No, your Precious Snowflake is just stupid, or lazy, or both. by Wulfenstar

http://youtu.be/VUnGTXRxGHg

Good, Im glad noone is arguing this.

It gives me hope that the human race is not doomed.

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Friday, April 3, 2009 7:44 AM

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

So when you post things like this...

Quote:

Um, Ward L. Churchill is a douchebag any way you cut it.

Hes [sic] exactly why the right can call you guys the "Looney Left".

Everybody has the right to their opinions, mind you.

But you don't get to propogandize [sic] students. Thats [sic] what libs don't get.

...is it because you're too stupid to write them properly, or too lazy, or both?

Oh, and it's "no one". Two words. Not "noone". That would be the guy who sang "I'm Into Something Good" in The Naked Gun.

You can make it a hyphenate if it helps ("no-one").

If nothing else, you've just helped prove your own point. People are too stupid or lazy to learn proper spelling and grammar, and then they want the rules to be relaxed for them, or they call those who point out their errors "Grammar Nazis". But what they will never, EVER do is actually learn the correct grammar or spelling - again, because they're either lazy or stupid. Or both.

Mike

Just lying smiling in the dark,
Shooting stars around your heart,
Dreams come bouncing in your head
pure and simple every time.
Now you're crying in your sleep;
I wish you'd never learnt to weep.
Don't sell the dreams you should be keeping
pure and simple every time.

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Friday, April 3, 2009 7:55 AM

http://youtu.be/VUnGTXRxGHg

Awww, Miguelito,

Who sh*t in your sherbert this morning?

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Friday, April 3, 2009 8:10 AM

It's spelled "sherbet".

Besides, couldn't you tell I was just fuckin' with ya?

Sarcasm and snark just DO NOT work well on message boards...

If you're reading something that I posted, assume it's said sarcastically. Even the most serious things I've ever posted should have had at least SOME snark in their inflection!

Miguelito (I haven't been called that in years! That really takes me back.)

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Friday, April 3, 2009 8:15 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

You should deal with some autistic kids. Then you'll know its NOT just lazy moms and competitive dads... That whole "refrigerator mom" theory went out on the 1950s.

And when they discover the causes of autism, boy, will Dennis Leary feel stupid. So I wonder what his excuse will be then, for himself?

BTW-Why are you looking to an actor... who has no experience or expertise in the matter... for your information?

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It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

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Friday, April 3, 2009 8:20 AM

Quote:
Good, Im glad noone is arguing this.

Actually I will.

It's never as simple as everyone else would have you believe, Wulf.

There was a serious boom in autism, thanks to a lot of factors, some of which are hotly debated even now, but whatever those factors are/were - there was a large damn bump in medically provable cases.

Now, some of these behavioral 'disorders' are pure bunk, and some of em are mostly-bunk, but applicable to some tiny fraction nonetheless.

And then you had big pharma not only cooking up the bogus ones, but expanding the definition of the others till it encompassed prettymuch everyone on the planet, to increase their market share - something I blame doctors for as much as big pharma cause improper diagnosis is malpractice, especially if done intentionally, and the docs failed in their medical duty out of corruption.

Then schools realized that they could get more funding by classing students as disabled, and while unfortunate and immoral, as horribly underfunded as they are to begin with* - they chose to exploit that despite blinding themselves to how counterproductive that is to their supposed purpose.

On top of all of this, you have kids who's basic human instincts are so completely at odds with what they are being taught is required for success and social acceptance that they suffer the mental equivalent of a windows fatal error and break down - and since people are individuals, you never know which way that's gonna manifest, only that it will be unpleasant.

And as a final coda, a social environment and pecking order lifted right from the penal system which leaves many children in a low level fight-flight state which does mimic the signs of ADD/ADHD but is in fact a natural response to an environment that hostile - and since flight as an option gets blocked, the fight part of the reflex takes over and initiates violence in an escalating scale, often without even the student knowing why because these triggers do not function at a conscious level to begin with.

Yes, sure, you have parents who make excuses - but scapegoating them is ignoring and denying very real problems otherwise, just as attributing so much of it to mental disorders is also scapegoating and denial, the truth of the situation is far more complicated and would require admission that our so-called educational system is based on a model that has quite blatantly and visibly failed because education was never it's primary goal in the first place.

I am not so good a teacher, ain't got the people skills for it and you gotta work to understand me cause I don't express knowledge in a linear, easy to understand fashion - but despite this, I have found the socrates method far more effective then stacking them in a little box, in nice neat rows, under threat of force and violence - hell, if you don't wanna listen, go AWAY.

So I sit on the edge of this little wall just off the school grounds, and I speak on what I know - here's some knowledge, come and get it if you like, argue it, discuss it, ask some questions, and if I have not a clue, I might know someone who does, right ?

I don't much do standardised testing either, but that one kid *DID* fix his mothers washer, neat as ya please, and showed enough potential that I fronted his application fee to a tech school personally.

I think a huge part of it isn't that they are stupid or lazy, it's that our education system isn't a one size fits all solution, especially with older kids and teens, and oft times the emphasis on structure, security and control* not only interferes with education, but makes it all but impossible for certain kids - who then find ways to retaliate.

Tell me you never played dumb as an act of retaliation, Wulf ?

We've codified the system into it's deathbed, too - while theoretically they could bust my chops for "teaching" without assuming massive debt for a few scraps of paper, since I make no claims nor charge a fee, there's little enough I can do, and as of late I *have* had at least one science teacher show up, watch, and start emulating the method a little (although his co-workers think he's a bit of a crackpot) and from what I hear his class has benefitted.

Tell me, if you try to change your spark plugs with a screwdriver, is it the spark plugs fault that it doesn't work too well ?

*The younger niece caught some hell recently for mocking her history class, right under "millions for defense and not one cent for tribute" she added the school logo and "millions for control and not one cent for learning!"

She's still PO'ed cause her algebra teacher was so terrible and negligent, a fact other parents have brought up and made serious issue of, that she had to beg her uncle to send her a large box of materials and textbooks rounded up from the local library's back storage.

And now she's struggling with Geometry cause of having to DIY her Algebra resulting in a less than complete understanding of the subject, passing grade or not - which given the effort she's invested, I don't see her as the cause of THAT problem, right ?

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Friday, April 3, 2009 8:31 AM

Oh yes, and since I am employing the same method here...

If you really wanna get to the bottom of the problem, you seriously need to follow up the work of John Taylor Gatto.

Here's a short piece - and mind in particular the source of the link, as it's a natural extension of much of the other work that I and others like me do, to expose and address this issue.

http://www.naturalchild.com/guest/john_gatto.html

For more info, here.
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/

And "The Underground History of American Education" is worth a read in it's entirety, and available online HERE.
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm

You wanna fight this one, Wulf, I'll be happy to open the arsenal for ya.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Friday, April 3, 2009 8:44 AM

http://youtu.be/VUnGTXRxGHg

Ok, Frem, we are arguing 2 different points here.

I don't disagree that the school system is fraked, and that their only purpose is to break little Johnny down so that he can fit into the worker-bee role.

What I’m talking about is the excuse making that the modern-Romans do for themselves. They are TERRIBLE parents, and when their children end up being little monsters?

They come up with fake-ass excuses and “diseases”.

THEN they medicate the kids, so at least there will be quiet in the house, and they can get back to quietly medicating THEMSELVES.

Its disgusting. Its wrong. Its immoral.

And its one of the reasons our country is so fraked up. No-one wants to take responsibility for their actions or inactions.

Autism, ADD, medications ect…..

It’s a “bail-out” for bad parents.

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Friday, April 3, 2009 9:11 AM

Wulf, it's not malice when they don't know any better.

That's domino two, part of it - we have no effective system any more to teach people how to be parents, and much of what we do teach them is counterproductive bullshit spouted by folks with an agenda that involves a financial interest and benefit from cleaning up the mess that advice will create.

The difference between ignorance and malice is that ignorance is curable - and sure, you're gonna have folks who play the denial card, but look at how many of these overworked parents are quite literally grasping at straws because they got nothin else - they don't know how cause their own folks were too busy tryin to survive and pay the bills to parent them effectively and show em how it's supposed to be done, generation on generation of latchkey kids with DIY parenting who have not a damn clue how or what to do, and no effective way to sort the facts from the bullshit.

That *CAN* be fixed, if only we invest our efforts at that end, the root, instead of at the other in law enforcement and the penal system - cause it's wiser to not spill the bottle in the first place than clean up the mess, ehe ?

Same principle with which I address the abortion debate - instead of trying to clean up the aftermath, strike for the root of the problem and there's no aftermath TO clean up.

Rue had a river analogy a while back which illustrated this methodology and her understanding of it quite well, I think.

As to the HOW, well, I'm workin on it, we never expected to get this far and the scale of this is large enough to make refining an effective method of addressing it not so exactly easy.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Friday, April 3, 2009 9:20 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Autism, ADD, medications ect…..

It’s a “bail-out” for bad parents.

Wulf, do you have ANY experience parenting? ANY experience with kids with ADHD or autism or seizures or learning disability or bipolar disorder? ANY experience teaching? ANY medical or neurological training? ANY experience whatsoever as the basis for your opinion????

Prolly not.

Well, I do. As a results of my daughter having suffered brain damage at birth, I'm not only intimately and personally familiar with ADHD, autism, learning disabilities, seizures and rare neurological disorders (childhood disintegrative disorder) I'm also familiar with her friends and their disorders. And once you'ev experienced that- brother, I can tell you - you'll never doubt the cold, hard reality of these diagnoses.

Much as Frem would like to blame it all on "society" and "big pharma" and Leary would like to blame it all on bad parents (My god! What a mockery of the parents who are suffering along with their children!) yanno what? "The mind" requires properly functioning wetware just to be "normal". Screw up that electrochemical computer- and trust me, there are a zillion ways for it to go wrong and only a few ways for it to go right- and all kinds of "behaviors" will show up.

AFA big pharma's role in the current explosion of autism diagnoses, my view is that their role is ZILCH. NADA. NOTHING. They have NO DRUGS to offer and therefore no stake. AFA schools overdiagnosing learning disabilities: That's another load of hooey. The schools do NOT get reimbursed by the Federal government anywhere near the cost that it takes to set up a special day class. Usually it works the other way around: schools refuse to diagnose children who are clearly disabled.

There are documented physical and chemical changes in the brain related to autism which is also co-morbid with seizures and EEG changes. There are peptides present AT BIRTH in the blood of children with mental retardation, cerebral palsy and autism (vasoactive intestinal peptide is particularly high). You don't get THAT from "bad parenting"!

You have your opinion out of sheer ignorance, so I forgive you for it. However, to remain ignorant and to coninue to spout equally ignorant opinions is less forgiveable.
http://jenellesjourney.blogspot.com/
http://caringbridge.org/visit/roo
http://brain.hastypastry.net/forums/showthread.php?t=51645

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It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

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Friday, April 3, 2009 9:29 AM

There we go, I did find it, hope ya dun mind me reposting it, doll.

Quote:
originally posted by Rue:

One summer in the village, the women in the town gathered at the river to do laundry. As they worked, one noticed a baby in the river, struggling and crying. The baby was going to drown!

One woman rushed to save the baby. Then, they noticed another screaming baby in the river, and they pulled that baby out. Soon, more babies were seen drowning in the river, and the women were pulling them out as fast as they could. It took great effort, and they began to organize their activities in order to save the babies as they came down the river. As everyone else was busy in the rescue efforts to save the babies, one of the women started to run away along the shore of the river.

"Where are you going?" shouted one of the rescuers. "We need you here to help us save these babies!"

"I'm going upstream to stop whoever is throwing them in!"

Which is, in the end, how I work these things.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Friday, April 3, 2009 9:31 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Going to add something: Since my SO is not only a computer/ analog electronics expert (where he makes his living) but also a philosopher, I've benefitted from his insights.

Our brains, in many ways, are like computers. They have "hardware", "firmware" and "software".

The hardware is the brain: a big, electrochemical structure with an electrochemical clock/ switchboard (thalamaus), analog to electrochemical translators, distributed working and long-term memory etc.

The "firmware" is the pre-loaded "software" and "drivers": reflexes, instincts, bios, hormones.

The "software" is what we learn through our lives.

It's possible to take a perfectly normal computer and load it with malware. It's NOT possible to take a misfunctioning computer and get it to run normal software normally. The fact that brains can get scrambled does not negate the fact that environment plays a role. The fact that environment plays a role does NOT negate the fact that some kids have malfunctioning hardware.

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It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

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Friday, April 3, 2009 9:39 AM

http://youtu.be/VUnGTXRxGHg

Sig,

You have my condolences.

However, Im not arguing against kids who were born with actual retardation.

Just making the point that a lot of these parents are trying to cover up for their bad parenting, AND their stupid kids, by jumping on the "autism, ADD" bandwagon.

Some parents refuse to accept that they suck as parents, and/or their kids are just fraking stupid.

Im sure there are actual cases out there of "autism". Maybe. But its probably 1 out of every 1000 that are reported.

With "ADD", its probably more like 1 in every 10,000.

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Friday, April 3, 2009 10:00 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Im sure there are actual cases out there of "autism". Maybe. But its probably 1 out of every 1000 that are reported.

No. What you don't understand is that PARENTS don't get to diagnose or report their children as having "autism". Nor do PARENTS get to diagnose or report their children as having ADHD, dyslexia, or other learning disabilities. Usually its the school (who- trust me- have absolutely NO REASON to over-report special needs students) in combination with a doctor and psychologist.

In the case of autism specifically, since there is no prescription for it, NONE of the entities involved have ANY reason to over-report it, and the schools specifically have EVERY reason to delay, deny, or obfuscate.

Doctors, neurologists, parents, epidemiologists have tested the very "theory" that you're proposing: that autism is being over-reported (its not) and that its the result of "bad parenting". Since autism usually isn't diagnosed until a child is three or four years of age resrachers went back several years to the california neonatal blood bank, and tested the frozen blood of children who were either normal, or diagnosed with cerebral palsy, mental retardation, or autism for eight peptides known to affect brain development. What they found was that children with developmental disorders had VERY high levels of vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) compared to controls.

The conclusion is that chidlren are born with autism.

I'll stack my informed opinion against Denis Leary's uninformed one any day. As much as I love him as an actor (I thought he and Kevin Spacy were GREAT in The Ref and awesome in Recount) he's no expert. He doesn't even have passing familiarity.
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It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

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Friday, April 3, 2009 10:14 AM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

Who do you blame here, Wulf ? Who's lazy ? Over-competative ? Neglectful ?

The mother ? The father ? The son ?

The monster inside my son

March 26, 2009 |

On Feb. 14 I awaken to this headline: "Professor Beaten to Death by Autistic Son."

I scan the story while standing, my coffee forgotten. Trudy Steuernagel, a faculty member in political science at Kent State, has been murdered and her 18-year-old son, Sky, has been arrested and charged with the crime, though he is profoundly disabled and can neither speak nor understand. Sky, who likes cartoons and chicken nuggets, apparently lost control and beat his mother into a coma. He was sitting in jail when she died.

This happens to be two days after my older son's 21st birthday, which we marked behind two sets of locked steel doors. I'm exhausted and hopeless and vaguely hung over because Andrew, who has autism, also has evolved from sweet, dreamy boy to something like a golem: bitter, rampaging, full of rage. It happened no matter how fiercely I loved him or how many therapies I employed.

Now, reading about this Ohio mother, there is a moment of slithering nausea and panic followed immediately by a sense of guilty relief.

I am not alone.

Andrew started life as a mostly typical child. But at 3 and a half he become remote and perseverative, sitting in a corner and staring at his own splayed hand. Eventually he was diagnosed with high-functioning autism, a label that seemed to explain everything from his calendar memory and social isolation to his normal IQ.

We got him into a good program and there was a brief, halcyon phase of near normalcy -- a time I long for still so ardently that I feel hungry for it at a cellular level -- from ages 12 to 17. Andrew aced algebra, became fluent in Spanish, played the cello in the school orchestra, and competed on weekends in tournament chess. I occasionally even referred to him as "cured."

But in the months before turning 18, Andrew grew depressed and bitter. Huge and hairy -- a young man who grows a beard by twilight -- he suddenly became as withdrawn as he'd been at 4. Many of his old symptoms returned: the rocking and "stimming" (e.g., blinking rapidly at lights), the compulsion to empty bottles of liquid soap. We tried a series of medications, but that only made him worse.

Once during this phase, he beat me. A neighbor heard me screaming and called 911. But I blamed this on the drugs. Despite everything, my son had always been gentle and sweet. This was no twisted adolescent squirrel killer who kept a pile of carcasses under his bed.

On the day he should have graduated from high school, Andrew was instead being treated in a psychiatric ward at the Mayo Clinic. But he seemed to improve, and we were hopeful. Upon release, he was placed in a series of behavioral health centers and group homes. This is where his real education began.

He'd quit progressing in school, but now my son soaked up new information like a toddler learning to talk. Every placement in a succeedingly tougher environment gave him new skills. He shoplifted like a pro, traded his belongings for sexual favors, and dined and dashed so often some local restaurants had his picture posted in their kitchen under the words, "Don't serve this man." I told myself at least he was thinking, making his own bad choices, experiencing adult consequences. A part of me was even proud.

But he'd also quit reading, conversing, learning people's names, or keeping track of the day of the week. He ate like some gnashing beast: stuffing food into his mouth until his cheeks bulged and food dribbled out onto his clothes. And after moving to the rural group home selected by a judge because it was miles from restaurants or businesses where he could steal, Andrew morphed again, the warty monster from a Grimm fairy tale, demolishing everything in his path.

His destruction was utterly senseless yet brilliantly thorough: He submerged his computer, stereo and iPod in water; threw puzzle pieces and Styrofoam cups into the toilet and flushed them, plugging the pipes literally dozens of times a week; and urinated on every square inch of his room: bed, walls, floor, closet, everything but the ceiling and that only because he had not (yet, I suspect) figured out how.

When I asked him why he did these things he would say, eyes narrow like a night creature, "I don't like being caged."

Then came Sept. 2, last fall. This was to be Andrew's first day of his final year in public school. He hated school -- a so-called transition program -- because it was demeaning. Lessons about how to cross streets and take buses and punch time clocks. My son had completed pre-calculus; now he was being taught how to make correct change.

But there was nowhere else for him. He'd failed to hold the two jobs my husband and I had found for him; the private job coach we hired said Andrew was the most challenging client he'd ever worked with -- right before he quit. We were financially tapped out and the state would not pay for vocational training until Andrew turned 21. Transition school was the only choice.

I'd explained all this. But when I showed up at the group home that morning, he was drinking coffee and pacing and still not dressed. I went into his room, took some clothes from the closet, handed them to him. And hinting at what he was about to do only with a small sigh, as if to say, "I've had enough," my son picked me up and threw me across the room.

I had three broken ribs and a bit of damage to my liver that made my doctor fret. Still, who among us hasn't wanted to toss our mother across the room when she's nattering on and making cheerful sounds in the morning? I dismissed it as an aberration until a couple weeks later when Andrew decked his elderly tutor, knocking her onto a concrete sidewalk and breaking her hand. He went on to attack several staff members at the group home, grope the mentally handicapped young women who attended his transition program, and finally to accost his 14-year-old sister right in front of my eyes.

It was Christmas Day. I watched him enter the room and fix his gaze on my daughter. Then he rushed her, and I screamed. My husband -- two inches shorter and 50 pounds lighter -- somehow intercepted Andrew and knocked him to the ground. After he had been escorted from our family dinner in restraints, we sat at a table heaped with food growing cold, where my elderly parents wept and my daughter shook silently. I comforted them all and after that was done -- the meal reheated and people eating -- I drank every drop of alcohol in sight, even draining the half-full wine glass my mother always left. The next morning, through a headache of steel knives and bad music, I got on the phone.

I called the man who was supposed to be my son's psychiatrist to ask for an emergency appointment. Andrew was becoming dangerous, I told the nurse, and he was going to hurt someone. But the doctor was too busy; he was on vacation. There might be an opening in late January. No one else was available, no matter how many numbers I dialed.

Secretly, as if committing a sacrilege, I searched online using keywords such as "autism" and "violence" and "murder." What I found was confusing. There were roughly a dozen recent articles about heinous acts committed by people with autism and Asperger's syndrome, but each was followed by editorials and letters written by autism advocates vigorously denying a link. There were a few studies from the '80s and '90s, but the results -- when they showed a higher rate of violent crime among people with autism -- appeared to have been quieted or dismissed.

On the other hand there were, literally, thousands of heartwarming stories about autism. A couple of the most widely read were written by me. For years I had been telling my son's story, insisting that autism is beautiful, mysterious, perhaps even evolutionarily necessary. Denying that it can also be a wild, ravaging madness, a disease of the mind and soul. It was my trademark as an essayist, but also my profound belief.

Now, despite the constant calling and late-night research, I could not accept what was happening. I could not write about it; I could not speak of it. Not even my closest friends knew what was happening inside my life.

My husband and I were on our way to an inauguration party the night Andrew finally came apart.

It was January, a week of cold so wicked I was dressed in long underwear and wool sweaters, scarves, a parka, and two sets of gloves. It took me a long time to scramble through all the layers when my cellphone rang. But missing the call was not an option. I'd already had four panicked messages from the group home that day: Andrew's violence was escalating. They were mandated by state law to stay inside because of the weather, and he was going stir crazy, terrorizing the house. No one knew what to do.

"Yes?" I answered.

"I'm so sorry," is how the voice on the other end began.

It was Andrew's counselor, calling to describe the situation. My son was in an ambulance circling the Twin Cities, sedated and strapped down to a bed. He'd been in there for a couple of hours and the medics just kept driving; they couldn't stop because all the psych wards were full.

"Yes," I croaked again. Other than this one low word, I'd been struck mute.

They'd had no choice but to call the police, the counselor said. After dinner -- which was served in the group home at 5 o'clock, leaving long hours to kill before bed -- Andrew made a pass at a young female staff member. Petite, blond, around his age. The girl rebuffed him, reminding him probably for the 8,000th time that day about the "no touching" rule. And then he went off.

My son reportedly leapt on her -- his 260-pound body surprisingly nimble -- one hand around her throat, choking her, and the other in her mouth, pressing down, cutting off her air two different ways. It took four men to pull him off and by this time the girl had passed out.

"Is she all right?" I asked. And this mattered for so many reasons: There was the basic human one, then the legal, also the fact that my own fate hung on the answer. While lying awake earlier that week, I'd made the decision that if my own child were to kill someone I, too, would have to die.

"She's bruised," he said, "and scared."

That's when I breathed. Nothing irreversibly evil had yet been done.

My husband wanted to turn around. But I was afraid that in the quiet of our home I might sit and think about my perfect, rosy-cheeked baby and actually go insane. So instead we went to the party and, as on Christmas, I drank as if it were a task I need to accomplish. Steadily, with steel. While my husband watched over me with his worried face, I hugged people and talked and tried to participate in a game the host had devised: Obama trivia. What movie did he take Michelle to see on their first date? Which brand of computer does he use? How big are his feet?

I failed to answer a single question and wondered why everyone around me seemed to know these things. Where had I been? Through my shimmering stupor, I surveyed the crowd of happy, shining faces. People were wearing buttons, T-shirts, even necklaces that spelled out "hope." This struck me as sinister and somewhat rude. Hope was bullshit. Hope was exactly what had been lost.

In the car on the way home, I asked my husband if I had fooled everyone at the party. Was I speaking normally? Did I at any point shout or cry or whimper? He assured me I had not. But for the few moments at the end when I'd looked as if I might collapse, I'd been pale but appropriate.

"I'm sure I'm the only one who knew," he said, shifting so the seat made its cold, leather groan and taking my hand.

I thanked him and leaned back, thinking dumbly that, of course, there was one thing he didn't know: I'd been secretly stockpiling the sleeping pills my doctor prescribes like Pez. I had about 80 saved up, which would probably be enough. The ambulance was still out there, driving through the dark night on frosted roads, holding my son inside. For now I could live. But the following morning I recounted my supply, just in case.

Back when Andrew was in junior high school, my mother had a friend whose adult son had only recently been diagnosed with autism. He'd been dysfunctional since childhood, failing at school, unable to make a friend or keep a decent job. At 35 he was still living at home, collecting carts at the local grocery store, and taking anticonvulsants (Tegretol was the unofficial treatment of that era for outbursts) to control the violent urges he'd been having for 15 years.

"You think he's better now," my mother's friend once said as we watched a young, laughing Andrew out the window, playing tag with his brother and sister in my parents' backyard. "But wait 'til he's older. Then you'll understand. "

I hated her and was furious that she wished for our downfall -- also that her dumb, psychopathic son had been given the same label as my beloved child. Autism had become oddly fashionable; my mother's friend was wealthy. Clearly she'd gone "diagnosis shopping." My son, I vowed, would be nothing like hers.

When Andrew finally landed at the county hospital, after 10 hours in the circling ambulance and another three in the E.R., I was still looking for a different answer. This wasn't autism. Surely he had a brain tumor, a seizure disorder, or a delusional condition such as schizophrenia. Maybe, on one of his crime sprees, he'd gotten ahold of some PCP.

But the psychiatrist assigned to my son said no. The MRI was clean; the EEG normal. The doctor's specialty happened to be schizophrenia, and he saw none of the signs. Street drugs would have left Andrew's body by now. This was isolation, frustration, hormonal surges, poor impulse control and hopelessness. It was adult autism, the psychiatrist told me: one awful direction it can take.

Monday, I went to see my son. He was in a bare white cell behind a steel door with a window, like Hannibal Lecter. The only thing missing was the mask. Two male nurses and Max, my 18-year-old linebacker son, walked with me into the room. Andrew was beached on a bed, his glasses the only thing on the shelf alongside. I touched his shoulder and woke him, taking his hands after he'd lifted himself to sit. "I'm here, sweetheart," I told him. "I want to help."

He looked at me with bug-eyed wonder and squeezed my hands, hard, "I might kill you," he said. That's when Max pushed his way between us and ordered me from the room. Sobbing, he wrestled his brother to the bed and held him there.

I spent Tuesday at a friend's house, as planned, in front of the TV, watching the Obamas walk and wave. Once, when someone asked why I was so quiet, I mentioned that one of my children was in the hospital, quite ill. She touched me and said something kind. I knew she was thinking of something like leukemia and I wanted to tell her I would hack off my right arm in return for something as simple as cancer. The flickering beauty of a sad, pure, too-early death sounds lovely. Instead I nodded, silent and dumb.

The one thing I held onto, through all of this, was the sudden appearance of this county psychiatrist: a small, bespectacled, Dustin Hoffman-ish fellow who’d spent years on a kibbutz before going to medical school in middle age. I found him magnetic, I trusted him. He became my talisman, my Obama, the only reason to hope. It wasn't that he had any magic solutions -- I've learned by now that no one does -- but he was openly upset, diagnosing Andrew simply as "someone in pain."

We sat in the doctor's lounge and he gave me a slice of banana bread to eat while he kneaded his forehead and read his notes. When he asked me what I wanted him to do, I told him: Whatever it takes to make my son stop. The threat of harm to my son's body was superseded by black stains on his soul. The doctor agreed, but he had made a list in ascending order of risk: Ativan, high-dose Prozac, Depakote, electroshock, Clozaril, Riluzole. A drug called Lupron.

I reached for my single semester of Latin. "Lupron? You want to take the werewolf out of him?"

"Exactly," said the Israeli. "But it's our last resort."

There were days spent in court, one swimming into the next, like a series of nightmares. Because my son was vulnerable, nothing could be done without a judge's order. Exhausted after this process, my husband and I went to Chicago and spent three days walking in icy sunlight, eating in no-name diners, going to sleep at 9 p.m. By the time we returned, Andrew had been given buckets full of dangerous, doping drugs and two sessions of ECT.

When we arrived at the hospital, he shuffled sleepily out of his now-unlocked room. We gave him money to order pizza (it turns out Domino's delivers to the psych ward), a sketchbook and pastels, two books. He could have nothing sharp, no cords. This ruled out a CD player, laptop, or ballpoint pen.

I asked tentatively if he remembered what he had done and suddenly he began to cry, tears running down his giant, furry face, jeweling his beard.

"Beware," he said through ragged breaths. "I'm bad now, I can feel it. I can't help the things I do."

Whether there is a definitive link between autism and violence -- between Trudy Steuernagel's situation and mine -- I cannot say.

And even if it exists, the cause is not clear. Our adult son's behavior could be the outcome of living daily in a world where everything hurts and nothing makes sense. It could be the result (as some scientists have postulated) of excess testosterone on the autistic brain. It could simply be wild coincidence that I ran across this particular story during a time when I was looking for answers. Any of these is possible. I just don't know.

The chairman of Trudy Steuernagel's department rose at her memorial service to proclaim, "Autism doesn't equal violence." And this probably is mathematically correct: Autism does not always equal violence. But I do believe there may be a tragic, blameless relationship. Neither Sky nor Andrew means to be murderous -- of this I am sure -- but their circumstances, neurology, size and age combine to create the perfect storm.

It is warmer, finally. Outside my window ice is melting off skeletal trees. I sit in the pale morning light, drinking tepid coffee and reading about this woman whom I suspect I would have liked. A fellow academic and writer, Steuernagel, too, insisted on finding beauty in autism. Her legacy includes an editorial about Sky's loving nature and relevance, how he led her through life along "a trail of sparkles."

Mine, I decide, must be in part to break the silence about autism's darker side. We cannot solve this problem by hiding it, the way handicapped children themselves used to be tucked away in cellars. In order to help the young men who endure this rage, someone has to be willing to tell the truth.

So here it is.

***************************************************************

Silence is consent.

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Friday, April 3, 2009 10:18 AM

http://youtu.be/VUnGTXRxGHg

Or the kid could have just been a monster from the word "Go".

(Now Frem, don't jump all over me for that one.)

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Friday, April 3, 2009 10:21 AM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

Go back and FRAKING READ IT !

Then come back and tell me you were wrong.

***************************************************************

Silence is consent.

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Friday, April 3, 2009 10:24 AM

Now now Siggy, I know the discussion has struck a nerve, but for a fact I've never denied that these conditions DO exist, in a smaller percentage than we've been lead to believe - and yes there WAS a huge jump in Autism and much debate about the causes.

Thing is, neurological misfires DO happen, I am not at all unaware of this fact, it's labelling other conditions as such to use them as excuse to not fix problems what has me irked about it.

Wasting resources chasing ghosts takes them away from folks like you Siggy, who really DO need them, and when they are spread so thin trying to cover all this crap which doesn't even properly apply, it's kids like yours that suffer for it.

Pour a little water on that fire and you'll realise we're kind of on the same page here, I want those resources used where they are actually needed, instead of a catch-all-cure-all for some pretty obvious failures no one wants to admit.

As for Neuro misfire - you know how I have been wondering how much genetics plays a part in the fact that my youngest niece has the exact same thought process, mentality, and many of the physical characteristics despite her mother and father not sharing them and having no contact with me till she was well past most of the developmental stages, right ?

And we're talkin exact to a kinda freaky degree, a near inability to distinguish left and right leading to ambidexterity, poor fine motor control in the hands, extreme difficulty with even basic mathematical functions, and mild language issues with an almost identical speech impediment, combined with a "sideways" thought process which borders on downright criminal.

And while the school said ADD/ADHD, I said bunk, and engaged a specialist.
Who assessed it as something I'd never heard of - "developmental Gerstmann's syndrome".
And so I looked it up.

And then had what my people refer to as a "furniture throwing hissy" complete with berserkergang and an explosion of profanity one might under other circumstances as Tourettes...

Not only is this a damn well provable cause with VISIBLE damage or malformation of the left parietal lobe in the region of the angular gyrus, but it's almost wholly repairable via adaptation and retraining - as witnessed by the fact that she can do algebra and I cannot, which means stoning her out to the point where she cannot function effectively (and I mean this literally, by eyewitness account) on freakin Concerta not only isn't helping, but is actively doing her harm, since at age sixteen she looks all of eleven due to a combination of our family's natural small stature and the well known effect (however they try denying it) on adolescent growth.

And I am enraged by both that, and other things...
While I was busy screaming and throwing shit, my mind was throwing up flashbacks of every time I got called stupid, lazy or clumsy in respect to this new data - I was seriously, lethally pissed in a fashion which hasn't happened in YEARS.

Proper diagnosis is first and foremost the KEY to solving kids problems, and a checklist with a pre-determined conclusion is just fuckin malpractice any way you slice it.

As for the niece, imma offer support in every way possible, but how the hell is it gonna do much good when she's bombed on a medication which will in fact aggravate the symptoms and make supportive therapy THAT MUCH HARDER - cause despite having a goddamn professionals opinion, and a freakin expensive specialist I had to pay out of pocket, mind you...

But nooo, they're gonna stick with that criminally negligent malpracticing asshole Bacharach, cause he's their go-to-guy for "diagnosing" ADD/ADHD on command, which is the only reason the fucker still has a license at all.
(He's already BEEN sued several times over this kind of shit before)

Believe me Siggy, while not quite in the same way, I feel the same bite, and it hurts all the more when it's not MY kid and my hands are often tied cause the school system down there can extert enough pressure to bend my sister to their will even when she KNOWS better, even when she KNOWS this is hurting her child... because the other option when the schools blacklist her cause her mother didn't play ball and medicate her is... the camps.

At which point all hell will break loose like it did on old boy Narvin, only it won't be an official inspection team this time, but a couple deniable PMCs on a smash and grab.

And so I work the edges and help her as I can while I seethe, cause the only method I really have to intervene would be so traumatic to all involved, send a couple to jail, and would probably screw the girl up far worse than she already is....

Believe me, I have my own horrors and frustrations Siggy - but trust that I am on your side cause I want any of this PROPERLY diagnosed and handled with a full treatment regimen including therapy and rehabilitation aimed at maximum self-sufficiency and minimal reliance on outside assistance and medication.

The latter is particularly important cause of tolerance and diminishing returns - medication is often best used to mitigate the symptoms while therapy and rehabilitation addresses the root cause, and in most cases shouldn't be used as a single solution unless there is no other choice.

If naught else in my ranting here, I just wanted to really bring it home to you that despite my means and methods pushing your buttons a bit, we really ARE on the same side of the issue even if we do not always acknowledge or realise it ourselves.

Do it RIGHT, yanno ?

-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Friday, April 3, 2009 10:33 AM

http://youtu.be/VUnGTXRxGHg

"Go back and FUCKING READ IT !

Then come back and tell me you were wrong. "

Um, no.

I never said there wasn't autism. Or insanity. or being crazy as a shit house rat.

So what exactly am I wrong about then?

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Friday, April 3, 2009 10:35 AM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

YOU A$$WIPE.

THIS IS WHAT YOU SAID

""I don't give a [bleep] what these crackerjack whack jobs tell you - yer kid is NOT autistic. He's just stupid. Or lazy. Or both."

AMEN"

AND THIS

"Or the kid could have just been a monster from the word "Go"."

STILL STAND BY THAT, A$$HOLE ?

***************************************************************

Silence is consent.

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Friday, April 3, 2009 10:38 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Where was the lazy parenting, Wulf?

---------------------------------
It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

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Friday, April 3, 2009 10:46 AM

Yikes, and in just the time it took me to fix lunch and write that rant...

Err...

Siggy

Quote:
The fact that environment plays a role does NOT negate the fact that some kids have malfunctioning hardware.

Yeah, I just addressed this, but if we CAN remove or mitigate environmental factors we have control over, oughten we do that ?

Quote:
Usually its the school (who- trust me- have absolutely NO REASON to over-report special needs students) in combination with a doctor and psychologist.

I disagree with that conclusion, because I have indeed run into quite a few schools who will over-report in order to obtain additional funding, hell, if you like, I will even name names, and they have their pet doctors and pyschologists who they can depend on, like that bastard Bacharach, whom I plan to file suit against on behalf of my niece the moment she hits eighteen.

I *DO* believe that an accurate and honest diagnoses is key to addressing these problems, but I do not trust the school to do it given my experience and the empirical evidence in my work - especially since a schoolteacher or administration is not only not a medical professional, but in addition will often give an incorrect assessment due to their own bias.

Proper diagnosis of a behavioral disorder takes a minimum of ninety minutes in a controlled environment by a specialist, not a 10 minute workup and checklist in a general practitioners office - that is sufficient to reccommend a specialist to look into it, but not as a full diagnosis itself.

As for the causes of the spike in autism, I suspect there's more than one cause - sure, some folk wanna lay it all at the feet of vaccines, and there's some evidence to support that, but it just plain does not explain the spike all of it's own, nor do other environmental toxins like lead or TEL, as we touched on earlier...

While I do not reject that Thimerosal was a contributing factor, the longer I have examined the evidence, the more sure I become that there's something else at work here, some factor we've yet to connect and I damn sure would like to know what it is... although the spike seems to be falling off, thankfully.

We might not fully agree on root causes, means or methods, but in the end I think we're aiming for the same results, yes ?

Rue ?

Dear heavens, I've heard that same story often enough, over and over, from every imagineable angle, but yanno, it never gets any easier to take, EVER.

Upon release, he was placed in a series of behavioral health centers and group homes. This is where his real education began.

He'd quit progressing in school, but now my son soaked up new information like a toddler learning to talk. Every placement in a succeedingly tougher environment gave him new skills. He shoplifted like a pro, traded his belongings for sexual favors, and dined and dashed so often some local restaurants had his picture posted in their kitchen under the words, "Don't serve this man." I told myself at least he was thinking, making his own bad choices, experiencing adult consequences. A part of me was even proud.

At that moment, everything that followed was damn near pre-destined.
There's a DIFFERENCE between places that actually rehabilitate, and the hellcamps, I do make that distinction, ok ?

But when they sent him to a hellcamp, that was gasoline on the fire.
*sigh*

One net benefit to wrecking them however, is that they no longer poison the well for places that can and will do the job right.

-Frem

EDIT: YES, I changed the thread title, can we not be petty about this, please ?

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Friday, April 3, 2009 10:56 AM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

I apologize.

Wulf responded literally within seconds - and I KNEW he didn't read the post. And ALL his posts on this topic have been ignorant demeaning snark. I got angrier than I have in years.

So, maybe you should ask Wulf for an apology, too - eh ? After all, what was so pretty about HIS title ? What was so good about HIS post ? Maybe he needs to apologize for the ignorance, ugliness and hatred that he smears around where he goes.

Ya' think ?

***************************************************************

Silence is consent.

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Friday, April 3, 2009 11:11 AM

If he wants to offer it, that's up to him.

I neither want nor need his apology, cause what I desire is to cure his ignorance, and lashing out at the boy isn't gonna help so much, though I've been tempted to give him a little three stooges action myself.
EDIT: (SORELY tempted, sometimes..

)

I got no issue with flamin Rappy, cause he's proven incapable of learning a damn thing, but once something is laid out for Wulf in a way he can understand, and you give the guy time to choke down his own prejudices about it, he's quite capable of figuring things out on his own without needing to be poked alla time about it.

Fact is, whether he'd admit it to US or not, he hates those damn issues and prejudices as much as we do cause they blind him just when he needs to see, and fill his mind with rage just when he needs to think - been there, done that, myself when much younger... and quickly learned to stop listening to the vectors feeding the goddamn things.

One can eventually, if not fully discard them, at least relegate them to a back shelf as forgotten ornaments, but it takes time, patience and effort.

I know he pushes y'alls buttons, but his reasons are entirely different for it, his worldview is coming up against evidence, and pieces are breakin off each side, and the guy is trying to sort them out to where they make some sort of sense to him while not showing any "weakness" to a world that's taught him well to hide it.

Now me, I wanna pour knowledge and tolerance into that crack in his bubble and encourage him to come out - not jam a spear in there and skewer him.

The friends across the field, remember ?

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Friday, April 3, 2009 1:11 PM

BYTEMITE

What about the claims over vaccinations and medicines that may have caused autism?

We're living in a toxic cocktail. Mercury, air-pollution, fluoride, leachable plastics... Eventually, some chemical is going to get into the system and screw things up. Maybe the result is cancer, maybe the result is autism. But maybe there is a reason for all these cases besides parents and besides society (directly, that is, if society and the pharmaceutical companies aren't doing this all intentionally).

Of course, our education system really does turn kids off. I saw it all the time when I was IN school. The system is designed to create a sort of hopelessness in everyone.

There is a difference between being spoiled and having ADHD.

And there's also a big difference between a kid who's been raised an apathetic couch potato, and a kid who has genuine social and learning disorders or autism. As I've observed it, the later retains all of their inherent creativity and curiosity, and the former type is just empty of it. Big, big difference.

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Friday, April 3, 2009 1:17 PM

WHOZIT

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
What about the claims over vaccinations and medicines that may have caused autism?

We're living in a toxic cocktail. Mercury, air-pollution, fluoride, leachable plastics... Eventually, some chemical is going to get into the system and screw things up. Maybe the result is cancer, maybe the result is autism. But maybe there is a reason for all these cases besides parents and besides society (directly, that is, if society and the pharmaceutical companies aren't doing this all intentionally).

They can't prove cigarettes cause cancer, your claims are BS.

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Friday, April 3, 2009 1:23 PM

BYTEMITE

...Huh? I said nothing about cigarettes. Cigarettes are really small scale, when you get right down to it.

I was talking more about things like contaminated food sources (especially fish), the prevalence of plastics that leach hormone-imitating chemicals, the possibility of air-pollution displacing oxygen and having an effect on developing brains, and GODDAMN fluoridated water treatments.

Even if we can't nail down what effect those contaminants have or prove that they cause cancer IN PEOPLE, we know they're poisonous, and we know they're bad for us. It's called toxicology.

You can't prove eating a hamburger will cause you to have a heart-attack, but there's cholesterol in it, and there's enough of a correlation between high cholesterol and heart-attacks that experts can advise people to stay away from high cholesterol foods.

People may not do it, but at least they're aware of the risk, so they can make the best possible choice in their situation.

I really didn't make any claims myself, either, only brought up the claims about vaccinations and medications causing autism because I wanted to see people discuss them and to know what everyone thinks.

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Friday, April 3, 2009 1:49 PM

http://youtu.be/VUnGTXRxGHg

What? Im supposed to back down cus Rue says so?

Fuck. That. Shit.

Do I think autism is bunk? Maybe, maybe not. Who knows? You can claim to know, but really? Same for ADD.

I prefer to try and handle things on the home front. Discipline, strength, honor ect...before going to whine to some witch doctor of a goddamned psychologist.

Plenty of people have existed in the past, who...if they had ADD or autism, still made something of themselves.

So yes, I'm sorry that you got shit on by God or whomever, but man up and deal with it.

If it really is something, then you have my sympathies. You have my condolensces, and by God even my pity. But don't sit there and tell me that some little rangerat is autistic because he doesnt want to do exactly as you tell him.

When, what he really needs is a good spanking.

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Friday, April 3, 2009 2:19 PM

THATWEIRDGIRL

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
not jam a spear in there and skewer him.

I'm okay with jamming a spear in there. He doesn't even consider these stories. Real personal accounts of diagnoses. He doesn't give a flying flip that many of us are personally affected by these disorders. Does he care? No. He just think we're f*cked up people who had terrible parents. Well, f*ck him.

---
Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Where have I gone wrong?" Then a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night."
-- Charlie Brown
www.thatcostumegirl.com
www.thatweirdgirl.com

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Friday, April 3, 2009 2:44 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Do I think autism is bunk? Maybe, maybe not. Who knows? You can claim to know, but really?

Are you asking for certainty? Then why are you quoting someone whose opinion rests on... sheer opinion???

But- what the hell then, Wulf! Why not just throw ALL data out the window if it doesn't match your perspectives?

---------------------------------
It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

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Friday, April 3, 2009 3:04 PM

Quote:
What? Im supposed to back down cus Rue says so?

No, you're supposed to accept the simple FACT that Autism is a medically, scientifically provable condition as opposed to various so-called behavioral disorders which have no medical correllation and therefore can be and sometimes even are, used as excuses.

Fuck. Your. Prejudices.

Quote:
Do I think autism is bunk? Maybe, maybe not. Who knows? You can claim to know, but really? Same for ADD.

Dude, again, when you can point to visible neurological malformations and significantly fucked up neurochemistry, it ain't bunk, it ain't speculation, it's fact.

How to go about fixing it, well, nationally we ain't invested enough effort to even TRY, cause we shovelled it right into the "no such thing" category right along with the Catholic Church's abuse, the Hellcamps, and internet-based predators of children.

And here you are playing the "no such thing" card yourself when you DAMN well ought to know better, especially when any real effort to research the topic on your behalf would clearly identify the rift between medically/physically provable conditions and the more debateable behaviorally based.

If you can put em under a CAT scan and point to it, the only debate AT THAT POINT is what the hell to do about it.

Quote:
I prefer to try and handle things on the home front. Discipline, strength, honor ect...before going to whine to some witch doctor of a goddamned psychologist.

Stuff your defensive macho bullshit, ok - I know it's protective coloration but it's just gonna provoke other folks who don't realise that.

While yes, good parenting is the first line of defense, it sure doesn't help when folks who have no idea what they're doin go lookin for help and then run into someone spouting crap like you are here and now, who also hasn't the slightest clue what they are talkin about neither.

Those who made the goddamn effort, realise they are out of their depth and engage professional assistance, often at great cost and the scorn of folk like you about it ought to be respected, cause they're tryin to do the right thing even in the face of hostile ignorance.

And while we're on the subject of the corruption of the medical and psychiatric industry, just because there's a schism and corruption doesn't mean the whole damn profession is worthless, fer cryin out loud the work of Doc Bruce Perry has jumped us forward two and more decades in trying to mitigate the very real problems of unfucking children damaged badly by abusive and neglectful parenting and zoomed in quite clear what the primary failures that cause the most damage are.

You'd do well to educate yourself before shooting your mouth off, especially to someone who's spent thirty years and more doing just that - you wanna address specific issues of neglectful parenting, you damn well better go get a brush less broad to be paintin with here, son.

And it's easy to blame folks fumbling in the dark who have no idea what they hell they're doing and call them lazy or neglectful, but it's also a dodge, scapegoating and a convenient lie to excuse not helping or educating them, which is within our power and to not do so makes *US* the lazy and neglectful ones.

You're all about self-realisation and self-rule, well with it comes certain responsibilities to aid your fellow humans, not because the law demands it or something thinks you should, but because IT IS THE ONLY RIGHT THING TO DO.

You can laugh at someone trying to push a boulder too large for them up a hill, or you can lend your shoulder to the push - what you decide shows the world who you are.

Quote:
Plenty of people have existed in the past, who...if they had ADD or autism, still made something of themselves.

As if it were that damn easy Wulf.

Lemme put it in terms YOU will understand, so that you comprehend how insulting what you just said was.
"Plenty of people have existed in the past, who...if they were born in the ghetto or wound up there through misfortune, still climbed out and made something of themselves."

Given that you know as well as I do what the price was, someone saying that to us would be a frikkin insult any way you slice it, wouldn't it now ?
Don't go doin unto others what you wouldn't take if someone did it unto you.

Quote:
When, what he really needs is a good spanking.

And for THAT, I would quite literally slap you, in person.

Yeah, and that little spark of hate and rage at the mere thought, yeah, that's such a WONDERFUL feeling to be inspiring in a child, isn't it ?

And you wonder why and how they get so fucked up in the first place...

In fact imma copy the whole goddamn post relative to this, cause you damn well need to read it.

But to say that is as stupid, as barbaric, and ignorant as saying you should resolve a disagreement with your wife/girlfriend that way.
Which was, at one time "conventional wisdom" as well, despite us now KNOWING how fucking asinine it was.

You should not use violence against people who have done you no harm.
Children are people.

Either you ain't gettin the former, or the latter, but sure as shit you ain't fuckin gettin it, and I mean to make that happen.

(stand by for copied post with higlighting regarding a point)

-F

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Friday, April 3, 2009 3:12 PM

TWG ?

With respect, my beloved empress - the reason he doesn't understand or care is that he's been taught not to by the very society that doesn't wish to address the problem cause it would require admission of blame at something other than the victims.

And he's by far not alone in that.
However, ignorance can be cured, and to flame him for it is as bad as flaming parents who screw up the job through the same kind of ignorance, we cannot just say "fuck em" and let it go on, our whole society and world depends on turning this around before it destroys us.

And so, I will show him why he SHOULD care, bring it home to him in a way that educates the guy rather then reinforcing his ignorant and incorrect perspectives just the same as I would do so with a friend who's ignorant parenting is doing harm to their child, BECAUSE WE MUST.

It's so easy to just get angry, frustrated, say screw it, throw up your hands and dismiss it as not your problem, but that's what those before us did, and now we're choking on the aftermath of that stupidity... choking to death, in fact, as those screwed up kids become parents and repeat the cycle.

I know it's frustrating, I know it makes one angry and hurt, but if we wanna break these chains, turn it around before they strangle us, we MUST do this, and we must do it on as wide a scale as possible, as often as possible, or just throw in the towel on humanity as a whole.

And that is something I will never do.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Friday, April 3, 2009 3:21 PM

And here's the copied post - pay close attention to the underlined parts in order to understand the full nature and implications of what you just suggested, and where that ends, Wulf.

==================================
Although a bit out of character for me, a hug for you Agentrouka, because you've understood enough already to ask the right questions.

And I fully understand you're not being snarky, but actually interested.

I will answer it here, but if you wish to start a new thread by all means do so - just be prepared for a lot of reading and make time for it, because almost all of this has been explored rather thoroughly by folks way more qualified than me, just that no one seems to want to listen cause they don't like what they're hearing.

The primary thing is getting away from what is "poisonous pedagogy" - a term coined by Katharina Rutschky and brought into sharp focus by Alice Miller.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisonous_pedagogy

This is where the parent, in seeking control, winds up treating their own child as an adversary or enemy to be conquered - I referred to it as "Adversarial Parenting" before getting involved in Ms Millers work cause I too saw how obvious the damage was.

The problem is that most parents have no experience or training with being parents, and thanks to a society that no longer allows time for it, wind up grasping at straws in an attempt to find anything that will work.

And then someone with a religious or financial motive directs them to the work of someone like that monster James Dobson, who's entire idea of 'parenting' involves breaking the child to your will, even if it breaks the child utterly - and it DOES NOT WORK.

Liken this to someone getting a doberman puppy, they hear dobermans are mean, so they decide to "show it who's boss" by beating the crap out of it all the time to cow it, to break it to their will...

Sooner or later, that dog WILL bite them - and then people blame the dog!
Or even suggest that the owner wasn't brutal ENOUGH!
And the cycle continues, and worsens.

And yes, we do this to kids, do a little research on what James Dobson claims is good parenting...

And worse, Gary Ezzo, of similar bent, who suggests using this model on INFANTS, a practice which has been linked to failure to thrive conditions and even death.
http://www.ezzo.info/Aney/aneyaap.htm

At it's most heinous, this path leads to the hellcamps, when the kids turn and bite, like the doberman puppy above, or resist a school social environment who's cliques and pecking order bullshit are replicated in only one other place in american society - the penal system, which as the Stanford Prison Experiment revealed, is about as humanly destructive an environment as is possible to create.

And when children face mixed messages of what their own humanity and empathy are telling them crossing up with exactly the opposite demanded of them for social success and acceptance, aberrent behavior is all but gauranteed, especially in so toxic an environment.

And then we call it a disorder and try to medicate it cause admitting the truth would be too painful, cause too much hassle, might involve admitting blame...

And if/when that doesn't work... the camps.
And kids DIE.

Humans are born with certain biological pre-dispositions, and the natural link between a parent and infant/child during the developmental stages is utterly critical to their future development, something researched in explicit detail by Dr Bruce Perry of the Child Trauma Academy.

And if that relationship is positive, no worries - but if due to following stupid advice, frustration or incompetence, that relationship turns negative.... the fuse is lit, you see ?
Now it's possible to defuse that, very much so, but the chances of doing so successfully are much greater the earlier you intervene, and just after puberty is when the childs personality begins to calcify and you run out of time - if you wait till they've already in the juvie court system, your chances are all but gone.

You're right that most folk do not set out to mistreat their kids, far, far, FAR more abuse comes from incompetence, ignorance, bad advice by folk with a financial stake in offering it, simple frustration or even well meaning but inadequate parenting, than ever came from malice.

But it ends in malice - because what's THE most common american advice to a parent when a child doesn't meet expectations ?
Hit harder, punish longer, use more control - when often it's those very things that set the relationship spiralling out of control in the first place.

And that child *will* learn to hate you, only in a child can love and hate co-exist right beside each other without conflict like that, but it's all too common, and what *HAPPENS* to these problem children, even if they've managed to stay out of trouble with the law and society, when they and their parents find each other so despicable they cannot bear each others presence ?

Why, out the door at eighteen, bang, no job, no job skills, no support of any kind from a parent who has completely neglected that part of their duty because it was, yanno, too much trouble, etc etc.

Or, and I am seeing this with at least one my relatives now - a parent who cannot let GO, who deliberately prevents a teens ventures into adulthood by forbidding them from learning to drive despite a relative who will pay for it entire, by forbidding them to have a job, gripping tighter and tighter till the child flees a home they've come to see as a prison, totally unprepared for a world that's all too ready to eat them alive.

There's a million and one ways to screw it up, and it's so hard to get it right in a society that legally and socially considers them something less than livestock - while it might not seem a great deal to the adult who just shoved away the four year old who wanted a hug cause they were "busy", it's a great deal to the child - and how often does the adult bother to explain or apologise ?

It's an oh-so-very-slippery slope, and almost no one at the bottom ever stepped on it deliberately, but they slid down all the same.

We need to make support of parents a PRIORITY, instead of stigmatising them, HONOR them, instead of penalising them.
(and let's not lie, most workplaces in the US *WILL* penalise you for it, if not outright try to be RID of you as unproductive deadweight for it!)

We need to take parenthood as seriously as the consequences of screwing it up really ARE.

Wowza, this has run on pretty long, so imma clip it here for the moment cause I got stuff needin doin, but I am quite happy to answer your questions, Agent, and help you refine them into concrete specifics as best I can - because it's very important to me.

-Frem
==================================

As I see it, Wulf - ya got four choices here.

1) Point and Laugh.
2) Offer to help.
3) Shut the fuck up.
4) Take up the banner I am so very willing to hand you, and start helping SOLVE the problems instead of bitching about the end result of them.

In the end, really...

What you DO - is who you ARE.

I know who I choose to be, what about you ?

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Friday, April 3, 2009 11:37 PM

CITIZEN

I think it should also be pointed out that Autistic people aren't stupid. It's a condition that effects a persons ability to socialise, because they're brains develop and work differently to "normal" people. In fact Hans Asperger was responsible for classifying the autism spectrum disorder Aspergers Syndrome, and described his young patients as "little professors".

In respect to Aspergers, those who have it, often find it much easier to interact with each other, than normal people, which has contributed to leading some to say it isn't a "condition" that needs to be "treated", but merely a difference. I feel I should point out that it's symptoms are very similar to what tends to be described as "sci-fi geek" in the mild ranges. Just remember before we start casting stones of stupidity about, where you're doing it, on a Science Fiction Show Fan Website. The chances of anyone regularly posting here having some degree of Aspergers is pretty high, something to consider before saying people with autism are stupid freaks with crappy parents.

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Saturday, April 4, 2009 1:46 AM

YINYANG

You were busy trying to get yourself lit on fire. It happens.

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
I was talking more about things like contaminated food sources (especially fish), the prevalence of plastics that leach hormone-imitating chemicals, the possibility of air-pollution displacing oxygen and having an effect on developing brains, and GODDAMN fluoridated water treatments.

Even if we can't nail down what effect those contaminants have or prove that they cause cancer IN PEOPLE, we know they're poisonous, and we know they're bad for us. It's called toxicology.

Yeah, they're everywhere, and yeah, they're bad for us... in high-level doses. But, usually when we're talking about things like mercury in food, the levels are ridiculously low, a few parts per million or billion.

Mercury in food:

http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2009/01/mercury-in-hfcs-retake.htm
l
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/01/fishy-sushi-scares.html
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2007/07/booster-shots-with-mercury
.html

Quote:
You can't prove eating a hamburger will cause you to have a heart-attack, but there's cholesterol in it, and there's enough of a correlation between high cholesterol and heart-attacks that experts can advise people to stay away from high cholesterol foods.

First off: Correlation does not equal causation.

Secondly, one hamburger? I can only assume you're being hyperbolic. It's about more than just eating one or a few hamburgers, it's about eating many hamburgers and other foods with high levels of LDL cholesterol in combination with one's own physiology and family history. And, even then, there's more to heart attacks than cholesterol.

Quote:
I really didn't make any claims myself, either, only brought up the claims about vaccinations and medications causing autism because I wanted to see people discuss them and to know what everyone thinks.

Mercury in vaccines:

http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2007/05/when-you-feel-scared-and-w
orried.html
http://www.ncirs.usyd.edu.au/facts/f-thiomersal.html

Anyway, if heath and food safety were as fraught with danger as they are made to seem, would humanity have lasted this long or gotten to such a large population? Maybe not, given how little information people once had about everything. Which is not to say that there aren't or haven't been problems, but from what I've seen the ones we hear about in the media tend to be overblown, and the real problems we hear about less often or with less hysteria (like East St. Louis).

Edited to add link to info on East St. Louis:

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Third_World_US/SI_Kozol_StLouis.html
http://hr.cch.com/news/safety/040309a.asp
http://www.umich.edu/~snre492/Jones/stlouis.htm

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Saturday, April 4, 2009 2:27 AM

EVILDINOSAUR

yes there are many kids who are diagnosed with autism who don't actually have autism, but that's not to say there is no such thing as autism. My wife teaches at a school specifically for autistic kids, and her students are not stupid or lazy, they have a genuine illness.

"Haha, mine is an evil laugh."

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Saturday, April 4, 2009 2:36 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

There are more cases of autism in the Northwest than anyplace else. Maybe lack of sunshine (melatonin) or lack of vitamin D plays a role. At this point, nobody knows.

I only looked into the brain-mind connection because of my dd's problem. Just to give you an idea of how ridiculously un-understood the brain is, I'll give you a little history: For reasons that nobody understand or will admit to she had a grade IV brain bleed into her right hemisphere when she was born. (Look up Grade IV brain hemorrhage, anything I say here will sound like exaggeration.) As a result, she started having seizures... which wouldn't have been so bad except she developed something called Continuous Spike Wave Syndrome (again, look it up. Same problem with me describing it here. BTW- I found the dx on the internet, no thanks to her doctors).

We tried over a dozen anti-convulsants (I kid you not. If you want a list, I'll post it), the ketogenic diet, brushing therapy. She was evaluated for surgery ... twice. Despite our best efforts... prescription, therapy, emotional... she swirled down the tubes into dementia. The doctors told us: We're up a creek without a paddle. You know what brought her back? Take a guess b4 you highlight

Select to view spoiler:

Steroids.

YEP- STEROIDS. There is some interaction with either the blood-brain barrier, or the effect of steroids themselves on the brain, totally unrelated to anti-convulsants, which turned off the aberrant brain function like a switch

Eventually, the side effects caught up, and without the medication she reverted back to the same problem. But one of her neurologists, who is a researcher in addition to being a clinician, took another flyer and tried

Select to view spoiler:

Amantadine, an anti-viral

And THAT seems to have permanently stopped the regression cold. Again- like a light switch. Unfortunately, our dd was left with a lot of additional brain damage brought about by uncontrolled spike-waves, but... we're working on that through therapy.

My point isn't to gather sympathy, but to let you know that - given my experience and the experience of other parents, when children in otherwise NORMAL homes exhibit abnormal behavior or mentation my FIRST suggestion is -

RULE OUT PHYSICAL CAUSES FIRST.

JUST BECAUSE YOU DON"T UNDERSTAND THE CAUSE, THE MECHANISM, OR THE CURE DOESN'T MEAN IT ISN'T HAPPENING.

I can tell you from experience that IF you're fighting a PHYSICAL cause, all of the therapy or love or punishment in the WORLD isn't going to make a hill o'beans worth of difference UNTIL you get the physical process under control. If you can. The HOURS of therapy that we killed ourselves into, the anguish, the love... sure, did some good. But mostly didn't stick... it got wiped out every night. The school that shocks its students??? Torture, pure and simple.

When someone is IGNORANT as Wulf comes along and says "It's all due to bad parenting" I just look at him and think: Yeah, and HE'S a perfect example of a bad parent, because he would punish his child for something that they can't help, and callously let his child -or other children- swirl down the drain without help. Just to assuage his prejudices.

---------------------------------
It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

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Saturday, April 4, 2009 3:29 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

BTW- I've found that people generally repeat their childhoods. Children who were loved tend to be loving parents. Children who were beaten or ridiculed tend to do the same to their children.

I wonder why they would want to repeat that on their children.

I think it's all tied up in their image of themselves. They look back and they think... Hell, I survived! And look at me, I didn't turn out so bad! I'm tougher, more resilient now than I would have been otherwise. Well... no. Abuse is damaging. People under stress... even the stress of past abuse... don't think as well. Their IQs tend to be lower, they resort to violence, tend to be MORE gullible and less resilient than children who felt loved growing up. But it's a blow to the ego, especially an ego made fragile by past abuse, to admit that maybe they're NOT a happy ending. Maybe the best ending is to become a different person, not to cling to the self-image created by having been abused.

---------------------------------
It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

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Saturday, April 4, 2009 3:46 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Oh BTW Yin-Yang- some chemicals are known to have have highly non-linear responses: they have an effect at very high concentrations, and an efect at very low concentrations.

And there are more chemicals out there than you might imagine which are endocrine and neuro-developmental disrupters.

Here are a few oddball ones: You might expect that endocrine/ neuro-developmental disrupters would be complex organic chemicals which dock precisely onto some critical active site. But, here's an example of an unexpected endocrine disrupter

Select to view spoiler:

Uranium

Yep, it docks into all of the places that estrogen does. Weird, huh? Another one is

Select to view spoiler:

perchlorate, a common oxidant in rocket fuel, which has contaminated groundwater all across the west

By blocking the effect of iodine on the thyroid, children exposed in utero develop many symptoms of cretinism. And there is

Select to view spoiler:

zinc

lack of which effects the IQ not only in the first generation but at least the next generation after that.

That's not including PCBs, which seem to prevent exposed children from learning from negative experience, and their related fire-retardant brothers, the brominated phenyls, found in most cushion foams; phthalates; bis-phenolA; mercury and lead (which has no know lower limit where it does NOT effect IQ), fetal exposure to alcohol or stress. Neurodevelopment... indeed, all of fetal development... depends on precise regulation of when genes are turned on or off, not just on the genes themselves. Common toxicants and even experiences can alter gene expression.

Also, take into consideration that the brain and the immune system work at cross-purposes to each other: immune-system components in the body, such as calcinuerin and phospolipids have an entirely DIFFERENT function on the other side of the blood-brain barrier, and when that barrier is breached... as it is in times of stress... the brain is assaulted by abberent developmental signals.

For kids with "behavioral disorders", my FIRST suggestion: When in doubt, try fish oil. Then test for sleep apnea. Seriously.

---------------------------------
It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

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Saturday, April 4, 2009 4:25 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

I heard a story on the radio, about an autistic person who came up w/ what seems to be a very brilliant observation. Seems this person suffered from panic/anxiety attacks,of some sort. So, they recalled having seen that when cattle are vaccinated, they are placed in a shoot where padded sides come together and holds them in place. While the cattle are in there, they appeared less panicked, would stop struggling and calmed down. With that concept in mind, this person made a 'hug machine', where there are 2 cushions or mattresses on either side, which come together and hug the person that stands in between them. Don't know the details, but the person who came up w/ the idea says it helps them , and w/ out the use of drugs.

Pretty clever, I thought.

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Saturday, April 4, 2009 4:38 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Indeed. There is an autistic woman, Temple Grandin, whose made a point of studying animals because she seems to understand how they process things.

I recall reading an article about two high-functioning autistic people who married. They have rules in the house like always put things back where they belong. Don't leave soap bubbles in the sink because they're too distracting. Don't look each other in the eye. I thought it was sheer bunk... and apparently so did the interviewer- until on the way out, when the husband said So-and-So- (his neighbor) was home. The interviewer wanted to know how he knew and the husband said Because the electricity meter was moving. The interviewer had to walk about fifty feet and get up close to the meter to confirm it.

Also, a story about a girl who would throw absolute screaming, self-biting fits for no apparent reason, until one day her mom helped her track down the source of a sound ONE MILE AWAY. Apparently certain frequencies were just PAINFUL to the girl.

Some autistics can't stand the feel of certain clothes... or toothbrushes... they have very unique sensory reactions (Sensory defensiveness). LIGHT touches drive them crazy. There is a theory that this is a sensory processing issue... most people "de-tune" their senses to filter out constant or repeated signals. Apparently autistics can't do that.

I would not believe that except I have direct experience. My dd has damage to the area that "detunes" hearing. Her hearing is extremely acute... it goes way beyond good... waaay beyond phenomenal... all the way to pathological. She can hear me get out my keys when I'm in the driveway and she's three rooms and three doors inside!

---------------------------------
It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

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Saturday, April 4, 2009 4:57 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:

I would not believe that except I have direct experience. My dd has damage to the area that "detunes" hearing. Her hearing is extremely acute... it goes way beyond good... waaay beyond phenomenal... all the way to pathological. She can hear me get out my keys when I'm in the driveway and she's three rooms and three doors inside!

---------------------------------
It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

Not calling anyone a 'dog' here, but that's approaching at which the level dogs can hear. Studies have been done that show dogs can pick up the sound of their owner's car from down the street. It wasn't that the animals reacted to the certain time of day the owners came home either. If the owner drove their car home, the dog could be seen reacting to the sounds ( engine revving up, gears changing, etc... ) from a long distance, but if the owner was in a bus, different car, or walked home, the dog wouldn't react until the owner was approaching the door.

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Saturday, April 4, 2009 5:03 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

I've thought the same thing myself. No offense taken. Children whining in a store drive my dd nuts. She speaks in a rather shrill, loud tone, because she's trying to get past all of the noise that SHE hears. It's... interesting. We've given her earplugs just so she can sleep. We got to borrow a pair of Bose sound- canceling headphones, so we're gonna try those on her too.

---------------------------------
It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

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Saturday, April 4, 2009 6:00 AM

Quote:

Indeed. There is an autistic woman, Temple Grandin, whose made a point of studying animals because she seems to understand how they process things.

Terry Gross had a fascinating interview with her on NPR's "Fresh Air" not too long ago. If you can find it and download it, it's well worth the time.

Mike

Just lying smiling in the dark,
Shooting stars around your heart,
Dreams come bouncing in your head
pure and simple every time.
Now you're crying in your sleep;
I wish you'd never learnt to weep.
Don't sell the dreams you should be keeping
pure and simple every time.
"Pure", by Lightning Seeds

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Saturday, April 4, 2009 6:05 AM

THATWEIRDGIRL

Autism goes hand in hand with sensory issues. I'd call it a sensory disorder. The off kilter interactions with the world cause the retreating, silence, and social awkwardness. Touch and hearing are greatly affected. Often times it affects their ability to eat because certain textures are just not palatable.

I find the hearing thing interesting. I don't have perfect hearing, but I can hear things other people cannot. A high percentage of ADHD had significant and reoccurring ear infections in infancy/toddlerhood. Cause or symptom? They are often considered klutzy too.

---
Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Where have I gone wrong?" Then a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night."
-- Charlie Brown
www.thatcostumegirl.com
www.thatweirdgirl.com

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Saturday, April 4, 2009 6:11 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:

I would not believe that except I have direct experience. My dd has damage to the area that "detunes" hearing. Her hearing is extremely acute... it goes way beyond good... waaay beyond phenomenal... all the way to pathological. She can hear me get out my keys when I'm in the driveway and she's three rooms and three doors inside!

---------------------------------
It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

Not calling anyone a 'dog' here, but that's approaching at which the level dogs can hear. Studies have been done that show dogs can pick up the sound of their owner's car from down the street. It wasn't that the animals reacted to the certain time of day the owners came home either. If the owner drove their car home, the dog could be seen reacting to the sounds ( engine revving up, gears changing, etc... ) from a long distance, but if the owner was in a bus, different car, or walked home, the dog wouldn't react until the owner was approaching the door.

Not to hijack the thread, just to reiterate what 'Rap said...

I've seen it in action, first-hand, with my dog. Where I used to live, the neighbors on both sides drove '90-'93 Honda Accords - my wife was driving a '90 Accord at the time. They'd pull up... no reaction at all. The dog would start getting antsy later, though, and I knew my wife was coming up the street. And sure enough, within 15 seconds or so, there she'd be, pulling up in the driveway - although I had to open the door and look out to confirm it. The dog could pick out THAT PARTICULAR HONDA ACCORD by sound, a good half a block away or more. No idea what makes mine sound different from any other, but the dog is acutely tuned to it.

My wife thinks I'm a freak because I can tell the difference between military and civilian helicopters and jets just from the sound when we're inside watching TV. But that's nothing out of the ordinary - they DO sound very different!

Mike

Just lying smiling in the dark,
Shooting stars around your heart,
Dreams come bouncing in your head
pure and simple every time.
Now you're crying in your sleep;
I wish you'd never learnt to weep.
Don't sell the dreams you should be keeping
pure and simple every time.
"Pure", by Lightning Seeds

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Saturday, April 4, 2009 6:12 AM

BYTEMITE

Quote:
Originally posted by yinyang:
First off: Correlation does not equal causation.

Secondly, one hamburger? I can only assume you're being hyperbolic. It's about more than just eating one or a few hamburgers, it's about eating many hamburgers and other foods with high levels of LDL cholesterol in combination with one's own physiology and family history. And, even then, there's more to heart attacks than cholesterol.

I know it doesn't, that's why I was trying to be clear about what you can't prove.

My point was even if you can't prove a cause beyond a shadow of a doubt, if there's enough correlation experts can make a recommendation.

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Saturday, April 4, 2009 6:56 AM

Quote:
My point isn't to gather sympathy, but to let you know that - given my experience and the experience of other parents, when children in otherwise NORMAL homes exhibit abnormal behavior or mentation my FIRST suggestion is -

RULE OUT PHYSICAL CAUSES FIRST.

JUST BECAUSE YOU DON"T UNDERSTAND THE CAUSE, THE MECHANISM, OR THE CURE DOESN'T MEAN IT ISN'T HAPPENING.

I can tell you from experience that IF you're fighting a PHYSICAL cause, all of the therapy or love or punishment in the WORLD isn't going to make a hill o'beans worth of difference UNTIL you get the physical process under control. If you can. The HOURS of therapy that we killed ourselves into, the anguish, the love... sure, did some good. But mostly didn't stick... it got wiped out every night. The school that shocks its students??? Torture, pure and simple.

Amen.

I consider environment to also be a physical cause, mind you, but I think both of us absolutely agree on a proper and accurate diagnosis to be utterly critical to the process - which is why a "checklist diagnosis" with a predetermined conclusion based on the biases on non medical professionals sends me into howling fits, obviously.

And yeah, that's what I was sayin about medication, indeed, it's best used to mitigate symptoms while you address the root cause, cause of some of the very issues you just mentioned, body tolerance and other such - and aimed at reducing dependance on something that might stop working or even have variable effects as a child ages, this is common when very young children hit puberty and their biochemistry starts changing in often unpredictable ways if there's a pre-existing misfire or condition.

Sometimes you got no choice, I understand that, cause as you say, you've actually explored every option you could think of, which is the right thing to do - believe me, I wish to hell some parents, and even some doctors, would invest that kind of effort cause to do less seems almost criminally negligent, and doctors should damn well know better, yanno ?

As far as ignorance goes, that's exactly what multiplies the problem - the parents don't know no better, and wind up taking advice from other folk who don't know no better, and it's this endless freakin chain-cycle I ever so desperately wanna break.

Quote:
I wonder why they would want to repeat that on their children.

I wondered too, but yanno, Alice Miller devoted her existence to finding out, and she did - the hard part is getting folk to acknowledge or admit it, cause that requires... I dunno how to explain, but it's REAL hard to accept something which not only flies in the face of so-called "conventional wisdom" (as not beating your wife once did) but also will leave you forever looking at our current society with a kind of morbid disgust, which can be in it's own way unintentionally hurtful to you.

Denial is SO much easier.

The Ignorance or How we produce the Evil
http://www.alice-miller.com/articles_en.php?lang=en&nid=47&grp=11
We can identify the causes of our sufferings
http://www.alice-miller.com/articles_en.php?lang=en&nid=59&grp=11
Banished Knowledge
http://www.alice-miller.com/books_en.php?page=6

As for as pollutants and environmental toxins, my understanding of the related science ain't too hot, but statistically, while possible, almost probably, significant factors - what has been noted so far, none of it explains the SCALE, because people are not all the same and would have different reactions even in a closed-loop environment, which gives doubt to any single cause that has been attributed so far, as people being people, some would be more resistant, some would be less, and so on and so forth.

Prolly doin a terrible job of explaining that cause of lack of scientific background in that respect, but one thing I am almost sure of, is that there's something ELSE at work there - and yes, Siggy, I noted the statistical loading to the northwest too, for the life of me I cannot figure the hell out why.

I won't say that the factors we've noted, and wisely tried to eliminate so far haven't contributed, but as the sole and complete cause ?
In light of all the evidence so far... I do not think so, and finding the hell out would be a damn good use of resources cause prevention is so damn much easier than treatment or mitigation.

As the anecdotal stuff after that...

We had a guy show up at our tabletop miniatures group, we eventually found out his name was Larry, but we all called him "Boss Hoss" cause his power wheelchair kinda reminded us of a badass cycle, since his folks had customised and personalised it for him.

Now, we never did really learn what was wrong with the guy, whether it was autism, ALS, MS or what have you, but he was in a wheelchair and could not speak, and his synthesizer was a very cheap keypress model which he had to share with "others" on some kind of weekly basis so he didn't always have it with him.

He did have some decent right hand function, and I will say for damn sure he wasn't dumb - he rolled up to us out of the blue in the mall where we used an empty storefront to set up our tables, and used his synth to ask to join a game, which set him facing me (and damn, I had planned on going easy on him!) so we gave him an old yardstick ruler so he could simply indicate which units he wanted to move/fire/etc, and he proceeded to give me a very sound thrashing... I took him, but it was a damn near thing, I was IMPRESSED, mind you.

Eventually I got frustrated with our efforts to communicate on weeks when he didn't have his synth, and took a oujia board and some scraps, and built a pyramid-hand sling kinda thing to hold his wrist up so he could tap out letters with a finger - he took one look and it was the only time I ever heard him try to laugh, but it worked well enough he wanted to keep it, and we gave it to him.

He stopped coming after a while and we heard he passed away, and by his wish was cremated, so a couple of us stopped by his marker, and each of us left one of our troops on it, out of respect.

The fact that we didn't shun the guy always struck me as a little odd, given how screwed up our society is, but we gamer types were kinda outcasts anyway and didn't much care what other folk thought was socially acceptable - had we done so we'd have missed out on the company of a man we considered a friend despite a near-impossibility to communicate on both ends.

I'll never forget the pained frustration in the guys eyes, either - it's gotta be some kinda hell to be trapped by your own body like that.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Saturday, April 4, 2009 7:01 AM