Reply to The boy in NJ who shot and killed mom, dad, sister and family friend was autistic

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Reply to "The boy in NJ who shot and killed mom, dad, sister and family friend was autistic"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have a huge amount of sympathy for Nancy Lanza. Hindsight is 20/20, but when you've been living in a situation like that, it can feel impossible. I came across this interview with the writer who told Adam's father's story to The New Yorker. Really good: https://www.npr.org/2014/03/13/289815818/6-interviews-1-reckoning-sandy-hook-killers-dad-breaks-silence

But apart from that, IMHO, we don't really need automatic and semi-automatic weapons for civilian use. They are designed to kill in volume.[/quote]

I don't see a lot of insight in that article.  Of course the father wishes that none of this had ever happened even if that means wishing that Adam had never been born.

What I don't see is how this father had no choice but to allow himself to be complete cut off from a kid who he knew was spending hours a day crying in a dark room, completely isolated with his overwrought mother pulling her hair out and feeling completely helpless.

Is there seriously NOTHING that these parents could have done?  How exactly did either one of them expect this situation with their son to end?[/quote]

http://www.ct.gov/oca/lib/oca/sandyhook11212014.pdf

Read the Connecticut State Report, it spells out how the parents failed Adam, particularly his mother.  I can say this as a parent of an ASD child myself.  It was sheer neglect.  There were many danger signs along the way.  They did not recognize the seriousness of his disorder and failed to provide treatment.  The school went along with this because we all know if the parents don't push it, schools usually won't do what they should.

When he was in middle school, they took him to the Yale Child Center, one of the country's leading autism centers.  Yale said he significant social deficits, and that he was being shielding him from the need to interact with others.  They recommended that he join a social group at Yale, that the IEP be rewritten to provide social supports, and that he be medicated.  In particular, they predicted:

"Having the emphasis on adapting the world to AL, rather than helping him to adapt to the world, is [b]a recipe for him to be a homebound recluse,[/b] unable to attend
college or work productively into his twenties and thirties and beyond with[b] mother becoming increasingly isolated and burdened."[/b]

That's exactly what happened by the time he was 20.  But instead of being alarmed by this prediction and doing whatever was necessary to turn things around, Nancy Lanza responded with "Thank you for taking the time to meet with AL yesterday . . . . I wanted to let you know that the options you presented are not going to work at this time."

The father at least wanted to follow Yale's recommendations, but his mother had primary custody, so she just continued down the dangerous path, and he didn't know how to turn it around.

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