Blog entry defending Stapleton attempted murder down players

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I am still on here a lot and empathy is a topic brought up often. What most report is not that they have little or no empathy but are overloaded to the point of paralysis so it SEEMS like hypo empathy when the issue is hyper empathy. So unless all these people are incorrect in what they are feeling a treatment created under the assumption that the issue is hypo empathy would be ineffective or counter productive

While I know plenty of people who would do anything to help other people and that probably describes the majority with so much wars terrorism, greed etc I find it hard to believe that is a universally innate trait in humans.

^^

The truth is there are both. And some folks readily admit to their problems with empathy and will do anything to fix it. And some folks don't care.

And yes, of course this issue is not specific to the Autism Spectrum. And of course in general it is an issue as modern science shows in the last several decades that empirically measured levels of empathy are down around 30 percent among college age folks.

Empathy is not a static ability nor innate ability alone. There are many environmental activities that increase it and many that do decrease it.

Unfortunately, flesh and blood communication is the greatest enhancer of empathy and Internet communication can be the greatest impediment.

People are cold all over the Internet and treat people like objects instead of basic humanity in what DOES even allow human beings and their primate relatives, Bonobos, to survive IN social cooperation with a similar empathy gene that no other primates shares.

In my opinion, most of the difficulty is environmental when it comes to higher functioning autism. As yes, social cognition and cognitive empathy are synonyms and science now shows that when mechanical cognition activities that are analytical related are done, it represses the pathways of the brain for social cognition also known as cognitive empathy.

The human brain is a remarkable organ of plasticity and in our genetics there is an 'epigenetic clause' that allows us either to evolve in humanity or devolve and that is contingent on what one adapts to for either success or failure in the most important game of life; social cooperation and survival.

It is the core innate reason that any time a child dies at the hands of a parent that the rest of the tribe immediately goes into EMERGENCY MODE, to correct the situation using whatever method is necessary, as it is the farthest thing from normal human nature to either attempt or successfully kill one's own child also known as filicide.

Otherwise, the human race would not have survived as long as it has with the child always considered the prize. Parents are responsible for that, totally responsible for that, but the FACT IS, it has, is and will always be a team of cooperative effort with the village raising the child, or the human species WILL go extinct.

In Japan, levels of human empathy from life in an extreme technological society have gone so low, that young folks as a whole, no longer even desire to procreate, for the most part.

Case in point; at least that is not happening in the US, not quite yet.

Most people don't even understand what cognitive empathy is, and yes that does include the general population. Without understanding it, it's hard to improve it.

And in fact, science has only recently gained empirical understanding of it, as well.

This is no easy no subject and there are no easy answers. It takes work, work, work and more work to make humanity work.

Not everyone wants to and not everyone is cut out for the work required for social cooperation success. But one thing for sure is, at core ability, the whole survival of the species is still continent on this success, always has been and always will be, as there is NO escaping Mother Nature; alive at least.

I don't feel any empathy or sympathy for the mother or the child in this case.
I read about the details, but I feel nothing for either of them, I dont' know why.
I feel really sorry for the people in Africa with the ebola outbreak.

I wasn't aware that has happened on other autism sites. I assume it has happened to you or to others you know?

But that wasn't why I was afraid of expressing it, I just think it would make people accuse me of being apologist or being a bigot or an autism hater or being treated like a bad person for my opinion and monster or being accused of not being on the spectrum just because I refuse to see Issy as a victim for her aggression and seeing it no different than an abuse victim when children kill their abuser or the woman does. Those are still considered wrong and women have gone to prison for killing their abusive husband and kids have gone to jail too for killing their abuser.


One thing I saw is I am reading a book written by Linda Russell (Susan Smith's mother) and I noticed that when she killed her kids, she was painted as a monster in the media but she was going through hard times because David was abusive to her emotionally and also cheated on her and was a deadbeat dad and played mind games with her and it put stress on her and depression so she went suicidal and was going to kill herself but got out of the car and the car rolled into the lake and then she snapped back into reality and started screaming "Oh my god" and panicked so she lied about it and then confessed because she felt it was what her sons needed. Her mother blames all this on David. But when Kelli tries to kill her daughter, she is painted as the victim. What's wrong with this picture?

Basically you need to have special needs kids and be overwhelmed to be a victim but if you have normal kids and you are overwhelmed by BS you are dealing with and you kill your children, you're a monster, you're evil. Yeah something is wrong here alright and I agree. But I wonder if anything would be any different if Issy was just a normal out of control teen who was beating her mother so Kelli finally tried to kill her. Would she still be painted as a victim or as a monster? That one mother who dumped her out of control 15 year old daughter off in Arkansas at a hospital was painted as a mom who abandoned her teen who didn't want to deal with "normal" teen issues so she got lazy and dumped her leaving out all these little details about her daughter that were so wrong she was doing that drove the mom to do that after years of trying to get her help and the system failing her and her daughter so the only way to get her help was to use the Safe Haven Law and it had a loophole in it and she knew it but used it to get her daughter help. That mother appeared on the Dr. Phil show to try and clear her name and telling her side the media left out. The girl wasn't aggressive like Issy was.

Last edited by League_Girl on 24 Sep 2014, 10:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

No it hasn't happened to me, I just read it on one, recently. And no I do not participate in sites like that. Just breezing by and saw it.

Filicide is a horrible thing, but the percentage rate is very small and in general the same across all demographics. Some folks in the Autism community are hyper obsessed with it talking about it on so many places that the real problem is exaggerated over the real numbers, when this horrific tragedy does occur.

It's simply an illusion that it happens more with Autistic children than any other demographic according to the science of it now, as is stands.

In my opinion, and in the opinion of my therapist who helped me regain my emotions many folks who are Autistic are misdiagnosed or the symptoms are an effect of a parental/child abusive environment. That too is politically incorrect to suggest it is a reality, but she sees it everyday in her clinical practice and cannot avoid the reality.

A common element in these issues are what seems to be a general hatred for parents, and stories of abuse at the hands of some of the 'leading folks' in the so called militant autism community that obsess about this issue. That only makes common sense that there would be this correlation.

To be clear this is just an observation of mine, after observing hundreds of conversations on this issue in analysis and anecdotal in effect of what I observed. There is no suggestion in this comment directed at anyone in this discussion in a personal way.

Other primates will show almost identical symptoms of autism, other than the verbal ones, with parental isolation or abuse. Or even isolation from other primates. It's no surprise, and really we aren't that different than Bonobos at the core of social cooperation and interaction. The love of a mother, of the nurturing kind makes an environmental social connection in the brain, that makes a cycle of love, instead of a cold heart.

That too, is just common sense, and anyone with any eyes has seen that who deals with nurturing or not so nurturing environments. It even works that way with dogs and even cats. Love 'em and they'll love ya back. Treat 'em bad, and the problems can and will ensue whether it is crippling anxiety or aloofness. Humans really are not that different, when it comes to love, compassion, affective empathy, and yes cognitive empathy too.

The fact that you have a child, makes a big difference in this discussion, in my opinion. Interestingly enough, I find that most people who are proponents of the militant aspect of this, have no desire to have kids. An obvious association there with potential lower nurturing levels; even at times, aversion toward babies. That is a common human attribute, among some folks on and off the spectrum, but certainly not a usual one. Otherwise, we simply wouldn't be here, even in the best of circumstances, per the environmental challenges of mankind, of the past. But all of this is much harder to understand for folks who haven't been there and done it in real time.

That too, is common sense. It's sad, but I personally give it no merit, as a result of my understanding of the science of it and yes anecdotal experience too.

Are there any studies comparing the fillicide rates of autistic children vs. the general population?

Not really. It is difficult to know how many cases of filicide (or filicide-suicide) there are as there is no national database. The incidences of it for typically developing children and those with special needs can only be guessed based on past newspaper reports. This article seems to be the closest thing to a study about it but given the small sample size, there is too much uncertainty to draw solid conclusions from it. According to news sources they found, 26 disabled children were victims of filicide between 1982 and 2010: 81% were male and 54% were autistic. 30% of the perpetrators had a mental illness.

Interesting "autistic people" are including the victim of murder as one of their own while ignoring the domestic abuse she suffered and subsequent obvious psychosis/PTSD. While her child may not have meant it out of malice.. she still got the crap beat out of her regularly. I know we could always call it just meltdowns.. but then why should we assume the mother did so out of malice when she was mentally ill herself? Or does guilt somehow just not exist if the person has autism?

Downplay murder. Okay. So why downplay assault then?

Bias and prejudice.

I feel more for the child than the mother but feel for the mother. In saying that however I am far more disgusted at a medical system that is for the most part ignoring severe autistics and blaming any and all medical problems on "the autism" rather than actually trying to actually treat real diseases they may have. So yes it sounds like the environment was abusive and codependency was to the extreme.. but shackling a kid to a bed like he's an animal? The hospital inflicted yet more trauma on someone who was not cognitively designed to handle any trauma. Hospitals are meant to exist in order to heal not cause more harm.

People can hate on Andrew Wakefield all they want but it seems he did try to actually help by referring the kid to another doctor. As to what his motives were that is another discussion.

Authorities were also to blame for allowing the kid to go home in the first place however leaving him shackled to a bed is a very poor quality of life. It sounds like his life was just one big nightmare horror story.

To your other point.. I do care about ebola but I have been trying to ignore it. I fully expect it to spread round the world and for a vaccine to be out just in the nick of time.. for some at least. Scary stuff.

Last edited by riley on 25 Sep 2014, 8:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

That's what I have been wondering too and I have seen the following comments about Issy to justify her actions, "she was abused" "the therapy made her do it," "therapy makes autistic kids be aggressive and they are created", "Kelli is lying" "She wouldn't accept her daughter" "Kelli is narcissistic" "Kelli did her blog to humiliate her daughter."

From what I heard by Kelli, Issy has been aggressive from age two and it got worse by age eight and it got worse as she got older. The irony I saw in her interview on the radio and on Dr. Phil was when she said about Issy when she was first diagnosed "Thank god she's not violent" and the next day she started to hit. Kelli admits she kept telling her daughter before the violence started "don't do this" "Do this" "Stop that." But lot of parents tell their NT kids this too and they don't go violent. They get frustrated too yes because they are not being told what they should be doing instead.

From what I read, Kelli got PTSD from caring for Issy from all the beatings she got and her doctor said Kelli got brain injuries and it was starting to affect her speech but yet she sounded fine on the show when she talked.


They said Issy has poor impulse control so supposedly that causes her aggression. But I have to wonder where the heck was the father all this time and leaving his wife alone with her? I know he had to go to work and stuff. I know my husband wouldn't leave me alone to get beaten by our own child and my husband agrees our kid would be hospitalized if that was happening. Unfortunately lot of people do not take parental abuse seriously. They think just because you are the adult and someone is the child, you should be able to be in control and stop it and easily restrain them but how can they think that about a child who is the size of an adult and bigger than the adult? People need to stop thinking all kids are innocent and can't hurt a grownup and stop thinking all young teens are smaller than adults and size of a child. I reached 5 foot in 4th grade and was taller than my mother in 6th grade by a half inch. I think that is why Kelli was posting her injury photos on her blog and the scratches and bite mark Issy left on one of her workers as a cry for help to show everyone how serious this all is. But instead it gets seen as narcissism and humiliation for Issy and being the victim?

I also think this may be happening because autistic people do not want to be seen as violent so if they paint Issy as the victim and justify her aggression, then there won't be any stigma on us. We do not want people to fear us thinking we will hurt them or their kids or anyone. I always see things the way it is from what information I am given while the rest seem to look at it and gloss over the bad stuff and predict what Kelli was doing to Issy and reading something else I have never seen. Kelli mentioned in her blog where these workers were doing quiet hands with her and autistic people were saying how she got violent because she was not allowed to stim, but when I read it, what I saw was Kelli wrote Issy was hitting so they gave her quiet hands, hit again, quiet hands. So she was being given quiet hands so she won't hit, not to not stim. Maybe they should have done gentle hands and given her an alternative? But even if they were not allowing her to stim, would she still be justified to hit? Would a normal person be justified to hit if they were told to not doodle and the pen was grabbed from them?

This reminds me, when Men Don't Tell first aired, women groups got offended by it because they didn't like the fact how women can do domestic violence on men and how men can be victims of domestic violence so they got the movie banned and it never aired again. I watched it on youtube and it was a true story. People also don't take domestic violence serious for men just like how people don't take parental abuse seriously. They did make a movie about it too in 2001 called Dangerous Child and the mom got the blame for it too as well in the movie until the son confessed to his abuse and he got arrested and instead of getting charged, he was sentenced to treatment to help control his anger and his impulse. The kid was sixteen and he was not autistic. He was normal who just had an anger issue and would easily lose control when he gets mad. I am not sure how people felt about that movie. But in the movie the kid supposedly got that from his father who also had the same issue and that was why his parents were divorced ad why mom had full custody. I suspect the dad was probably abusive towards his wife so she divorced him and had full custody of the kids and the dad had part and the kid picked up on it thinking that is how things are solved when you're mad and the mom ignored the red flags when he would have verbal outbursts so when the nine year old was starting to do it, it wasn't ignored this time. Sometimes parents make a mistake ignoring an issue and then it gets worse and worse and then the kid is psychical like what happened with the 16 year old. But even watching this as a 16 year old, I knew then it was BS to say it was the parents fault and the mom should be god just because she is the adult and should be able to be in control of his actions and stop it. I mean how could she stop it if the son is bigger than her and size of a man? But I bet if the mother had killed her son, she would have been painted as a monster I bet and people would be glossing over the fact how violent the kid was and probably justify it too and say the mom was probably abusive so the boy always defended himself and the mom is just saying all that to be a victim to make people feel sorry for her.

Last edited by League_Girl on 24 Sep 2014, 4:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

In an ideal world with greater supports for eberryone, what would one do about this situation to prevent a child from becoming aggressive and a parent from losing it?

No..... No no no no no. Ok, a theory, right, is when a fact graduates into something more than fact. It's a higher level of truth and is more substantiated than fact.

With communication, it works both ways. Communication through verbal only, isn't having a lack of communication, having a lack of communication takes two people. With non-verbal AS people, yeah ok, lack of communication. For AS the lack of communication comes from one side using verbal only, and the other side (NTs) not understand, or misunderstanding, or reinterpreting incorrectly -- Also, one side using prominently non-verbal, and the other side (AS) missing it, or not getting its intended meaning straight away. The breakdown in communication works both ways.

If the senses aren't working, e.g. you can't feel touch in your right hand, that is sensory dysfunction. Also if you receive incorrect senses or receive them at the wrong time, like in schizophrenia.

With impulse control and emotional regulation, you don't see that in every AS kid or person. It's possible they do have impulse control or emotional regulation issues, but that sure as hell isn't AS, or has anything to do with it. If it were, everyone on the AS would have this to some degree, but that's not the case. It's even possible that impulse control or emotional regulation has nothing to do with the outcome that you're observing.

Autism does indeed cause aggression, but not in the way you're thinking. It's very easy for NTs to internalise AS people as "the other" or "outsider", social norms associated with community, and what's acceptable and what isn't can easily be discarded, much in the same way as wearing a mask. The old saying reiterated in movies of "people fear what they do not understand" does hold true. With that, actions that would otherwise be unthinkable in other contexts can be justified under these circumstances, hence the appropriation of aggression and violence by otherwise normal NTs.

Being asked "do you understand?" is actually a pet peeve of mine, because part of the problem is getting NTs to understand, when they don't have the capacity to understand in the first place. It's very hard to teach someone when the cup is already full.

If I understand correctly as a result of the show supports that they weren't getting are going to be or are being forwarded to them

What does one do about a child who becomes aggressive from age two and continues to get more and more violent as she grows up?

Hospitalize them would be my family's answer.

LOL I debated using the word "theory" and them decided to use it. Oops. I was using it in a colloquial way. It's not a scientific theory that has been tested many times like gravity..

My kids don't have Asperger's. My one kid doesn't speak, doesn't use PECS, doesn't use sign language, doesn't point or gesture, doesn't even take you to what he wants most of the time. If that's not a lack of communication, then I don't know what a "lack of communication" is. I think my kids exhibit of those things and my "theory" is based on them... I read all the books and go to seminars if I can, and I pay ridiculous amounts of money for therapy to teach things like something resembling communication that I understand. I shouldn't have asked if my theory made sense because now I feel bad. Not knowing is hard and I'll probably never know, but I need to at least think I understand because everything's a failure. I feel defeated.

As btbmyr asked what if it gets worse, from my experience, it does get worse. Every year it's worse and they are bigger. This is why it's hopeless unless something changes. Our dr already wants to sedate my elder son because he requires 2:1 in school sometimes. By"sedate" I mean he'll be in a daze falling asleep and stuff. I'm saying no for the time being because I don't want that for him, bur when he's 20... I think it's going to be inevitable. How depressing.

Edit: I know it's not up to me to judge the quality of their life, but based on my reality, I often wonder if my oldest son is ever happy. I try to give him happiness, but he doesn't smile to communicate happiness so I don't know if he is, and when he's being so violent, he probably isn't happy. I would imagine Issy's mom wondered this too and concluded she'll never be able to be happy so her life isn't worth living. It's not her right to do that, but I do understand wondering.