Compassion for mother who chained up autistic son? What?!?

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I think you'll find I'm an angry, embittered person, especially when it comes to ASD and disability. I have been compared to a dog before by my own mother. Forgive me if my compassion appears one-sided.

I am unfamiliar with the relevant Australian legislation, but to me, (moral judgements aside) this is black and white neglect.

How would it be classified if done to an adult?

These type of abusive actions and the justification of those actions seem to come from the historical legacy of parental ownership of their children, and their right to do as they see fit to/for their children. These types of norms and values belong in the last century.

For example, if we look at what led up to the birth of child Protection with the foundation of the NYPCC:

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The minimization of the harm inflicted on a child by chaining him and leaving him unsupervised in this state, is to me the undermining of child protection and in complete contrast to the recognition of children's rights as human beings aged under 18. How can any educated person excuse this neglect, in any manner, surely they must have an ulterior agenda...

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Last edited by Amity on 22 Nov 2015, 2:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The issue of why the mother made the decision to chain up her son, is much, much larger than her sense of morality. There is a fundamental flaw in how society values people, and the services available to different groups of people in a financially driven world. 'We don't exclude, but our prices do' .

To make any type of moral judgement about the child's mother, I believe it would be prudent to first examine this case with the context of Urie Bronfenbrenners Ecological Systems Theory.


Do you blame the individual, or blame the system for its lack of support? Are they both at fault?
Is wider society also at fault? Who is blamed, and what does that actually change?

I am sorry that you had such an awful mother. But I also thibk that you realize that not all parents are like her or you would not have acknowledged this :

Miss Lizard, I am sorry that I misunderstood what you said. Forgive me.

It is a sad situation and I am sure it is one that is very common. Hopefully this woman and other parents like her will be able to get the help they need for their families.

Last edited by skibum on 22 Nov 2015, 4:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Goodness, that is cruel. My mom has said some doozer things to me too but never anything like that. I am sorry you went through that.

Your post says a lot more about you, to me.

I don't know if this depends on the country and state but I have heard that if you have to chain your child up, you have to get permission from the judge so it wouldn't be child abuse. My ex boyfriend knew a kid like that in his school who was always in chains because he would harm others and himself so to protect everyone from him, his parents had to go to court to get permission from the judge. I assume the parents loved him so much, they didn't want him in a mental hospital so to keep him at home, they had to make their lives safe and others too round him.But I felt sorry for the kid because that had to happen and if everyone was yelling abuse at the parents, I wouldn't have sympathy for the kid but thank god it wasn't on the internet where everyone was judging or I would have felt anger and hated the kid because everyone thinks he should harm others and victims have no right to be safe.

And like you mentioned, League Girl, we might also look at the perspective of whether the parent was considering not only might the child hurt someone else but whether or not the child would end up hurting himself. And an Autistic child could very easily hurt himself. I know. I have given myself concussions before and I am very high functioning. There is a lot more to this situation than we can possibly know from just reading one article. So it's just best not to pass harsh judgement.

If it takes a village to raise your (NT) kid, then it takes a whole county to raise kids with LFA. By the sounds of it, this was an immigrant single mom with 6 kids living in poverty. I don't know what support services are offered by Australia, but at the end of the day you are wholly and solely responsible for your child. If she had 5 other children, those children need to be fed, clothed and afforded at least a reasonable quality of life. You can't expect her to neglect all her other kids because this one had ASD and therefore was the only one that counted / mattered. The mother probably needed to work, shop, cook and clean. Maybe there was no one to back her up and she was doing the best she could under the circumstances especially if the child had a tendency to elope / wander. Would you rather he was tied to a bed so that he couldn't wander away and put himself in harm's way or would you rather he turned up dead ?? We don't know all the facts.

Again, I am vehemently opposed to physical restraint and had previously fought against the use of rifton chairs in classrooms, so this is quite horrific to read. But if she needed to buy food, if there was no way she could take him (not all stores are autism friendly), and if there was no one she could trust to watch the kid while she went to buy food ??

It is all very well to get on a high horse over scenarios that you will never experience. But it takes a lot to actually hold out a helping hand and offer assistance. It is quite obvious, however, that the ones most judgmental of this woman are also the ones LEAST likely to help.

Talk is cheap, after all.

Good. I don't believe that a disability is any excuse or reason to be a nasty bit of work. If you want compassion and understanding, then please extend those courtesies to others first, even to "evil NTs".

Respect is a 2-way street.

Also, people should put their money where their mouth is - if you are going to judge this woman, how about you also see how you can help her ??

The chaining up itself is upsetting, but what really upsets me is, if the home were to catch fire, this child would be home alone, with no way out, and trapped to die. ...er, I don't like the thought that my cat is left in my house with no way out when I'm gone if something were to happen. If it were a child, I don't think I'd be able to function to shop. I don't think "we understand how this kind of thing could happen" if the worst case scenario were to happen would be the same response.

Then again, it is really sad. We live in a world in which you don't have the community we had when I was growing up. When I was a child, we lived on a street with a lot of young parents just trying to start out. We were considered fortunate because we had 2 running cars and our own telephone. If any of the moms was in a pinch and had to take another child to the doctors in an emergency, or run out to get medicine, knocking on a neighbor's door was an option. Even if your child was special needs, people would step in for a few minutes if it had to be done. Not for like day to day convenience, but there was a sense of being there for one another in the hard times. Now it seems like there is so much isolation, and people have to be so wary of each other in general. It would almost be considered strange to do that sort of thing looking around, now.

It does take a village, you know ?

We are in the process of organizing a "special needs co-op" in our little zipcode. This is where you "trade" babysitting time with another family and you can take your children to another family to have the parents watch your kids while you go do "whatever" (including shopping, date-nights, or just even relaxing watching TV). Then when another family needs a break, or help, you step in. Currently, we have identified only 4 families willing to participate in the co-op (as many others prefer to use paid respite), but I am "marketing" aggressively to "enroll" more families so that we can create that village to raise our offspring in.

I hope this family gets the help they need. I am going to check on Facebook to see if anyone is fund-raising for them - if Australia does not provide respite services, then she may need to pay for it out of pocket, and I don't see how she could afford it with 5 other mouths to feed . Even casting aside my disagreement over the use of physical restraint (including that awful Rifton chair), I don't think it is safe to leave a child with ASD alone in a house because what if there was a fire ? Not likely but why take a risk ?

She needs respite STAT.

This looks like something my neighborhood did when I was little. We lived in a HOA neighborhood so it was like a little community. Everyone knew each other and we had the president and the secretary and we held functions and meetings and everyone would drop their kids off at one house while the parent had to do an errand or something. We all took turns so I grew up with other kids coming to our house and us going to other kids houses where we played.

I don't know if all HOA neighborhoods are like this but if you have this community, it makes parenting a lot easier but you have to be sociable and have no problems with talking to people and being social. But the con part if gossip so there was lot of drama and gossip between neighbors but my mom learned she had to be careful what information she shared with and the pro thing about it was she was also given support about me so she had all this support around her about raising me and how to help me because one neighbor was a speech therapist, one other used to work as a special ed teacher and then she worked for the district, one other was a occupational therapist, and one other was a music teacher and told my mother that voice lessons would help me with my rhythm and speech so my mom was able to get support and know where to get it because she had all these neighbors who would recommend classes or other therapists they knew. That was how my mother found an occupational therapist for me who worked in my age range. Our OT neighbor was friends with her so she told my mother about her when my mom was trying to find OT for me but none of the teachers worked in my age range.

That sounds like a really smart and creative idea. I hope it catches on and its use becomes more widespread in other communities as well.

HisMom, the coop is brilliant. I too hope you the best with that. And hopefully the idea will spread into many many communities.