Ok, if he did have asperger’s, here is my thought on that from someone with professional and personal experience with asperger’s. kids with it feel hurt deeply, but have trouble feeling empathy. How they are raised would be key to whether they would be loving, empathetic adults. With asperger’s they need to LEARN empathy like others learn mathematics.
These kids are often tortured by peers at schools. A divorce or other hard family issues can be devastating to them because they will internalize the hurt and not get over it as easily as others.
Many many many kids have asperger’s today. Parents need to do their best to develop deep attachments in them, and remove them from school settings if things are not going well. All children deserve lose and respect, even those with serious behavior problems.
Asperger’s kids can be very very difficult to raise. They can bring out strong heavy negative feelings in their parents. They can say and do things as children that are just horrible and uncaring, and the parents need to be adult and not respond to what the child is pooping out his mouth, out of normal anger that he doesn’t know how to get rid of, but to love him and explain t him why “we don’t act like that” because he won’t be intuitive like other kids.
Parenting is hard. Parenting an aspie is 10x harder.
Now we see how important it is for parents to have loving support while they raise such a child.
Everyone, if you see someone struggling with a tantruming older child, 6-17, please no longer say to her “that is the worst behaved kid I’ve ever seen!” Or “that boy just needs the belt!” All you do is make the poor mom feel like a failure and she will be harsher on a disabled person, possibly closing off his emotions.
Autism is an epidemic due to something in our environments. Maybe the multitude of infant vaccines. Who knows? And these highly functioning kids need to be loved and attached securely in order to learn empathy. They need to learn to love and be loved.
Help these parents. If you know someone, be a sounding board to them, allow them to offload their negative emotions once their kid is in bed for the night. Take them out and help them vent. Make them feel competent. Let them know how hard it is to parent someone with a behavior disorder.
If this post stops a few people from horribly prejudging parents dealing with an impossibly behaving child, and maybe helps some, I am grateful. We don’t need more monsters growing up.
What do you think about an Aspie parent raising an Aspie child? I have family in this situation and wonder what you might have to say about it.
My Aspie, came home from school yesterday and watched the news with me. He could not understand how someone could kill innocent children. even more, he couldn’t understand how someone could kill their parents. This kid doesn’t have an aggressive bone in his body.
I have serious doubts about Aspergers Syndrome. I think its a way to slap a label on those who are socially awkward or those who are smart and think differently.
My son would never think of hurting someone, even when he’s frustrated. This kid yesterday had a lot more going on.
And while his mother had every right to keep guns, she had a responsibility to keep them away from her son if he issues.
I am of the belief that Aspergers, OCD, bipolar, autism, ADD, SAD, ADHD, schizo, dystemia (sp?)and all the others are just manifestations of our fallen nature, and in reality there are very, very few that don’t have a touch of it on some level.
Hell, when I was a kid I could block out everything in favor of what I was focused on. I practically ignored my sister after 2nd grade. I could be sociopathic to gushingly compassionate on any given day. Very socially awkward at times. You name it. I still don’t process social information the best, but considering what our society has become, I’m not sure I care anymore anyway. In fact I think the twisted crap is magnifying and aggravating it.
Bottom line is, as the saying goes, society is but a few days away from total civil breakdown and chaos. We all have it in us, some just suppress it better than others, some are better anesthetized by societies comforts, some have better drugs, and some simply have Jesus. None of us really escape it though.
The local support groups help a lot filling the holes missed by the medical profession. They don’t “cure” anything, but sure help in retaining balance in dealing with the inherent difficulty.