“Sorry about your kid, it sounds like you are doing what can be done.
Cathy Darnell, Nathan’s mother, is excusing his attacking people. As some people on this thread are also doing.
If the kid uses a knife next time, will that also be excused?”
First off thanks, yes we’re doing what we can. I don’t know this kids family so I can’t comment as to excusing her son, but I can say, just by reading your post and some of the posts on this thread, that lots of ya’ll are commenting on something you know nothing about. Yes autistic kids can act out and if you’re not trained it’s scary, and can be dangerous...but autism isn’t the same as psychotic, an autistic kid isn’t going to grab a knife, and hold anybody hostage. They tend to lash out when they’re frustrated and there are always signs of agitation first. Secondly these kids can be taught not to do this, but not always by conventional means, I used to spank mine when he would hit, then he got where he would hit just to make me spank him. That’s counterproductive so we moved on to timeouts, that mostly works now, but not always, and it took about 5 times longer with him than with the other kids. You can’t beat autism out of somebody. As for this case, I think the aide wasn’t qualified to handle an autistic kid, but even at that he is 6, and I’ve seen plenty of normal 6 year olds that acted worse than my son, and she knew the job involved untrained kids when she took it.