Posted on 05/25/2014 11:21:16 AM PDT by Yaelle
We don’t have a gun problem in this country. We have a brain problem. And it is going to get worse.
After reading just some of this killer’s autobiography, only up to age 12, I am starting to believe that we need to STOP MAINSTREAMING kids with asperger’s or highly functioning autism.
And I have a son with it, same age as this guy. His childhood parallels my son’s except: I DIDNT FORCE HIM INTO SCHOOL. By 4th grade he was homeschooled all the way through. You will not see my son in the news for killing people.
First, the similarities: the frustrations that caused tantrums in this guy were like the same ones that did it for mine: things not going the way he thought they would, even small things. Very hard for step parents to understand, but moms make it a little easier, maximizing what they do like and eliminating or minimizing what they don’t. The same joys in athletic pursuits when they CAN keep up, and in Pokemon and video games, where there are not subtle cues to try to understand, just straight forward logic. Kids on the spectrum excel at these and engender admiration from the other kids.
The difference: when he started to come to the age of logic, he saw himself as FAILING. He looked around him with that Aspie logic, saw that he was unable to be popular like the other boys (probably far less of those than he realized even were), and tried his hardest to copy them. But nothing he tried worked. He was missing all social skills, and sadly, he was the only one who couldn’t see or sense this. My son was not in a world where he had to see himself measured against “peers” who are really not peers at all. Inside, the world is very different for neurotypicals.
Yet his parents, out of both ignorance of and disinterest in autism, kept shoving their little square peg boy into the round holes of school, public and private.
About a tenth of the male population at his age and younger is on the autism spectrum. Most are shoved into public schools and may well feel similar to him. The bullying and even just social ignoring they are receiving could lead these guys to logically click off as this one and the Sandy hook guy did. People with autism can click off their emotions easier than the rest of us, especially when young.
These kids need to be schooled with others with social deficits. Not the criminal guys on their way to Juvie, just other kids with spectrum or learning disorders who have trouble socially. This way, they can have friends and more understanding between them. Maybe even gender separation after fifth grade as well as intense coaching on social cues, and learning what the non-spectrum people can “sense” and how to make up for that lack.
I see hope if we as a nation can actually do concrete things to help our young boys with autism understand reality. This boy did not. My heart aches for the misunderstood, mocked boy he once was, just like my son. But when I saw that my son’s description of his third grade “friends” didn’t match up with the sheer avoidance of him I saw in the school, I took him OUT OF SCHOOL. And it was a religious private school, too. Children are children. No one helped this boy early on. No one realized this was going to be a powderkeg situation.
NOW WE KNOW. Kids with autism need to be in separate schools or classes, where they can honestly be taught about their differences, encouraged to have play dates with like mindeds, and believed in. THOSE WHO WERE MURDERED IN SANTA BARBARA WOULD BE ALIVE TODAY if this killer had been treated appropriately. He didn’t understand why he couldn’t have friends or girlfriends. He could have learned this at 12 instead of turning against the whole world.
This guy doesn’t deserve our attention as a cold blooded killer. He deserves our attention because of his “manifesto” which is a service he has done us to describe how he reached the point of cold blooded killer. And his autism played a huge part. With one child in 30 being somewhere on the autism spectrum, we had best drop our focus on the gun and put it where it belongs: a child’s lifetime of feeling outside of society can definitely cause deadly harm. We need to make sure these people are attached to society. It can be done.
Counting down to the FReeper who first says that children with autism weren’t beaten enough by their parents. Three, two, one....
At some point, a kid with Aspergers has to learn how to interact with their peers, how do you do this by removing them from exposure to them?
At some point, a kid with Aspergers has to learn how to interact with their peers, how do you do this by removing them from exposure to them?
At some point, a kid with Aspergers has to learn how to interact with their peers, how do you do this by removing them from exposure to them?
At some point, a kid with Aspergers has to learn how to interact with their peers, how do you do this by removing them from exposure to them?
You won’t be removing them from exposure. But you would be taking them out of the daily challenge to fit in and the daily risk of being ignored and bullied. Bullying still happens, even today, especially to the special needs or the overweight child, not as much to races or gays.
Look, this current way isn’t helping.
Well, the first thing is that you don't have to worry about negative social reactions before the child is old enough to understand why it is happening (like someone being made fun of for repeating the same thing over and over)...
*grin*
Problem is autistic boys have same intelligence and drives as normal boys. Problem is due to their sensory problems they cannot take information from environment and learn. Depending on degree of severity, these boys eventually will progress but at various levels and degrees. But the drive to have a girl does not disappear. Our pop culture does not diminish sex and sexuality. Many of these autistic boys will grow up and become violent. Each year scores of parents or caregivers are beaten to death, scores of young good looking female workers at half way homes are assaulted. Many of these autistic boys when they grow up to be men, cannot roam the streets, but rather institutionalized along with the mentally insane.
The movie Rainman with Dustin Hoffman does not portray austism accurately. Small percentate of austistic people become geniuses, but most are not. Significant numbers become violent.
Agreed. Therapy can be helpful too. To some degree they can learn social skills, such as empathy, and they can learn what not to say in social situations.
Allowing a kid like that to play violent video games is not the answer to keeping him occupied, though it is temptingly convenient. Clearly this kid “solved” his problems by taking his cues from first-person shooter games.
You did the right thing. A parent’s duty is to protect their children.
State-run schools are and always have been pure evil, and intentionally so.
The creation of public schools and the takeover of American education kicked into high gear with endowments by George Peabody, the forerunner of the Rockefeller foundations.
Those interests, and parallel groups in the UK and Europe are where eugenics, etc., all come from, which was notably implemented in NAZI Germany.
The chain of research and strategy directions continues in American government schools today, under the auspices of the tax-exempt foundations of the elites.
It’s pure evil, but too many American parents give in to the temptations of wanting social fun and extracirriculars for their children. It’s like Josef Stalin as “The Music Man”.
Very interesting post. It’s so very hard to homeschool these children, hats off to you, and obviously movie producer Hollywood dad couldn’t have done it (wouldn’t have either). I have a daughter this way, who has expressed ideations like this boy’s, but given the testosterone differential, boys do the violent thing more than girls. I finally took her out of school as a senior, better late than never. These kids are treated so very very bad, and they don’t have the mental skills to be able to think “whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger”, no, rather for some of them it’s whatever doesn’t kill me makes me want to kill you.
I think your comment is full of inaccuracies and generalizations. But it does have huge points.
These people do have the same drives. Note that this little boy,when he was innocent and young, longed for male buddies and had some trouble achieving what he wanted. Puberty exacerbated his problem because now he not only wanted to be objectively popular with the girls, he wanted the “possession” attributes of the male female sexual relationship. There aren’t any young girls who would have the understanding to deal with such a total social misfit long enough to achieve sexual gratification!
We can’t be saying “most people with autism will become violent” as that is far from true. A better way to generalize the situation is to say that most people with autism who are highly functioning will be able to feel deep dis affectation and possibly even disconnection from society.
What can we do to prevent this?
The truth is, keeping a young teen with autism from playing popular online video games is cruel. This is the genre (they needn't be violent but they have to be popular) and segment of society where they can finally feel like they belong on this planet. I wouldn't dream of taking it away from them. However, there are clever conquest and puzzle style games that aren't only shooters.
Many if not all young men with autism play and enjoy online video games and in the clear world of them, can feel somewhat socially competent.
I believe we need to change the PARADIGM of educating the highly functioning kid. Academics is the smaller part of k-12. Socialization (often negative, ask any kids from the inner city) is the larger part. I'd bet this kid had no trouble at all with academics. Typically kids with asperger's are very bright, IQ-wise. We need to get them away from the social melėe and spend time getting them connected and happy in a school setting. This is working today in many private schools for autism or LD all over the country. Giving them a world in which they do fit in, and in which they can didactically learn about social skills and cues in the outside world as well.
We have a spiritual problem that no amount of meds can cure.
I agree with you. They can’t see the difference. They don’t understand how neurotypicals feel. And kids and teens can be cruel. Groupthink is just horrible.
Smaller environments just for them, and actual courses in understanding neurotypical development and thinking and social cues could really help these kids.
I repeat. NO AMOUNT OF “exposure” to NEUROTYPICAL KIDS will erase one iota of autism. Yet that is the current paradigm. It really only serves the in denial parents who won’t admit there is something permanently different about their child.
We have a spiritual problem that no amount of meds can cure.
Disagree here, with one potential exception.
Disagreement — religious families also have kids with autism. Religion and morality don’t prevent it or cure it.
And there aren’t meds for autism anyway.
One potential exception, and I’ll give you credit for this one: if this family of the killer had had a closeknit religious community, with the right people in leadership, MAYBE, just MAYBE, he would have had somewhere to go to confess his horrible thoughts and feelings, and maybe someone could have guided him.
He definitely could have had a girlfriend. There are plenty of teen or twenty something girls with special needs who also don’t know how to relate to others. The two could have learned together. If only his family could have guided him to a social group for teens with autism, maybe a summer camp, when he was in his teens. Things could have turned out differently.
(Beg pardon if they did try that - I did not read the whole manifesto)
Reading the thread I'd wondered about that. Is the diagnosis clear enough that it is rarely misdiagnosed so that some with autism are put on the ADHD type drugs as kids?
Good job! That should be seen and read beyond FR.
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