They say people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, but right now so many of them are still chucking boulders around it isn't funny.
Just a few short days ago, a fellow Autism parent snapped. Was it right? Hell no. Could it happen again? Most likely. To me? God, I hope not. To someone else I know? Maybe.
There are so many questions and so many possibilities to our lives and those of our children and yet so many people (especially special needs parents) are still so trapped. When Alex's mother stabbed him repeatedly earlier this year, so many people were so quick to condemn her. How can any mother kill her child? Others tried to be understanding. She was just dealing with so much. In turn, these people were vilified by the autism community. There is no excuse for killing your child.
No excuse perhaps, but sometimes people snap.
The statement has been made over and over again, "God never gives you more than you can handle." I happen to disagree with this immensely. Mental illness throws everything out the window.
If a typical teenaged star athlete commits suicide, does everyone instantly label the parent as bad? Maybe. But most likely there was some mental illness that caused the child to lose hope and lose the will to live. If a mother (or father) of a typical child kills him/her there is instant horror and outrage. How could he/she be so selfish? But when a parent arranges a murder-suicide the first assumption is usually (I would hope) "what brought them to this point?" After all when you try to take your own life as well it isn't so much selfishness as despair.
So many people have never dealt with the intense violence that was a part of Kelli and Issy's life. Many have never dealt with the crushing choices facing them. How about living 2.5 hours away from your home and the rest of your family in order to have your child go to the best school? I am willing to bet not many people could take that one on the chin and keep going as though nothing happened.
Autistic people will say that if you try to justify a crime like this you diminish an adult autistic's life. I think it is safe to say that Issy's life (and Alex's) were already diminished. Does that make it right? Hell no. Does that make it sad? Immeasurably.
So before all the haters out there jump on me for excusing or justifying this crime, let me be clear. I AM NOT! I am trying to understand. I just want to keep this from ever happening again. I wish I had answers.
Maybe this hit me especially hard because both these children were 14 and my Alan just turned 15.
All I know is I'm not throwing any stones at Kelli ... not even a small pebble.
No. Just no.
ReplyDeleteInsisting someone who has autism's life is already diminished due to their autism is wrong. It's like parents who merrily blog about hating their kid's autism. Failing to notice their kid and autism are one and the same. What that parent is actually staying that they don't want their kid, THAT KID -- they want a different, non-autistic one!
Kaylee, I hate to start a disagreement here. But I think you are wrong to lump all parents based on one. And I think that is Julie's point. A parent who says they hate autism isn't saying they hate their child. Instead they are saying they love their child so much that they hate how autism has changed their child.
DeleteIt really is no different than saying you hate breast cancer. It doesn't mean you hate the person who has it, you hate how it is making them suffer.
Kaylee, I think that anyone that is THAT violent is going to have a diminished life. Maybe I shouldn't have said that THEY are diminished, but I truly feel that my youngest doesn't get all that life has to offer. How can he when he can't talk to other kids or play or go half the places that his still autistic but higher functioning brother can go? That said, I love my son, I just want more for him than he can experience at the moment.
DeleteAnd then there are the parents who say they love their kid but hate the fact that said kid is gay. The kid and the "gayness" are one and the same.
DeleteThere are plenty of parents who really, truly believe the fact that their kid is gay diminishes their life, prevents them from getting into heaven, etc. I'm pretty sure a gay kid in this type of family would feel that their parents don't accept them, don't love them and basically want a completely different (ie heterosexual) child.
Loving the kid, hating the autism isn't too dissimilar.
Thank you for such a thoughtful post on this terribly heartbreaking subject. I wish we had answers ... and more ways to help.
ReplyDeleteJulie, what an honest post. I think empathy is needed. People do snap, we don't know what that parent was feeling at that moment. It doesn't excuse what they did but it helps explain it and hopefully bring closure, understanding and most of all knowledge.
ReplyDeleteNo pebbles from here. Just prayers.
ReplyDeleteThank you Julie, for being upfront and honest. Yes, no peoples thrown here either, what's the saying "there, but for the grace of God, goes I" Where something like this is tragic, so is the situation that this family was trapped in, as so many others are. We need to have empathy, yet having a sense of how horrific this is can be a lesson to parents as well as family members, friends, and the general public that there are people suffering that need support. I hope that tragedies like this don't continue to go unheeded, that more begin to reach out to those that can help and to those that need help.
ReplyDeletePebbles* :-) predictive text, sigh.
ReplyDeletelol I *love* auto-correct! :-)
DeleteIt is so hard to say. We all have felt our days, nights, or both spiraling out of control sometimes. It is just sad that there was no one she or anyone in the family could turn to for a break, for an extra pair of hands to help, for a shoulder to cry on or to scream to. We all feel for the family and can only offer a prayer and hope that if someone else is reading this, feeling the same way - that they reach out to anyone/someone for help. No judgment.
ReplyDeleteWhile I understand your trying to understand, I have to disagree iwht most of it. It's true that some parent ssnap, but so do parents of typical children (who, after all, can be a pain in the ass too). I disagree with the idea tht autism makes someone's life inherently diminished. I do understand many parents (and some autistics) feel autism diminishes lives, because they did not get what htey were expecting, but this is life. ife isn't far, and it's true that sometimes more gets thrown at you than you can handle. Can we understand this crime in terms that don't involve autism? I think so.
ReplyDeleteAnother very brave and honest post - I'm not sure I'd go along with the word 'diminished' but one adult autistic told me on twitter that she would certainly describe herself as 'disabled'.
ReplyDeleteMany parents snap, but I'm not sure that that is what happened in this case, but certainly Kelli was in an awful situation, and was not getting the right kind of help for her child or herself - I do not think that any parent should have to tolerate that level of violence from a child, or from anyone else in their life either.
Oops. Sorry, I'm a few comments behind in replying. I agree with both Astrid and Looking for Blue Sky that the term diminished was probably a poor choice of words. What I was trying to say is that they get less out of life than a typically developing child does. Even Alan gets to do so much less than Joe and it frustrates the whole family. Joe wants his brother along and yet knows that Alan can't follow the necessary rules. Alan is the daredevil and would probably love things like amusement parks but we can't even get him in the gate because of sensory overload and lack of comprehension.
DeleteAstrid, if there had been no autism, I'm pretty sure Kelli would have gotten MORE sympathy because of the violence she was subjected to. Then everyone would say "Izzy should know better" and she should. While the premeditation of the act infuriates me (and makes me regret my use of "snap") I totally get the frustration.