Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion National Dialogue Hurting Or Helping?

Trauma? He only bothered me for a little while. I don't think I offered him the appropriate level of bully satisfaction.

I had forgotten he existed until my neighbor growing up told me that he had finally snapped and took out his parents and then himself.

And now that I look it up, he attempted to kill four people, but only ended up killing his mother, he merely severely wounded his brother, his sister, his father, and his sister's boyfriend. His weapon was a knife. He did use a gun to kill himself, though.

He was under house arrest at the time.

And here's a gem from the paper: "I remember when he was 8 or 10 years old, he was very nasty to most people".

Yes, that's true. He was quite nasty.

How are you going to stop crazy? You can't even make regular people "act right". It's just sad. I cried less today, but I still cried and it's three days later. I've been a fountain, soaked my pillow, my husband had to ask me if I was ok to drive at one point because the tears have ran for days.

What's the dialog?

i've seen guns, religion, and politics,
Is it a national discussion when people use every news event to say their own point again?

It's frightening to parents that this is a parenting fail that make everyone feel insecure (above the safety insecurity emotions). I think someone had a quote on their wall that said, "I am fully human so anything that any human has experienced cannot be fully alien to me." Everything this guy was, every choice his parents made, some of them match your family and your neighbors.

Maybe a talk about people slipping through the cracks. What else could have been done? It seems like they tried to do quite a bit. I cried less tears today than the first two days, I was like a fountain.

The dialogue I am referring to is this: that this was somehow caused by autism, and that autism is being described as a mental illness that can lead to this kind of horrific behavior. Yes, the pro- and anti- nuts choose every tragedy to create a soapbox for their agenda, by my concern is what this new dialogue about autism is going to do.to our children who, even when not diagnosed on the autism spectrum, have some of the traits due to their high IQ.

I admit, I found my heart sinking when I read that the killer had an ASD and was extremely bright. Both because of how this will affect other people with ASds and their families, and because it frightened and freaked me out on a gut level. DD doesn't have an ASD diagnosis, but we haven't ruled it out. She is extremely compassionate towards animals and very altruistic in her general thinking, but I am sometimes alarmed by her ability to become cold and nasty when stymied, and recently by a new tendency towards frequent lying (which she is quite good at due to being very quick on her feet and a good actor). She lies about things that don't matter. She also blames her problems on others--it's very hard for her to admit fault.

Has anyone else had the thought the young man is being describe as highly intelligent along with obvious issues of social adjustment. PLEASE understand I'm throwing this idea out based on a few things I've read in the news about his past and a small and intuitive reaction I had this morning while contemplating why on earth would someone intentionally target an elementary school in rage (or carefully calculated violence). It is just a thought.

This year, I watch my own 6 year escalate his cries for challenge and help. He at one point even seemed angry that his 1st grade teacher didn't understand him. He even said a few times that he thought he would be better off dead- school was that frustrating and as he saw it, it would always be frustrating. It took time to get testing and work with the schools and psychologists to respond to his needs. Things aren't 100% perfect- but a move up to 2nd has helped him feel better and more challenged.

I WISH I knew from experience the level of inner struggle some of these highly gifted feel. In our own family's experience, trying to communicate these intense feelings at such a young age was heartbreaking and painful- he would even say sometimes that talking about would make him cry and that's why he had a hard time telling his teacher his needs.

I'm not a psychologist- but a brilliant mind, marginalized and misunderstood for a long time, combined with anger and mental illness- could that cause a person with deep rooted anger and frustration lash out against their memories of where that disturbance began?

I hope that when the mourning ends and healing begins, our nation takes a close look at violence in our media (especially in games that some parents give their children permission to play), mental healthcare reform, gun control AND our knowledge and understanding of gifted education.

Ohhh... me too. My stomach is still in knots about it.

The first sight of the word "gifted" in connection with AL sent me scouring the internet looking for as much info about him as I could find, trying to pin point what makes him different from all the other ASD/HFA/AS/2e people out there who are NOT MENTALLY ILL.

How do we undo the public perception damage this has done to those with Aspergers?



Me too, and same here. I'm ok with this now, though, because I've spent the last 2 days reading every scrap of text I could find about AL and I've come to the conclusion that he's very, VERY different from my two kids.

I am worried this may keep some parents from searching for help for their children (be it Asperger's or anything else) because they will be worried their children will be labeled and everyone will be scared of them. ... Do I really want to got through all the possible Autism evaluations we have ahead of us for DS2.8 when in the end others around us may think he (just like his brother) is some sort of 'freak' that can at any point snap and kill everyone around? That's so NOT like my kids!

so, yes, what the media is doing here is scaring the heck out of me!

I'm very glad ABQMom started this post - thanks!

Like ultramarina, my heart just sank when I first read "socially awkward" and all that, and that his mom "tried homeschooling for a while", and that people "didn't really know her" etc. How heart-wrenching. My DD is so gregarious, friendly, has many successes outside of school, does get mad at home but mostly snarly/arguing things. It runs in the family - some ethnicities are more "reactive" than others!! Nothing out of control though. She feels things very deeply. But at school is it different. She's so much more awkward and nervous. Is is the institutionalize environment? She's in a smaller private school now with a tougher curriculum but it doesn't fix everything, and socially quite frankly she doesn't really fit in that great. So so. We don't fit in as adults but the kids are from all over so it's not a big deal...to me. She has to learn something at school and she's doing that more now.

I'm not looking forward to this week after a couple of e-mails I got about their "concerns" (which offer no details). I am going to pay for private counseling now though for us both because of some of the things she's gone through that are obviously sticking to her and I'm out of ideas for how to talk to her/help her. I'm very optomistic about the woman I found, will start soon. Not looking forward to this week but looking forward to vacation so very, very much!! Anyway thanks guys I feel better reading everyone's posts.

My homeschooled son is very smart, occasionally wears all black clothing, plays video games and we have become more and more socially isolated as brace wearing and pain issues became more difficult to work around in musical theater so that he had to quit. He did not want to be involved with the one homeschool group in our area because they are not tolerant toward people who are different in any way. He had to quit scouts several years ago because of the physical issues that made hiking long distances and camping impossible.

When my son was about seven my sister insisted that he had to have Aspergers even though doctors said he didn't because he read so early and talked like a professor in addition to having a few sensory issues. If she met my husband's family she would probably think that most of them have Aspergers. My husband's sister is a geology professor and she talks like a professor. One of her kids is an engineer, the other pre-med. Another relative is married to a lawyer. They all use high level vocabulary.

But in our small town my son does not fit in and I feel like people are going to be looking at us even more than they did before. I don't think I will let him wear the black clothes for a while.