Mother talks about killing her autistic daughter and herself

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Juggernaut
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08 Mar 2007, 10:34 pm

Just want to say I stand by what you've been saying Zeno!



RedMage
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08 Mar 2007, 11:09 pm

Can't watch... Computer too slow...



Inventor
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09 Mar 2007, 12:05 am

I lived throug it by luck, I share much with other dinos. We did not have words for it. I never spoke much but was watching.

I never identified with anything before WP. I still have no idea of the spectrum, or where I fit. I know I do. Some said I was a slow learner, but when I did it was 100%. I am from so long ago that I have always thought I lived among hostile and lesser beings who were dangerous. Looking back, I still think that.

The world did seem to teach hostile agression, and by early teens I was 100%. Then they did not want to play anymore. I did get picked on in other ways, out of my school there was I, and a fat kid who were into science and math, and our teachers considered us abnormal. Then Sputnik went up, the Science Panic of 1957. A National Progran was started, new text books, science clubs, of chosen upper middle pure white christian kids with two parents. Me and the fat kid were not allowed to join, and still had the top grades.

It did turn into a race to the moon, to put white christian males there before goddless commies. Since I kept their chosen ones from getting top honors in science, I was pushed out of school. I applied Physics at a pool hall, and was soon making more than a teacher.

I took jobs that gave others headachs, places where exact knowledge paid off. I mastered photographic printing, when the strobe failed, and half a wedding was under exposed, the other half normal, and a reshoot was out of the question, the job came to me, the alblum matched. I could have flown in on my own wings and would have gotten the job. I was recruited for punch card IT in 1963, a room of trays and machines, and had it all figured out and running much better in a week.

Not much of life ever cared about my look or other behaviors, I did the job to perfection. I never get bored, but cannot work with a radio playing. I took lonely jobs, only person there on the night shift.

Girls did not see me as marriage material, the though of having a child like me freaked them, but as they were not ready for marriage, some passing sex was OK. I hit the 60s, sorry you missed the party.

I was well cut out for self employment. I function best all by myself.

I never lost my fixation on learning, learned several fields well, and got back in IT in 1990.

I do not have a social life, mostly I stay home, I had joined nothing since the Boy Scouts, till I signed up for WP. I have read 20,000 non-fiction books, written several, and publish others.

I came here to learn, and I think I am lower on the spectrum than many. I still sit and stare, there are things going on inside, several have turned into Patents.

I was written off by family, school, and yet I just kept going. Almost all of those people are dead now, and the dead do not have opinions. My grandmother told me I was just a late bloomer, there had been several in the family, and it took longer, but it turned out well. She was right.

I am in awe of WP, it opened a world I never had. Thank You Alex.

Perhaps in my slow buy sure way I have learned some things better.

This thread is about people who would speak for us? I find the people here speak well, and from real knowledge.

The charity deal here is, you can raise money without being a non-profit, if you give 11% to a non-profit. 89% is for overhead. This organiation is pro-cure, which is pro-pill, so they can raise money from drug companies, they are advertising. I am shocked that so little has been learned, I was that kid, I did build my world from nothing bit at a time, till I mastered each step. I did it through a lot of resistance.

Nothing has changed in fifty years. We are not allowed to speak about how we learn, we need to be managed, by self appointed managers?

Paddle your own canoe.

They are a fund rasing machine, here are 9512 members, many visitors, and we learn much through aspie rambling, it is a lot of fun, but we could save a lot of people a lot of grief if we would lay out a road map. I find nothing helpful in the psycobabbling and ever changing Mental Health Profession. They could not make the cut for a hard science, and just wanted jobs. Drug companies are purely profit driven, there is a lot of money to be made pushing pills that do not work.

The aspie range is so broad that no one answer could ever fit even a fair percentage. I have looked, I cannot find even one pair here. Each is a world of their own, yet they do speak across broad lines of sex, age, condition, and there is a common theme. There are extremes of knowledge, but narrow and unconnected.

We do have the only collective memory, we can all say what we remember of the good and bad of childhood, development stages, and the path that did intergrate us into life. I cannot compare aspies, there is no measure of AS +/- NT. The starting point may be different. I do not know the spectrum. I was a slow starter, and had to master each step, that may take more or less time. Different for each, but the same trail, it can be documented.

A collective We should be speaking for the spectrum, because only we know the range. Psych Majors and Drug Companies are blind to our world. The best they can ever do is a one size fits all approach, I would rather hear my parenting dos and donts from people who lived through it, and parents who are living through it.

I do not have video or speakers, but I have gathered what this is about. There is a woman on a bridge who says she is going to push her daughter off, if she does not get some major funding. It is a play on, if you dont do what I want little girl, the puppy will be hurt. To get along with others, my mother blamed everything on me, right in front of me, like I was not there. Then I had to be punished, to show she was a good mother. She is claiming to be totally screwed because of a little girl, but I think she does not need the girl, and would still be totally screwed.

These are the people who are speaking for us?

I do not see them as powerful, what base they have can be crumbled. I am quitely hostile and agressive, but to me it has the emotional baggage of chess. I play to win.

As Krex pointed out, we need an Asylum run by the inmates to protect us from the world. There is enough science running around here to give creditability to anything we say. A 504c non-profit cost $535 to file with the IRS, then people, corporations, can deduct donations. A non-mental health, drug company, source of information is needed. We are important to the IT industry. 1-300 is a million in the US.

I say we declare war, and dominate our market sector. Who do these outsiders think they are? I would not attack this woman, always bad form, but a list of donors has been filed somewhere, and are worth a mailing. We can be generally anti drug, and still control the market, for if we give bad consumer reports, it will cost them millions. Now they push drugs on Psych Majors, who pop a few, put clients on them, and then repot how effective the treatment was. We can take it one step farther down the line.

We own the customer base, so we can define the treatment. If I thought a pill could solve my main problem, spelling, I would ask Machine1 first. I think we could bring in a lot of money, promote our art, and create jobs like writing a report about what it is like to have AS and be a thirteen year old girl.

I have said before, Alex knows the first rule of medicine, "Do no harm."

I do hearby nominate Alex as Chairman of the Board, do I hear a second?



Zeno
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09 Mar 2007, 7:52 am

Thank you Juggernaut. This thread is interesting for the wide range of reactions that it has solicited. All of us can agree that what that woman wanted to do was wrong, but we do not agree on what it means for autism in general. I am fully aware that what I have said is deeply unpopular and unsettling for those who have given their lives to the care of autistic people, but in all that I have read about autism, few have dared to look at the abuse of autistic children; save for the instances where real, and usually horrendous physical harm was involved. Where there is any attempt to examine the difficult family dynamics that an autistic faces, it is usually the Aspergian who is blamed.

It is the children who are mildly autistic who are at greatest risk of abuse. When a child is deeply autistic, he or she is usually institutionalized in one form or another. While an institutional environment is not ideal, the professional care does mitigate the risk of caregiver dysfunction. The HFA or Aspergian on the other hand lives with their family and generally goes to the same school as everybody else. There are good arguments for keeping Aspies in the general population – it gives them a chance and it also imposes the lowest financial burden. But there is a risk that the caregiver, whether a parent or a teacher, might actually end up mistreating this autistic child because they cannot cope with the autism.

What is frustrating is that these children are abused not because their caregivers are innately abusive, but because of the failed interactions between the caregiver and the child. There are of course “caregivers” who are abusive, but such cases of abuse belong to a general category of child abuse that encompasses all children. The special case that this video brings to light is the abuse that autistic children might suffer because of the burden that they impose on others. The literature is full of advice to parents on how they might help their autistic child cope, there is precious little on how the actions of these parents might impact their children and how that might lead to painful and unwanted outcomes.



ZanneMarie
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09 Mar 2007, 9:14 am

I second that motion, Inventor.


Yes, us Dinos went through it by luck and grit. The more I see about what has happened in the last ten years the better off I think we were.



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09 Mar 2007, 9:52 am

Zeno wrote:
but in all that I have read about autism, few have dared to look at the abuse of autistic children; save for the instances where real, and usually horrendous physical harm was involved.


Anytime a child or adult (NT or ASD) deals with abuse, then they ARE harmed.


Zeno wrote:
It is the children who are mildly autistic who are at greatest risk of abuse. When a child is deeply autistic, he or she is usually institutionalized in one form or another. While an institutional environment is not ideal, the professional care does mitigate the risk of caregiver dysfunction.


All children face the risk of abuse. There is physical, mental, & emotional abuse and it is really determined by the caregiver. If the caregiver is abusive, then the child will be abused.

Being institutionalized does not reduce the risk of abuse. It opens up people to the care of multiple people- some of whom do not have the best of intentions. Doctors, nurses, therapists, personal support workers, social workers.... they are human and some of them are abusive themselves.


Zeno wrote:
What is frustrating is that these children are abused not because their caregivers are innately abusive, but because of the failed interactions between the caregiver and the child. There are of course “caregivers” who are abusive, but such cases of abuse belong to a general category of child abuse that encompasses all children.


Abuse can happen to any child or adult- with or without autism. Any case of abuse occurs because the abuser has something wrong with them. The abusers ALWAYS try to justify it with some reason or another. In singling out the abuse of autistic children, you are saying that some people justify the abuse because of their 'failed interactions.' However, all abusers say it was the victims fault until they take personal responsibility for their own actions.



anbuend
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09 Mar 2007, 10:34 am

Zeno wrote:
It is the children who are mildly autistic who are at greatest risk of abuse. When a child is deeply autistic, he or she is usually institutionalized in one form or another. While an institutional environment is not ideal, the professional care does mitigate the risk of caregiver dysfunction.


FYI, that's something that works in theory, but in practice it's been shown that the more caregivers exist (such as in institutional environments), the rate of abuse goes up, not down. (I'd recommend Dick Sobsey's book Violence and Abuse in the Lives of People with Disabilities for the actual statistics.) That and that institutions, like many other places, recreate roughly the environment of the Stanford Prison Experiment which almost inevitably leads to abuse. But the institutional environment actually appears to raise the risk of caregiver dysfunction in a whole slew of ways, not lower it.

One of those ways, for instance, is the fact that the direct-care staff in institutions are the lowest on the hierarchy besides the inmates. This means they get almost the full brunt of the organizational pressure and frustration and powerlessness, and only one set of people to channel it into -- the people who actually have to live there, who are the only people they have power over.

Another of those ways is that in institutions, the main goal is usually not to help people but to keep people "out of trouble", in which what constitutes trouble is defined by the management and usually means "difficult for the professionals". It can be very difficult to swim against that tide, even in a professional who wants to. In fact, when I interviewed a woman about working in those places, she said that unless you know exactly what kind of damage you can do to the people who live there, it's very natural to fall into a role that is abusive without ever knowing that you're being abusive, and very difficult to resist that role, because it lends itself to you so naturally from the institutional structure.

In an institution, one or two people working there who are bound and determined to be extremely ethical cannot make much of a positive difference (and one or two people who are just average ethically are likely to get sucked into the sort of abuse of inmates that isn't immediately apparent to those perpetrating it) except in a limited and short-term way (I have even personally watched people transform from good staff to bad staff in front of my eyes sheerly from what the institutional environment did to them). In a family, one or two people can make the difference between an awful family and a great family, and everything in between, and one or two average people can create a non-abusive household with relative ease.

The part you may have gotten right though, is that people considered less severely disabled are more likely to be abused. That appears to be true in institutions as well, and may have to do with the fact that those considered less severely disabled are more likely to be making demands to do things that staff don't necessarily want them doing. I say "may" and "appears," though, because I'm not sure exactly how, in an institutional environment, they can discern how much abuse a person is getting, if that person is unable to tell them. I know that when I was considered the most severely disabled person in certain institutions, I was singled out for specific (but hidden) abuse, rather than less subject to it, but was also unable to tell anyone about it.

There's also the fact that the worst abuse institutions create is not the physical brutality, but the level of day-to-day degradation that is hard to describe to someone who hasn't lived there. I would rather be outside of an institution and beaten up on a daily basis (something I've experienced) than inside of an institution where no deliberate abuse took place (something I've also experienced).


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09 Mar 2007, 10:41 am

BeautyWithin wrote:
Abuse can happen to any child or adult- with or without autism. Any case of abuse occurs because the abuser has something wrong with them. The abusers ALWAYS try to justify it with some reason or another. In singling out the abuse of autistic children, you are saying that some people justify the abuse because of their 'failed interactions.' However, all abusers say it was the victims fault until they take personal responsibility for their own actions.


I think that's an overly simplistic (and overly individualistic) description of abuse. Of course, every person has a responsibility not to be abusive, but there are other possible (and more complex) reasons than "something being wrong with the abuser as an individual and nothing more" (which is the trap you fall into in your description of institutional abuse, too -- the widespreadness of it and the nature of it makes it clear that it's rarely just a matter of bad apples).

Something Laura described to me in the interview I linked in the last post:


Laura wrote:
...the brutalization of clients, does not come from the individual per se. It's part of the system. It's just inherent in the way it's all designed. And you can pretty much plug everybody in, and if they don't understand it in a deep way, if they don't get what's wrong here, they will simply plug themselves very neatly into the staff role, and they will act staffy. And they don't even need to have social skills enough to figure out how staff are supposed to work, because it's just built into the role. I don't know how to describe that very well, but it's built into the role. It's built into what you're expected to do.

...

From a staff perspective, you would very easily fall into an enormous amount of self-delusion. And a lot of that comes from the fact that you have this pressure to get people to do certain things. You are expected to get Client A to be at Location B at Time C or something like that, with Level of Order D. And the real-world client may not wish to do that.


This does not mean that it's not staff's responsibility to resist this, but if a person thinks that all they need to do is be a decent, not screwed-up person, and they will not abuse power, then they are almost guaranteed to abuse power in those situations and many others.

All of that said, the idea that it's only natural to abuse autistic people is definitely not an idea that I would support. (In fact there's some evidence that supporting that attitude makes abuse or worse more likely, because it normalizes abuse and makes it less unacceptable.)


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09 Mar 2007, 12:53 pm

Inventor,

I don't know where YOU were coming from, but I am white, and was considered christian at the time. I would have indentified with that. I have the SAME complaints YOU do! I guess I am a DINO(meaning older person "middle aged") also.

Steve



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09 Mar 2007, 12:57 pm

i finally watched the video clips in question here and followed other links on you tube where i found this.

an answer to both autism speaks and GRASPs articles of understanding

the video is also on youtube but youtube doesn't contain the audio transcription, which the above link does.


i am the mother of two bipolar daughters. and while i would never wish what i have been through with them on anyone(teenaged years can be devastating with bipolar symptoms completely out of control), i never once wanted to end anyone's life over it. neither did i want to have my children out of my life.
they are bipolar forever. they will have issues forever. and i will love them and take care of them and try to help them adjust to life forever.

i am no martyr, i am just a mother.


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09 Mar 2007, 2:40 pm

Inventor wrote:

I do hearby nominate Alex as Chairman of the Board, do I hear a second?



Got my vote!



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09 Mar 2007, 3:15 pm

alex wrote:
The American public is starting to think what i just posted *is* autism.


Agreed, but the problem is bigger than Autism Speaks. Example - those articles in Newsweek from last winter (I actually found electronic versions and posted them in the News forum). AS/HFA was only mentioned parenthetically and ALL of the children profiled would have trouble living on their own and functioning in society. Even the ones who had jobs (albeit menial ones) were portrayed in the worst possible light.

Autism Speaks makes me sick, but they aren't the only group misrepresenting autism.



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09 Mar 2007, 3:20 pm

alex wrote:
Petitions aren't going to do anything! I can't believe more people haven't revolted at this! And it seems like the people who did revolt weren't even heard by anyone else. I'M OUTRAGED!


Has someone called child protective services on this b***h?



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09 Mar 2007, 3:29 pm

I did. Hard to say if they will do anything. I know of some others who also did. The more people who call the better. She might just be incredibly dimwitted and think she's identifying with the run-of-the-mill parent of an Autie, but I'd rather not take that chance for Jody's sake.

Her name is Alison Singer and she lives in Scarsdale, NY. It's hard to give the address to that vid over the phone to someone, but the more that call, the more likely they will be to watch it.



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09 Mar 2007, 3:39 pm

ZanneMarie wrote:
I did. Hard to say if they will do anything. I know of some others who also did. The more people who call the better. She might just be incredibly dimwitted and think she's identifying with the run-of-the-mill parent of an Autie, but I'd rather not take that chance for Jody's sake.

Her name is Alison Singer and she lives in Scarsdale, NY. It's hard to give the address to that vid over the phone to someone, but the more that call, the more likely they will be to watch it.


Thanks for the info, I will take that under advisement.

BTW, I have two friends (sisters) who work with children in NY - one of them is a speech therapist and one is an occupational therapist. Apparently, once you are reported in NY they keep you on file forever as someone who has been reported. The one sister (OT) was reported because a kid she worked with, who was known to self-injure, had bruises on him like a day after she worked with him. She was criminally charged (along with a few other of his caregivers) and the charges ultimately dropped because 2-3 people worked with him on the day that he got bruised and it couldn't be proven that a caregiver bruised him because he was known to self-injure. Anyway, she ended up having to spend several thousand on a lawyer to get her name removed from the file of people who were reported but not charged because she had trouble getting a job after that.

I know that this is slightly off-topic, but this tells me that NY over-reacts, if anything. That sucked for my friend, but seems justified for the b***h if it ends up keeping her away from other peoples' children. Keeping her away from her own children would also be a big plus.



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09 Mar 2007, 8:15 pm

What would you have accomplished by lynching this woman? We could form a real mob, march into that super rich Scarsdale suburb she lives in, grab her, rip her clothes off, hang her via her wrists to a tree, and party around a bonfire while the fire ants sting her to death. And we could do all this while her two young daughters beg you piteously to let the only mother they know go.

Your blood lust viciousness disgusts me.