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View Full Version : "I Am Adam Lanza's Mother"



Kathianne
12-16-2012, 12:18 PM
Unlike Adam's mother though, this woman understands her brilliant 13 year old is and likely will remain dangerous. He's medicated and hospitalized when necessary. She agreed to have his 'most suitable setting' changed from 'gifted' to 'self-contained behavior disordered' now most often referred to as EMH or EMD. Little teaching goes on, but they work mostly on self-control, life skills, and most seriously, laws.

It takes basically repeated or such serious criminal acts to move beyond this level. It does happen though. The school recommends 'alternative residential placement.' By this time, most families are just relieved. It will be short-lived though. On meds and with extremely restrictive rules, many are back in EMD classroom within a few months. Which brings them back to their families.

Anyways, some of you might want to take a look at this:

http://gawker.com/5968818/i-am-adam-lanzas-mother


I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother Liza Long
http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/188j67o66gkgojpg/medium.jpgThree days before 20 year-old Adam Lanza killed his mother, then opened fire on a classroom full of Connecticut kindergartners, my 13-year old son Michael (name changed) missed his bus because he was wearing the wrong color pants.


"I can wear these pants," he said, his tone increasingly belligerent, the black-hole pupils of his eyes swallowing the blue irises.


"They are navy blue," I told him. "Your school's dress code says black or khaki pants only."


"They told me I could wear these," he insisted. "You're a stupid bitch. I can wear whatever pants I want to. This is America. I have rights!"


"You can't wear whatever pants you want to," I said, my tone affable, reasonable. "And you definitely cannot call me a stupid bitch. You're grounded from electronics for the rest of the day. Now get in the car, and I will take you to school." (Ed. many will say at this point, 'I would have ..., what kind of nonsense response was that? Anyone who has been a parent of healthy kids, knows you pick your battles. Keep reading.)


I live with a son who is mentally ill. I love my son. But he terrifies me.
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A few weeks ago, Michael pulled a knife and threatened to kill me and then himself after I asked him to return his overdue library books. His 7 and 9 year old siblings knew the safety plan-they ran to the car and locked the doors before I even asked them to. I managed to get the knife from Michael, then methodically collected all the sharp objects in the house into a single Tupperware container that now travels with me. Through it all, he continued to scream insults at me and threaten to kill or hurt me.


That conflict ended with three burly police officers and a paramedic wrestling my son onto a gurney for an expensive ambulance ride to the local emergency room. The mental hospital didn't have any beds that day, and Michael calmed down nicely in the ER, so they sent us home with a prescription for Zyprexa and a follow-up visit with a local pediatric psychiatrist.


We still don't know what's wrong with Michael. Autism spectrum, ADHD, Oppositional Defiant or Intermittent Explosive Disorder have all been tossed around at various meetings with probation officers and social workers and counselors and teachers and school administrators. He's been on a slew of antipsychotic and mood altering pharmaceuticals, a Russian novel of behavioral plans.

Nothing seems to work.


At the start of seventh grade, Michael was accepted to an accelerated program for highly gifted math and science students. His IQ is off the charts. When he's in a good mood, he will gladly bend your ear on subjects ranging from Greek mythology to the differences between Einsteinian and Newtonian physics to Doctor Who. He's in a good mood most of the time. But when he's not, watch out. And it's impossible to predict what will set him off.

Several weeks into his new junior high school, Michael began exhibiting increasingly odd and threatening behaviors at school. We decided to transfer him to the district's most restrictive behavioral program, a contained school environment where children who can't function in normal classrooms can access their right to free public babysitting from 7:30-1:50 Monday through Friday until they turn 18.

...

Abbey Marie
12-16-2012, 12:42 PM
After reading this, I just thanked my daughter for being so, well, normal.

And not to make light of the subject, but I have long thought that for the person with the super high IQ, it isn't such a good thing.

Kathianne
12-16-2012, 12:52 PM
After reading this, I just thanked my daughter for being so well, normal.

And not to make light of the subject, but I have long thought that for the person with the super high IQ, it isn't such a good thing.

That's been pretty well agreed with, the brilliant have always seemed to be different than just in intellect. However, we don't get to pick the way our brains are wired, nor the gifts and trials that may come with.

All over the discussion seems to be on 'gun control' which is not surprising since that's always on the liberal planner, so any excuse.

Seems to me this is the case for re-examining forced commitments when warranted.

mundame
12-16-2012, 12:53 PM
After reading this, I just thanked my daughter for being so well, normal.

And not to make light of the subject, but I have long thought that for the person with the super high IQ, it isn't such a good thing.


Yes, what is going on there? I remember the famous neurologist Norman Geschwind described a syndrome of males who are thin, short, geeky, near-sighted (so they wear glasses), and extremely, very smart -- especially in math-related areas. We know these people; we see the characters portrayed just like this in movies all the time. Geschwind viewed it as a birth defect!

I never forgot that, that high math ability can be viewed as a birth defect, because it so often goes along with serious social deficits. Boy, that was the last day I ever worried that women weren't as good at math as men!! Certainly ihigh math ability is a well-known component of autism and even mathies who do well in life later quite often have something major wrong --- Einstein famously didn't talk till he was five.

Lanzi clearly fit into the syndrome of very bright, mathy males who have something terrible wrong with their minds.

Abbey Marie
12-16-2012, 01:08 PM
Yes, what is going on there? I remember the famous neurologist Norman Geschwind described a syndrome of males who are thin, short, geeky, near-sighted (so they wear glasses), and extremely, very smart -- especially in math-related areas. We know these people; we see the characters portrayed just like this in movies all the time. Geschwind viewed it as a birth defect!

I never forgot that, that high math ability can be viewed as a birth defect, because it so often goes along with serious social deficits. Boy, that was the last day I ever worried that women weren't as good at math as men!! Certainly ihigh math ability is a well-known component of autism and even mathies who do well in life later quite often have something major wrong --- Einstein famously didn't talk till he was five.

Lanzi clearly fit into the syndrome of very bright, mathy males who have something terrible wrong with their minds.

We seem to know so little about the brain. As you and Kathianne have implied, the outcry should be for more attention to mental disorders, not gun control. But as Kath mentioned, that is not a priority in the liberal agenda, so the media jumps all over the gun issue.

Compounding that are the attempts to silence any discussion of the possibility that the shooter may have Autism/Asperger's. I have already heard people are outraged over the mere mention of it. We can never learn if we can't even discuss it, let alone research it.

mundame
12-16-2012, 01:14 PM
VERY interesting find by Kathianne about "other Lanzis."

Here are two novels about this topic, boys who are just grossly, severely murderous from the get-go, though they may be able to hide it for a long time, on the Eric Harris model ---

"Defending Jacob," by Walter Landay. The father is a state's attorney, a prosecutor, who has to take a leave of absence when his son is, he thinks, falsely accused of crimes in school. He loves his son and supports him whole-heartedly. However........ This novel is excellent, and I bought it to listen to on audiobook even though I read it earlier this year.

"We Need to Talk about Kevin," by Lionel Shriver, and they've got a movie out now with Tilda Swinton playing the mother, and having read the dynamite book, There Is No Way I'll be seeing that, though I love Tilda Swinton. It's way too powerful and upsetting in what happens to watch it on film, for me. The novel is set up in epistolary form, and I love epistolary novels -- everyone who tries that form does some new, wonderful stuff with the form, and this one is no exception. It's just so confusing, this can't be happening, right? We must have misinterpreted, right? In fact, the kid was wrong even when he was quite young, and it doesn't get better, nope, sure doesn't.



So with these novels and a movie I guess our society is waking up to the fact that there are some young males who are just grossly violent, murderous, right from childhood, extremely dangerous, something badly disturbed in their brains. The capacity to kill humans, as many as possible, which is evolved in humans for the use of soldiers, is somehow let go free in their brains and they use it against their own families and their community.

This shooting will promote recognition of such dangerous individuals and people will start to develop places to lock them away, I hope. I remember when Jonathan Kellerman, the crime novelist and child psychologist, had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal saying basically that some people seriously needed to be locked away or they will kill lots of people, and our government has absolutely no capacity to do that! I was amazed, it was such a non-PC thing to say. He is so famous from his novels he could afford to say what he thought, I guess.

mundame
12-16-2012, 01:22 PM
Compounding that are the attempts to silence any discussion of the possibility that the shooter may have Autism/Asperger's. I have already heard people are outraged over the mere mention of it. We can never learn if we can't even discuss it, let alone research it.


Oh, I bet the autism groups go completely bonkers at the mere mention of Aspergers. Not that I assume that really is Lanzi's diagnosis, yet. I think people are fishing desperately for a label right now.

Remember how the mental illness groups come out constantly after every shooting by a schizo repeating again that mentally ill people don't usually commit crimes!! Yeah, I'm sure, but every truly dreadful shooting IS done by a crazy person, everyone agrees to that and the diagnosis is usually real clear, so I have no sympathy with these groups at all. They are trying to sweep a serious problem under the rug for their own reasons, and this kind of PC causes more deaths.

That said, I myself have not heard that males with Aspergers are committing crimes --- it's usually schizophrenics, after all. Or psychopaths, if that's really a disease. I know little about it, I admit --- have you heard that there are violence problems with autism/Aspergers? I know the boys very impaired with these syndromes often fly into rages, I've seen that, but that's basically mental retardation, not crime. They couldn't do anything except hit people near them.

Kathianne
12-16-2012, 01:25 PM
Not surprised that Kellerman would write that, he's a moral writer.

It would be a good place to start. I've seen liberals at other sites discuss how the 'mentally ill' need treatment. Even saw one tool say that all public school children should be required to go through psychoanalysis every so many years, to 'identify' those that may need help, without having the pain of being treated differently.

OMG! All I can think of is TSA meet Freud!

tailfins
12-16-2012, 02:25 PM
That's been pretty well agreed with, the brilliant have always seemed to be different than just in intellect. However, we don't get to pick the way our brains are wired, nor the gifts and trials that may come with.

All over the discussion seems to be on 'gun control' which is not surprising since that's always on the liberal planner, so any excuse.

Seems to me this is the case for re-examining forced commitments when warranted.

Maybe Fidel Castro was ahead of his time when he added laws against dangerousness to the penal code. Raul is still lucid, so maybe he can help draft a bill in Washington or state legislatures. The thirteen year old in the OP committed criminal acts and can simply be prosecuted as such. I blame the mother for not filing criminal charges.