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Post by kewpie on Mar 20, 2015 9:38:49 GMT -5
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Post by healthy11 on Mar 20, 2015 21:47:50 GMT -5
I know there are many families where parents disagree, even about "relatively simple" neurotypical child-rearing aspects. Unfortunately, when dealing with a serious mental health issue, the outcome of parental discord can have devastating effects. I'm not clear if the parent's divorce was a direct result of their disagreeing on how to handle Adam, but I'm betting not, and suspect the mother had some "issues" of her own. I can't fathom how a rational person would keep one gun, much less several, knowing a teen with mental health problems was in the house...I wonder if she was hoping Adam could fill a void after her husband left, and was attempting to "become his friend" by "relating" to him about common gun interests, rather than remaining in the role as his mother, saying no to guns, and making hard choices about his treatment.
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Post by empeg1 on Mar 20, 2015 21:58:35 GMT -5
What is not in the article but has been discussed in many forums is that Adam Lanza showed the facial features of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Even the syndrome is overlooked and not diagnosed. His lability, impulsivity, poor judgment and, perhaps, poor cause effect reasoning plus reactivity and black and white thinking so fits.
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Post by kewpie on Mar 23, 2015 9:25:07 GMT -5
I can't help but wonder if they had placed in him a school where he was accepted and happy, if the outcome would have been different.
I also totally agree that guns should not be accessible to a person dealing with anger, frustration and impulsive issues.
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Post by michellea on Mar 23, 2015 9:36:38 GMT -5
I have a few clients where the parents do not agree - it is very very difficult. I am very worried about guns in our society - especially the accessibility to people with depression and other mental illness. It seems too risky, and the suicide rate by guns in the US compared to other countries is off the charts.
Navigating our health and school systems is not easy - much more difficult for parents that may not have the inherent advocacy skills or have mental health difficulties themselves. I think this case points to the importance of a strong community support system and the danger in assuming everyone can make it through life on their own and without support.
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Post by jisp on Mar 26, 2015 20:35:07 GMT -5
This is a bit of a side story but a friend of mine works in my ex-town's middle school and told me that the teachers and staff spent a professional day doing an armed assailant simulation at the school, complete with cops shooting blanks. WHAT? I thought this was INSANE. Statistically these types of events are extremely rare. And almost always the assailant is a student who is suicidal. More importantly if one wants to make it more likely that an armed assailant will not harm students the best thing one can do according to the data we know about these events is to make schools more porous...in other words...make it easy for students to run and get out of the building. But instead we do the opposite and turn schools into fortresses. There is absolutely no way one can prepare for such an event and I think it is terrible to traumatize staff at a school with such a simulation. Their professional day would have been better spent learning about mental health issues and how to detect signs that a student might be suicidal or in need of help.
Statistically a student in our town has a dramatically higher risk of dying in a car accident, drug overdose, alcohol poisoning, or suicide. In fact suicide attempts among teens in our town has been on the increase.
Yes Newtown was tragic.....there are so many pieces that came together to allow it to happen. I am 100% convinced it could have been prevented with better gun laws, but I have given up any hope that our country will make rational legislation having to do with guns any time soon.
Empeg that is interesting that he had the facial features of somebody with FAS. I did notice that his facial features were odd. That explains it.
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Post by eoffg on Mar 27, 2015 5:14:36 GMT -5
Jisp, I agree that it would traumatize staff at the school !
It would probably have caused many of them to consider a change of profession or workplace?
But it could also effect their thinking in the classroom and the way that they work students?
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Post by jisp on Mar 27, 2015 5:19:02 GMT -5
Eoffg,
I am not sure how a drill like this would impact how they work in the classroom except to make them more paranoid and afraid of their students. What frustrates me is that this is the same school that repeatedly struggled to learn and educate themselves about my son's mental illness. We were constantly told the teacher's didn't have enough time. The school constantly did things to make our son worse, not better. Our son was fortunate, rather than subject himself to the torment he was getting at school he retreated to his bedroom at home as he had two parents who were home all day. There he was safe. But other students are not so fortunate and the subtle abuse and misspoken words to those students is torture. Teachers and staff need to spend time learning how to talk to students who are struggling with mental health problems so they can be part of the solution and not part of the problem.
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Post by healthy11 on Mar 27, 2015 9:50:39 GMT -5
While the active shooter drill that the school held does seem extreme, I am skeptical that "in service training" would prepare teachers and staff for dealing with students who have mental health problems. As it is, we know that not every individual who has the same "diagnosis" (even something as straightforward as ADHD) responds to teachers in the same way, and so to expect teachers who are not psychiatrists to first identify, and then interact in a way that provides solutions to each student's issues, seems like an impossibility. Again, thinking about Adam Lanza's situation, he was their biologic child. If he had FASD, it would indicate his mother was drinking, and maybe that's why she didn't use the best judgement about having guns in their house. From what I've read, however, professional psychiatrists had diagnosed him with Asperger's or a personality disorder and sensory issues, www.nydailynews.com/new-york/adam-lanza-20-deeply-disturbed-kid-article-1.1220752 . If his own family couldn't recognize Adam's risk to others and talk to him in a way that provided some solutions, I doubt, even if he had remained in school, that any teacher could have helped, either. |
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Post by jisp on Mar 27, 2015 19:14:46 GMT -5
Healthy you are wrong. In service training to teachers on mental illness is ESSENTIAL and DOES WORK. Unless somebody has had personal experience with mental illness they can easily be confused and do exactly the wrong thing. Teaching teachers techniques for managing a child who is showing signs of depression, anxiety or has anger management issues can go a long way. I know because I have helped an IEP team get this sort of training. Before they had the training they were constantly doing things to make my client upset and angry. My client had become school phobic and when he was in school he often lost control because he was so frustrated and angry. The child went to an Out of District temporary placement where he was evaluated. The Evaluation indicated that the child could return into the mainstream, but before he did I insisted that the teachers spent half a day working with the therapeutic placement to learn how to manage this particular boy. They did and much to the parents surprise and mine the training was effective and things were better.
Teachers who were not trained and were not knowledgeable were constantly making mistakes with our son which resulted in our son not trusting them and feeling unsafe at school. For example one day when our son was pacing in the classroom and telling his teachers he was not well and could not settle, the teachers insisted this was a behavior problem when really it was due to our son having a major crisis with his medication and they should have contacted me and his doctor immediately.
I have seen teachers who are working with "at risk" kids actually YELL at a kid who has their head on the desk. I have heard teachers call these kids lazy and bad. I have heard teachers be verbally abusive, but it goes unrecognized because if they said those same things to a neurotypical child it probably would not be a big deal.
There are techniques that work with ALL Children who have behavior problems. They are simple and they can make a world of difference. For example when a teacher is dealing with a raging child (regardless of the diagnosis) it is important to NOT corner the child or raise your voice. It is important to talk slowly and lower your voice as you come to the end of sentences. Many schools have florescent lights which can trigger a child and make things worse, so getting the child to go into a dark quiet room can help. When a child is raging it is important to not argue with them or threaten them with disciplinary action.
If a child has any sort of LD or mental health issue then school should be a safe comfortable place if home is not.
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Post by healthy11 on Mar 27, 2015 23:25:29 GMT -5
Jisp, I appreciate that you have seen improvements when teachers have had training on learning how to manage particular children ("...I insisted that the teachers spent half a day working with the therapeutic placement to learn how to manage this particular boy") but I also have attended special ed in-service sessions where it's apparent the teachers are unable to distinguish children with LDs who can't do an assignment, versus children who don't complete a task for some other reason. If teachers can't even recognize "basic" differences in the general student population, it's hard to believe that a day of in-service training will result in them having proper interactions with the most vulnerable at-risk students.
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Post by empeg1 on Mar 28, 2015 0:24:32 GMT -5
Healthy, "professional psychiatrists diagnosed him with Asperger's and sensory issues.... yes, psychiatrists typically misdiagnose individuals with FASD and diagnoses along the Autism Spectrum are the most common. And, newspaper articles at the time of the shooting discussed the fact that Adam's mother frequented bars in the area.... with information that she was an alcoholic....... his facial features fit the face of FAS. The fact that he was not diagnosed as such means nothing.
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Post by dw on Mar 28, 2015 7:57:31 GMT -5
Is there an association between individuals afflicted with FAS/FASD and violent crime? As a result of empeg1's advocacy of FAS/FASD, I read several books on the topic but I don't remember such a connection. Incarceration for impulsive crime I remember, but wasn't there some planning in the Adam Lanza history, found on his computer?
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Post by empeg1 on Mar 28, 2015 22:38:11 GMT -5
Prenatal alcohol exposure affects widespread areas of the brain. Each individual affected is different, However, the effects include increased difficulty with rages, aggression, impulsivity, mood swings, alexithymia (problems in expressing feelings in words and understanding the feelings of others), poor cause-effect reasoning. In fact, suicide risks are much higher in FASD. Yes, criminal behavior is higher in FASD. Many individuals with FASD are at risk for impulsive behaviors leading to problems with the law, being used by others without understanding its criminality and, yes, crimes involving violence.
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Post by kewpie on Apr 2, 2015 11:03:22 GMT -5
FASD and ASD symptomology sound very similar and a person could indeed have both. FASD could exacerbate ASD and so could improper treatment of the student as Jisp pointed out. I looked at his features but I could not be sure. Kids in middle and high school grow and their facial structure can go thru a lot of awkward changes. I only saw his middle school pictures.
When my younger son was in 5th grade, his teacher was so horrible to him that he developed tics, depression, head banging and a written death threat to the teacher. Bad treatment at school will exacerbate any underlying issues. It was the year he was diagnosed with ASD. Where there symptoms before yes, but they were not "negative" symptoms so they went un-noticed.
Once my son was removed from the toxic environment and put into a non-public school, the symptoms dissipated over time. All 3 of my kids developed depression and anxiety in public schools due to improperly trained teachers.
I sincerely believe in Adam Lanza was removed from public school and put into a better environment in a special school (and the East coast has so many!) I do believe the tragedy would never have happened. He was carrying some sort of grudge (real or imagined) against school or I don't think he would have returned there to seek revenge. That is what his Dad wanted to do and I believe he was on the right track.
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Post by kewpie on Aug 25, 2016 13:20:52 GMT -5
Here the most complete and eye-opening look at the life of Adam Lanza. Its scary how much I could relate to this story with my children. www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/11/22/nyregion/report-on-adam-lanza.html?_r=4While denial on the mothers part is discussed, it also must be remembered that the school reports on him in the class room did not find him to be much of a problem and improperly (in my opinion) in accurately reported his elementary school life as almost typical and even demitted him from special education at one point. When a child's issue are glossed over and reported to be doing well according to teachers, is the parent really suffering from denial or from being lied to? What is really scary is that Lanza wrote a very disturbing book in 5th grade class (including child murder, taxidermy and killing) but no one even gave it a 2nd thought. In middle school, when he wrote something disturbing the teacher just let it go and just told him to write "something else". |
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Post by healthy11 on Aug 25, 2016 19:35:34 GMT -5
Maybe the parents weren't getting completely accurate views from some of his school teachers, but they still could tell he had issues. In my opinion, the access they gave him to guns was unconscionable.
Also, the report said there were no medical records from his visits with a psychiatrist between ages 13-15, just 5 years prior to the shooting at Sandy Hook. Aren't there requirements for doctors to maintain records for at least that long? I wonder if there was an intentional destruction of his file, perhaps because that doctor's office knew they billed for services, but didn't actually provide appropriate treatment? (I know the article said the mother was against any treatment involving medication, but you'd still think there would be records of each of his visits.)
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Post by kewpie on Sept 1, 2016 10:06:26 GMT -5
>Maybe the parents weren't getting completely accurate views from some of his school teachers, but they still could tell he had issues.<
True and maybe. It wasn't until I got into almost full blown due process that I realized my middle son behaved one way at school and another way at home. The stress and stimulation of school triggered more autistic like behaviors and in retrospect most teachers were not upfront with me. Most of the time I spent at his school, there were structured activities and field trips and he just followed along without incident. Since he was relatively well behaved, it wasn't that big a deal to them until he wasn't as well behaved due to the mounting demands. There was a time or two when a teacher did mention some odd behaviors in pre-school. I was confused and wondered what she was talking about as I had never those behaviors at home. Was he quirky at times? Yes but nothing was harmful.
I found out on the first day of due process, the Kindergarten teacher brought in an OT to observe him because she noticed autistic like behaviors. No one ever shared that info with me.
The whole psychiatrist thing was interesting too. Many people don't realize that Eric Harris, the mastermind and primary killer behind the Columbine tragedy was also seeing a psychiatrist and on anti depressants. In fact is also led to a huge lawsuit over what ever meds he was on.
I totally agree with you about the guns but I can also see how a parent could not conceptualize of their child committing such horrendous acts.
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