I know nothing about this guy and his history. But what I explained about asperger’s yesterday here might help you make sense of the emotional differences. Kids with asperger’s are born with the ability to feel every emotion about themselves. They are each different from each other, but they feel love, pain, joy, hurt.
What they have problems with is empathy. They have a very very hard time putting themselves in the shoes of another. Within a loving family, they learn this, learn to understand others not by reading cues, osmosis, like we all did, by by repeated example and also by parents teaching them to understand others the way we teach kids the colors.
It would be very important to learn, maybe from the older brother, how this killer was treated. Kids with asperger’s engender a lot of negative emotions in their parents. Parents with such kids need a lot of loving support from their friends and community to help them raise good people, but often they are ripped to shreds by their fellows. “worst behaved kid ever” “ can’t you get him under control” etc for years and years.
Parents of kids like this need to know that while it is very difficult to raise their child, that with love even when he sounds hateful, this little one will grow to be a good, kind productive member of society. That is true; I’ve done it. But you must respond to the child’s unseen yet desperate need for love and not to his screaming tantrums where he yells the meanest things he can think of to say.
I am afraid that a lot of these freepers who castigate parents around here (”a few rounds with the belt should do it”) are capable, if blessed with a child with asperger’s, of raising him harshly right into one of these monsters. Please be more supportive of parents trying to raise kids with neurological problems. You can’t beat it out of them.
Makes a little more sense now, but could someone with this condition be used/manipulated to do something horrendous that a normal person couldn't be made to do?
Thanks,
He has never even raised his voice that I am aware, he has never been a problem to his parents and as a matter of fact, my daughter jokes that he is far less trouble than is two "normal" sisters. She has said she wouldn't change a thing about him. Fortunately, I heard Dr. Baden on FOX say that Aspergers has nothing to do with this.
Amen. Well stated, thank you.
An aspie