear about kids/adults. I have already seen some over reactions I spent 1.5 hrs dealing with one case this week.

Second, Petitions are the place to start along with calls/ emails to Congress.
It is wrong that a child cannot have their parent stay with them on an inpatient psych unit. I am sorry it is a more difficult situation to control. The parent would need to submit to a search and confiscation of property while on the unit. But I would do that for my kid if in their most vulnerable, they had to stay several nights ina hospital psych unit.

I really don't care about endless debates about a blog post. I want to stand up for these kids now.
Is there anyone who couldn't agree those proposals improve the rights and care of the vulnerable ?
I will see it again, it's not fear of autism I see at work, it's fear in general. No one mentions possible autism when I see staff get concerned someone is a safety risk. I do see more requests in some to control them and stronger reactions in general though to perceived risk.
I know kids scared because of all the rumors now about threats in school. I know kids suspicious of a person walking by the school looking funny. No one mentions autism except in blogs and the news.

Think airlines. Yes Middle Eastern looking people bear the brunt, but how many of the rest of us are swept up in measures that don't even consistently work and traumatize kids, inconvenience disabled and elderly?

My last post on this but I am interested in response to proposals as it will affect my action plan if I hear some better ideas to use.

To bring this home, forget about your kid ever being a mass murderer. That's not the point.

Wonderful autistic kids get sexually abused in school, bullied sometimes even by staff and teachers. They then act out. Kids with no diagnosis change behavior after an incident and often don't talk. Why are your kids different?

How do you want the school to respond to your sexually abused kid in a full blown meltdown unable to verbalize what happened? You want them taken away in handcuffs by police? You want them inpatient psych without you at their side until someone gets finally what happened if ever? Should the police really be the early response to an unarmed child
In a meltdown?

This is your concern

You may have missed it, but one of the things that bothered me about the blog post we're discussing here is that I felt, rightly or wrongly, that the mother had opportunities to mitigate things with her child that she missed, and that possibly could have prevented the eventual involvement of police.

I am with you on not considering law enforcement or hospitalization to be the right answer most of the time, but not all parents have the talent to handle things themselves. I consider it to be mostly sheer luck that I've managed to do OK by my kids so far; it is all so case by case, person by person, family by family, I don't know how you come up with a viable solution beyond encouraging parents to eductate themselves and get off the life treadmill long enough to figure out what their unique kids need. Professionals are aids; the first line has to come from parents.

If you want to create a piece that will find concensus, go for it. I ended up seeing enough good stuff by others that I decided to put my energies elsewhere.