A Response to Stuart Duncan’s Deconstructing the self-righteous – when parents try to kill their children

Kelly Green wrote this response to Stuart Duncan’s blog which I had reposted here.
Since I am more interested in sharing all sides of conversation to help the conversation along. We cannot discuss issues such as this if all sides are not represented. If we don’t it’s not a conversation it’s a lecture. Ideas need to be exchanged for problems to be solved.

This is from Kelly Green:

When we try and get into the mind of a killer we are merely being morbid. Just look at all of the TV shows and films fascinated with murder and the reasons why people do it. It’s big dollar business. I sure don’t see anyone understanding and preventing murder much, do you? These shows will never run out of subject matter.

We are upset with the underlying hidden belief systems, that favor abled lives over disabled lives Robert and Stuart. The argument is just that simple. When a man shakes his newborn baby to death, do other parents and society “understand” and feel sorry he suffered from sleep deprivation? No. They don’t.
So we wonder why disabled VICTIMS are spoken of as after facts…”something objective” that needed services to correct the murderer and/or abuser’s perception of them? We don’t wonder why the person harmed was communicating in a violent fashion? Why is that? That is what everyone should be focusing on. Adjusting the factors that cause a person to lash out violently through pain, anguish and frustration. Not how stressed out, tired and in need of services, a drink OR bacon the parent is because of it!

A parent that will go to the proverbial end of THEIR rope and throw their child under the “hibachi” bus is selfish and in need of self examination. Not pity, sympathy and understanding. Humanizing and honoring an aggressive person’s dilemma is where the healing starts, not documenting it while begging for dollars to “service it away.” You absolutely will never resolve the person in pain’s problem by exploiting and/or killing them. Until parent’s of Autistic people see the world through the souls of their children and their personhood…we will NEVER UNDERSTAND this.

We will never even try to understand it. Why would we?

You can check out Kelly’s blog here and her website Autism Hwy here.

Deconstructing the self-righteous – when parents try to kill their children

This was reposted with permission from Stuart Duncan.

I keep seeing some disturbing responses to the Kelli Stapleton case and I thought I’d address a couple of them today… a sort of, let’s clear the air, type of post.

Without wasting too much time, let’s get right into it.

Copycat Crimes

In a recent statement from ASAN (Autistic Self Advocacy Network), they condemned Dr. Phil’s interviews with Kelli Stapleton stating “We see a pattern of copycat crimes whenever there is a well-publicized case of a parent murdering, or attempting to murder, their disabled child … Dr. Phil had an opportunity to shut down this cycle of violence, and instead he chose to perpetuate it, as loudly and widely as possible.”

I have long seen many people get adamantly upset any time anything to do with autism is portrayed negatively in the media. Whether it’s adults that still behave as children, needing parenting for life or children behaving violently, no matter the situation, if it “makes us look bad”, the media is the bad guy.

I wonder though, where were these people when mothers were murdering their children that didn’t have autism? How come no one screamed about the risk of copycat crimes when these mothers killed their children?

I don’t know if you noticed or not but those stories are from 2014 alone and that’s not nearly all of them. Where’s the outrage? Why is there no one calling for the end of the journalists that reported these stories?

In our efforts to protect children with autism, do we now not care about any child that doesn’t?

There are more of these murders every year than there are months on the calendar but one murder attempt on a child with autism in the last year and suddenly we fear copycat crimes? No, we fear our own public image being damaged, nothing more.

The truth is that media attention is good. Whether your stance is that there should be more services (this will convince people of that) or if your stance is that she’s a monster for trying to kill her child (this will convince people of that too), media attention is not what leads to another tragedy like this, doing nothing is.

We must focus on figuring out how to prevent all of these stories from ever happening again. And crossing our fingers and hoping that no one becomes a copycat is simply not going to do it.

How can anyone sit there, in their big self righteous chair, and claim that a “copycat crime” is our biggest concern? How can anyone honestly sit there and try to tell me that the last mother to attempt to murder their own child did it only because they saw someone else do it on the news and thought “hey, I can do that!”

No, either

  • A – they are totally out of their minds, in which case, it was just going to happen no matter what or
  • B – they hit rock bottom and saw no other way out and don’t care in the slightest what any other mother has ever done. They just don’t.

Copycat crimes are not what this is about. It never was.

If you’re really worried about this happening again, let’s talk about real ways to prevent this from ever happening again.

Which leads me to…

Murder is never OK

I keep hearing this and as a statement on it’s own, I agree. However, this statement is a precursor to the rest of the intended message which is “now is not the time to discuss a lack of services or support or funding.”

I have one simple question then, when is the right time? During the lull between the last attempted murder and the next one? Or after the next one? Or the one after that? Do we look around and go “What? Too soon?”

Let me put it another way, if we never get around to discussing how we can lend help to the next parent that is reaching the end of their rope, for what ever reason, are we partially to blame? Well, no, I suppose not since “murder is never OK”, right? We can wash our hands of all blame.

I’ve seen it go even further than that. I’ve witnessed good people be verbally and brutally torn apart for so much as suggesting that they think events could have played out differently if the support had been there. I’ve seen people be accused of the most horrid and vile things simply for suggesting that they have it rough too and understand how someone could reach the point of murder/suicide.

Now, let me be clear, no one ever said they condone it or would ever do it themselves. They only said that they’ve been depressed and felt helpless and felt alone and felt abandoned and they understand what that murderous mother felt. Not that they’d do it too, but that they take the time for understanding… that they have shared a similar experience at least in leading up to the crime.

When a mother (or father) comes to you saying how hard they have it, how difficult their lives are, how no one is there to help, how no one seems to care, how there is no money, how there are no services… and when they say that they understand how hard it must have been for the last mother that was in the news, if you take that as an opportunity to beat that parent down with your words, to bully and chastise, to degrade and humiliate and to dehumanize that parent with all of your might…

What do you do when the parent you bully is the next parent you read about in the news? What do you do when you realize that you pushed them to it?

You do NOT get to throw your hands in the air and say “don’t blame me, murder is never OK.” No, you are not without guilt here. You are in fact a part of the problem. In fact, you’re worse than the lack of support, you’re the opposite of support. And if that mother that you’re beating on is the next one we read about in a headline, I will never ever forgive you. I will never ever let anyone forget what you had done and I will never ever stop reminding you of exactly who is to blame.

You know what? You’re right, murder is never OK. But that doesn’t mean we forsake our humanity and it certainly doesn’t give you a right to forsake yours.

Yes. A parent that tries to kill their child is a monster. And you’re right, murder is never OK. On that, we’ve never disagreed. It’s what comes next that you need to figure out with the rest of us.

Now, either learn to start helping people that need help or get the hell out of the way of the people that will.

A call to action

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I wrote this in May of 2012 but I thought I would repost it.

My friend Noelle posted this on her Facebook and it got me thinking. What if we treated other illnesses like they were mental illnesses? It got me thinking that some people still treat Autism as if it was a mental illness. As if somehow having Autism made us crazy or mentally unstable or at the very least deserving to be treated as if we were less than human. Then I got to thinking, I write this blog so that one day I won’t have to write it. I write it so that one day Autistic will be completely synonymous with human in the neurotypical worldview and not equated in some cases with mental illness.
The day we are treated as equals and as fellow human beings is the day that we autistics will be quiet. It’s the day we won’t blog. Its the day that the world won’t need us to say anything because we will be understood. I believe that autistics and other differently-abled people are given the responsibility to educate humanity on it’s shortcomings and cry out at injustice.
As Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.” Our words are both a sword and a shield against the intolerance and injustice of humanity. We are in a pitched battle to save the very soil of humanity from the depths of it’s own depravity and from the legions of those who are against and are led down the path of ignorance. We as autistics who are capable of putting pen to paper or putting words in mouths have a moral obligation to do so. Especially for those of us who can’t speak or write. Our words are the swords that educate the world and they are the shield that shall protect us from the spread of ignorance. There shall be nothing written or said about us without us writing it or saying it.

‘Mom, Please Help’: FBI Probing Alleged Abuse of Deaf, Autistic Kids – NBC News.com

I just came across this article. Abusing the disabled is not okay. http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/mom-please-help-fbi-probing-alleged-abuse-deaf-autistic-kids-n193846

My rift with some autistic self-advocates

I had to unfollow/unfriend lots of autism self-advocates on social media  because of the hate they spread. I make no apologies for that. Tolerance goes both ways.
And by autism advocates I mean autistic self-advocates who cannot separate the good parents from the bad.
These autistic advocates have taken to vilifying all parents of autistics unjustly.
Then again many autistics have experienced bullying and abuse at the hands of non-autistics and have grown to hate them as a result.

These advocates ask for compassion and often give none in return. I prefer to love people and to spread love.

I have seen many self-advocates take this stance: if you don’t agree you are a terrible bigoted person and you should be quiet.

One of the biggest issues is that of the Kelli Stapleton case.
The negativity that come from some autistic self-advocacy groups is troublesome. I am an autistic self-advocate but I don’t fall in to this victim mentality that some have fallen into. I have never met a parent who is perfect and I know for a fact that most parents are trying to do what is best for their kids. That being said I also understand where most of autistic self-advocates are coming from. Many of them have been abused, beaten, bullied, and victimized by non-autistic people which has led them to be angry and possibly have PTSD. They are so angry that when they see things like this it brings back many of the experiences that were negative and painful and they assume this defensive position that talking about why Kelli Stapleton tried to kill her autistic daughter Issy is the same thing as condoning it. Its not. Trying to understand something like this is done simply to prevent it. Parents often get little to no assistance. These autistic self-advocates often don’t realize the adverse affects their behaviors can have on their families and loved ones because of their mindblindness. If i was in Kelli Stapleton’s position I cannot say I would have done the same thing, but I can say I understand why she did it.

When are autistic self-advocates going to stop blaming parents for everything? Just because they had bad experiences in life doesn’t mean every parent of an autistic child is terrible.
Parents of autistics are our natural allies and not our enemies. As long as we are at each others throats we will gain nothing. A house divided is a house that will fall.

As my friend Rochelle Dolim said:

“…they can’t educate against ignorance and hate by using anger and hate and expect any outcome other than perpetuating those negative feelings. Not much longer than a generation ago, minds that are now identified as being on the spectrum were an integral part of getting man safely to the moon and back. Only the perspective of autism has changed.”

I was raised with the idea that having a disability was not something to be ashamed of. I watched as my mom worked tirelessly to get my a diagnosis and taking me to the doctor on a regular basis after I got it. I watched as she advocated for me struggling against a system that wanted to deny me services and that I was even autistic. I watched as she took my case to against the Regional Center in California to court. The case set a precedent in California and and was one of the first times that Aspergers was legally recognized as autism because that was the issue of the case we filed in 1997. That’s who my mom is and that is who most parents of autistic children are. They are people who will fight to the ends of the Earth for their children. And as their children get older they will fight alongside them.

Not Wanting to Pass for Neurotypical.

I was reading a comment on a Facebook group where a mom was asking how to tell her Autistic daughter that no one was coming to her birthday party. She had invited 30 people to her daughter’s party and didn’t know how to tell her. Seeing that bothered me and reminded me of many of my own birthdays a child and as a teenager.

Autistics are highly intelligent but socially awkward in most cases and sometimes we do things that make other people uncomfortable or give us strange looks. And that leads to social isolation and depression. Autistics have a high rate of depression because of this isolation. We are not always isolated because we want to be, but because we don’t read social cues and often are faced with an lack of understanding from neurotypical people who, because they don’t understand us, often exclude us from social activities. Human nature is to discriminate and segregate that which we don’t understand.

In order to survive in this world we Autistics are expected to pass for neurotypical. In other words, hide who we are. We have to learn proper behavior in classes or in groups or in one-on-one sessions with behaviorists.  Autistics like me take behavior classes to learn acceptable behavior when neurotypicals aren’t taking classes in tolerance. We basically have to learn to behave and think like a neurotypical person. That is not always easy for us, but it is not impossible. It takes a lot of energy to behave like an NT person. We can be charming and friendly, but it takes effort on our part.

Unfortunately this places an undue burden on us and it’s not something I am willing to do.

Behaving like a neurotypical person also means needing to learn how to think as a team at times. The idea of thinking as part of a team is foreign to us, but it is not impossible for us to learn. It just takes time and a bit of creative thinking and a bit of patience from neurotypicals. Still, understanding the deficits Autistics have in this area can go a long way to making the process easier. When there is no understanding it can be frustrating for us. I for one don’t always understand when people don’t know much of anything about autism. I suppose this is similar to what happens to neurotypical people who don’t know anything about autism meet an autistic person for the first time.  I can imagine how frustrating it can be when we don’t respond to something they have said because we are so fixated on something. That level of concentration can be a real boon especially because it allows us to pay attention to minute details especially when doing the research. I can also understand when say exactly what we are thinking how it can make neurotypicals uncomfortable. Autistics are notorious for their lack of guile especially when it comes to their thoughts and feelings. Neurotypicals seem to very good at not letting their thoughts be known especially when they know that by saying what they are thinking could prove disastrous.

That singular fixation we Autistics have can be the cause of our social isolation. I believe that its important to look up from what you are doing every once in a while and say hello to the people around you. That way people will at least know that I am making an effort to be social. Life is only enriched through the connections we make with other people. Making friends takes effort even for neurotypical people, but it takes an even greater effort for me. I know that in my case I have to make a conscious effort to be social with people and learn the rules of the social road.

I often forget that much of the strife Autistics experience in life is caused by the fact that we expect neurotypicals to understand us and force us to act more like them. I, for one don’t believe that most of the neurotypicals I have met are inherently mean or intolerant. I think autistics don’t understand the world of the neurotypicals as much as neurotypicals don’t understand our world. This lack of understanding on our part leads to us feeling that the neurotypical world is inherently unjust when in reality we just don’t think in terms of greys like they do. The expectation that all people will react the same way is an unrealistic expectation that develops as a result.

I think autistics have to spend lots of time being forced to be things that they are not. We should be allowed to be ourselves but often we are not.

Autistics have difficulty understanding abstract thought. I for one am no exception.  Living life is an abstract thought. There is a lot of unknown in the world and I am not afraid to try and understand the abstract world I live in with my objective and factual mind. Yet, as a person with autism, I see and experience too much ignorance. It frustrates me. I wonder when it is going to end. Then I realize its not when it will end that matters but how it ends. The manner in which you face injustice is the manner in which it ends. If you handle it with dignity and grace it will end quietly. The way to make people accept you is to be yourself and to accept them in return.

Related articles

If I had a son….

If I had a son, he would most likely have Asperger’s Syndrome like me. This is what I would tell him when he asks how to live in a non-autistic world:

“Living with Asperger’s Syndrome is difficult. It can be frustrating not knowing if people like you because they use body language to convey their thoughts instead of just saying what they feel. This also makes it worse when people lie. It comes easily to non-autistics to lie and cheat and take advantage of autistics and non-autistics alike. Most people who are not autistic are cowards. They chastise and mock anyone who dares to be different. It is hard for them to accept you because they can’t accept themselves. The ones that do dare to be your friends are special because they are brave. They are brave enough to be different. They are brave enough to accept your differences despite what people will say. I say to you ignore the nay sayers and the doubters. You are capable of achieving your goals. It may take you longer but you will get there. Why rush? Life is wonderful. Enjoy it. Let people hate you. They are just jealous of what you can do. They are just jealous of the way you look at the world. If people think you are incapable of being useful and productive. Don’t let them deter you. People with Asperger’s have to adjust to a world that refuses to adjust to you. It is how you deal with this selfish injustice that defines who you are. I would rather have Asperger’s than not have it. Be proud of who you are.”

I just wish my parents had said this to me.

Autism Reporting: Know the basic facts.

Autism reporting: Know the basic facts

By Robert Moran

In December 2012, a young man walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and killed 26 people, 20 of them children. We later learned that he’d killed his mother before going to the school.

His many issues relating to social isolation came out in the following months, including the fact that he had Asperger’s syndrome, which is an autism spectrum disorder.

As an autistic person, those subsequent headlines startled me, and not just because innocent people were killed. I talked to some people online after the shooting, and this was the first time some of them had ever heard of Asperger’s syndrome. They first heard about it as a result of a mass shooting at an elementary school.

To read more click here:  http://www.spj.org/quill_issue.asp?ref=2110

In Memoriam: A Eulogy for My Mom

My mom died March 1. I gave the eulogy at her memorial.

When I was first asked to write this I found myself asking how do you write a eulogy for your mother? How do you say goodbye? The answer is you don’t. You say I’ll see you later.
Still I found myself at a loss as to where to begin so I decided to do what any good journalist would do and start with the facts.
My mom was born Deborah Elizabeth Stortz on (date of birth) in (place of birth) and Died as Jennifer Deborah Elizabeth Stortz Andres on March 1 at her home in Arizona.
My mom loved to go camping and fishing, traveling. Some of my fondest memories where of the trips my mom and my sister and I would take to Calico, camping in the mountains and skiing at Lake Isabella.
That skiing trip I still remember clearly. I must have been about 6 years old and my sister tricked me into wearing these heavy ski boots. They must have been made it to of lead. I mean seriously I mean seriously these boots were the kinds of that mafiosos made their enemies wear when they were about to dump them in the Hudson River.
I walked out into the snow and down I went. I literally could not get up the boots were so heavy. I lay there screaming and crying for what seemed like hours but when you are young everything seems larger than it is so it may have just been hours. I remember this story because it was my mom who came to rescue me from the snow. She took me back to the ski lodge and gave me a cup of warm cocoa, some slippers, and made sure I got warmed up. See that’s just who my mom was. She loved her family and most especially you and me Michelle (my sister). All we needed to do was just ask and she would be there for us.
My mom loved giving and gave us lots of love. She also gave us material items. She gave us our first color television. Do you remember that Michelle? I only think of that because it took her dying for me to realize the impact that she had on my life. If she had not given us that TV I would never have been introduced to TV news.
It’s funny how much our lives are interconnected. When she was a child she once met Walt Disney and because of her gift I now work for his company.
I am a firm believer in God and I know that my mom is in Heaven. And when it’s my turn to die I know that she will be waiting in front of the pearly white gates with a big smile and open arms. So I love you mom, but as I said earlier this is not goodbye this is I will see you later.