Truthers and Sandy Hook

[The Observer]

I suspect there are hundreds of Adam Lanzas in the world, the difference being that the rest of them were stopped before they shot their mothers and two dozen people at an elementary school. Maybe after they went after uncle Bob with a pocket knife, or while they were trying to make a fertilizer bomb in the garage? Maybe after a family member checked the medicine box and found out that about two weeks worth of pills were still there?

Being a person who has had two relatives diagnosed with Asperger's (and have lived with these two) the first thing to establish is that no two people with Asperger's are alike. So there aren't hundreds of Adam Lanza's out there in the world. While there is a criteria set and behaviors that can be associated with Asperger syndrome, not all of them have to be present nor do they express themselves in the same intensity from person to person. Having Asperger's is not unlike having a dial set in one's brain and the dial has been turned to a certain point and then frozen. Thus you get a spectrum of behaviors from each individual which is one of the reason why getting a diagnosis of Asperger's and then dealing with it is so difficult.

The only thing you can honestly say about a person with Asperger's that would be true across the board is that they are attuned to a different perspective of the world around them. Where the challenge comes is how they decide to react to their environment. 99% of the Asperger's patients are not prone to violence on their own; most cases where you have an Asperger patient committing violence is due to either their perception that they are being attacked (bullied, pestered, cornered, confronted) or because they have been continually frustrated and reach a breaking point. The problem is that they have little to no sense of judgment in recognizing how their behavior will be responded to by society. The only thing they will sense is that they are being ostracized and abandoned. They will not be able to consider and accept the fact that changing their behavior might reverse their increasing isolation. In their viewpoint, their behavior was justified or otherwise necessary, and now it is unfair that society expected them to act differently.

Given the above, the Asperger person who does resort to extreme violence most likely has had a history of rejection, isolation, and a series of experienced events that tend to reinforce their viewpoint that they have been wronged. Many Asperger people suffer from depression early on in life, based on experiences that start as early as childhood. None of this means that Asperger patients are going to end up committing violent acts like Adam Lanza, but they will tend to be loners, avoiding interaction, and withdrawing.

What will minimize the chances of that happening is early intervention and basically exposing the person with Asperger's to interactions with other people and training them how to behave according to societal norms. Not that it will make any more sense to them, but they can grasp that they can make life easier for themselves if they can learn rules to go by.

I suspect that in Adam Lanza's case, his mother was not doing or promoting this. Instead of reacting in a positive way to negative events and making Adam learn how to get along with society, she took the course of least resistance and decided to stay home and let him withdraw. My guess is at that some point she realized it was a mistake to do this and ended up confronting Adam, telling him that his life patterns had to change. If so, this may been a moment where Adam interpreted this to mean that the life he had adapted to was going out the window and he would suffer horribly. This was unacceptable, and it would be far better to lash out and get rid of the people who had caused him so much pain in the first place, starting with Mom.

So what is the difference between Adam Lanza and my relatives? Besides the possibility that Adam was farther on the Asperger spectrum than my two male kin, they also were "forced" to attend school until they graduated high school. Lots of counseling sessions, lots of times when there were moments of embarrassment, lots of anger, lots of tears, but they understood that there were no other options - this was life. And there would be a lot more of it to come. Both had hard times making friends, but eventually by 12th grade they managed to make a few. One got involved in show choir and ended up enjoying it. So much so, when the Young America music program auditioned at his school, he was the only one of three who made the audition. Currently he is in Europe touring with the Young Americans and teaching young school kids over in Scotland, Ireland, England, Germany, Norway and the Netherlands how to sing and dance. Not bad for a kid who was driving all of us grownups up the wall during his formative years. This is not to say that he doesn't still have those moments from time to time, but he is able to bounce back from them quicker, even sometimes able to laugh at himself.

[JamesVincent]

That's pretty much my understanding Obs. Alyss falls in the spectrum, as a NOS she doesn't show the full traits of an Autistic child but does have her own view and has some serious issues with showing emotions. It does not affect her in school, grade wise, and she is a very social person but has a hard time actually fulfilling those relationships she starts.

In the report that Arayder linked earlier it stated that the mother had been pretty complacent in allowing Lanza to dictate how the household ran and may very well have overdid it. He also had OCD, which is something both of my girls have. Alyss has the same sort of issues as reported with Lanza, food and meal prep in particular. She can not tolerate having food touching each other, I have actually seen her breakdown after being served something too liquidy that ran into her other food. OCD and Autism aren't specifically linked IIRC but they do have a tendency to show together. They both generate some of the same effects in dealing with life, making life much harder for the person suffering form them. One of the things that the kid's therapist have drummed into me over the years, to help with a plethora of issues, is the establishment of a routine and the determination of what is and is not acceptable when dealing with the idiosyncrasies of their issues. For the longest time I used divided plates for Alyss, just so she would not freak out everytime we ate but gradually started using regular plates. I pay special attention to her plate when serving but she uses a normal plate. She gradually has come to better grips with it and, if there is an issue, she just moves stuff around herself, mostly without comment.

From reading the report Lanza's mother did the exact opposite, and made his every demand a reality, including not cooking certain foods or allowing him to dictate what foods she did serve. While that may have appeased the onset behavior, it gave him no reason or instruction to change. Whereas I will force Alyss to interact with others in a controlled way, it sounds like she just let him do his own thing yet he could not know how to develop relationships or how to deal well with others. The few things she did, like taking him shooting, only had a temporary and partial effect. I can see the shooting helping, my stepdad used to take me quite a bit growing up and it gave me another thing to look forward to, she may not have used it to it's full effect. Other then that not much was really mentioned about any long term plans for growth and integration into society, which should be the overall goal of any treatment plan. And I don't remember hearing about anything different from the reporting done at the time of the shooting.

However I will reiterate something I said before. Compared to the huge neon lit signs that other mass murderers carried around with them, screaming this is a seriously screwed up individual, Lanza did not demonstrate, to the best of my knowledge, any of the bigger signs that you would look for. He was apparently bullied to a mild extent but was reported to never have fought back and apparently had never been as much as you would have expected. He did not show a cruel streak or show cruelty to animals like a lot of, not only mass murderers but serial killers, show. I have seen no reports of him verbally threatening to harm, which quite a few mass murderers do, sometimes for years before the event. He may have been withdrawn but typically Autistics are. And, again, a lot of the changes that had been described could have been ascribed to the coming of age process, maybe this whole thing called life was starting to sink in. That age is pretty harsh sometimes no matter what your diagnosis.

[Number Six]

I suspect there are hundreds of Adam Lanzas in the world, the difference being that the rest of them were stopped before they shot their mothers and two dozen people at an elementary school. Maybe after they went after uncle Bob with a pocket knife, or while they were trying to make a fertilizer bomb in the garage? Maybe after a family member checked the medicine box and found out that about two weeks worth of pills were still there?

Being a person who has had two relatives diagnosed with Asperger's (and have lived with these two) the first thing to establish is that no two people with Asperger's are alike. So there aren't hundreds of Adam Lanza's out there in the world. While there is a criteria set and behaviors that can be associated with Asperger syndrome, not all of them have to be present nor do they express themselves in the same intensity from person to person. Having Asperger's is not unlike having a dial set in one's brain and the dial has been turned to a certain point and then frozen. Thus you get a spectrum of behaviors from each individual which is one of the reason why getting a diagnosis of Asperger's and then dealing with it is so difficult.

The only thing you can honestly say about a person with Asperger's that would be true across the board is that they are attuned to a different perspective of the world around them. Where the challenge comes is how they decide to react to their environment. 99% of the Asperger's patients are not prone to violence on their own; most cases where you have an Asperger patient committing violence is due to either their perception that they are being attacked (bullied, pestered, cornered, confronted) or because they have been continually frustrated and reach a breaking point. The problem is that they have little to no sense of judgment in recognizing how their behavior will be responded to by society. The only thing they will sense is that they are being ostracized and abandoned. They will not be able to consider and accept the fact that changing their behavior might reverse their increasing isolation. In their viewpoint, their behavior was justified or otherwise necessary, and now it is unfair that society expected them to act differently.

Given the above, the Asperger person who does resort to extreme violence most likely has had a history of rejection, isolation, and a series of experienced events that tend to reinforce their viewpoint that they have been wronged. Many Asperger people suffer from depression early on in life, based on experiences that start as early as childhood. None of this means that Asperger patients are going to end up committing violent acts like Adam Lanza, but they will tend to be loners, avoiding interaction, and withdrawing.

What will minimize the chances of that happening is early intervention and basically exposing the person with Asperger's to interactions with other people and training them how to behave according to societal norms. Not that it will make any more sense to them, but they can grasp that they can make life easier for themselves if they can learn rules to go by.

I suspect that in Adam Lanza's case, his mother was not doing or promoting this. Instead of reacting in a positive way to negative events and making Adam learn how to get along with society, she took the course of least resistance and decided to stay home and let him withdraw. My guess is at that some point she realized it was a mistake to do this and ended up confronting Adam, telling him that his life patterns had to change. If so, this may been a moment where Adam interpreted this to mean that the life he had adapted to was going out the window and he would suffer horribly. This was unacceptable, and it would be far better to lash out and get rid of the people who had caused him so much pain in the first place, starting with Mom.

So what is the difference between Adam Lanza and my relatives? Besides the possibility that Adam was farther on the Asperger spectrum than my two male kin, they also were "forced" to attend school until they graduated high school. Lots of counseling sessions, lots of times when there were moments of embarrassment, lots of anger, lots of tears, but they understood that there were no other options - this was life. And there would be a lot more of it to come. Both had hard times making friends, but eventually by 12th grade they managed to make a few. One got involved in show choir and ended up enjoying it. So much so, when the Young America music program auditioned at his school, he was the only one of three who made the audition. Currently he is in Europe touring with the Young Americans and teaching young school kids over in Scotland, Ireland, England, Germany, Norway and the Netherlands how to sing and dance. Not bad for a kid who was driving all of us grownups up the wall during his formative years. This is not to say that he doesn't still have those moments from time to time, but he is able to bounce back from them quicker, even sometimes able to laugh at himself.

Plus as bizarre, irrational and inhuman as a comment like "arayder" made, you have to wonder how many people pushed the panic button on relatives with autism or Aspergers after traumatic events like Sandy Hook? "I better get him nailed down before he nails me in the middle of the night". There are many good people fighting the hateful stigmas put on people with various health defects or "special needs". People like Temple Grandin who has chronicled her road to health through somewhat alternative but common sense means. The last thing people with diagnosis' need is stigma. "I used to be conceited but now I'm perfect".

It looks like Nancy Lanza was running away from her problems, as a gay divorce she could afford to or thought she could. The week of the massacre she spent at the Mt. Washington hotel, returning home the night before.

[arayder]

My apologies if I have given offense.

I don't mean to imply that everyone with Aspergers and OCD is a budding mass murder, or even persons to be feared.

When I say there are probably other Adam Lanza's I mean to say there are other kids, with and without some sort of diagnosis, who are contemplating violence. I mean to say that we can count ourselves lucky that in most cases in which the child acts out events don't turn violent.

Along these lines I have been concerned that Lanza has been called " a monster" and thus dehumanized. The fact is he was a mixed up kid who needed help and supervision.

Having said all this I still have a problem with and am critical of the lack of care that allowed him access to the .22 that stared the whole thing.

Again, my apologies, folks.

[JamesVincent]

Again, my apologies, folks.

I didn't see anything really negative about your comment Arayder. At least to me, in the context, it was a legitimate concern to have. People who don't have to deal with mental issues on a day to day basis really don't know what it entails, so I don't take offense by a misunderstanding. As long as people are willing to learn about it is what I care about. It's hard to explain sometimes what exactly we go through with dealing with issues. Like Obs said every case is unique to the person, even though the diagnosis may be the same. In a situation like someone with Autism there can a whole plethora of other mental conditions mixed in, like I had said about Autism and OCD, that cause an even more unique situation. It's pretty rare that you have one great condition without having other, more minor, conditions that all affect treatment. Unless you're a head doctor then there's no reason to expect you to know about a lot of the problems without having to deal with them personally. I have talked about my kid's issues before, as had Famspear and others on here. We all deal with it and have to know about it.

Some of the hardest things to deal with, at least to me, are some of the medications that are prescribed to children with problems. Both Mary and Chris have ODD and the medication they put them both on put them to sleep. Seriously. Was not even at a dose that was considered therapeutic. Even Mary's seizure medication has the side effect of heightening her anxieties, which is real wonderful considering she already had an anxiety syndrome beforehand. Yet it is one of the more mild medications and if she isn't medicated then she has the pretty distinct possibility of the seizures doing irreparable damage to her body and mind. My cousin has a daughter who has the same type of seizures as Alyss, they call them dis-associative fugues now, but had hundreds of them a day. She can no longer talk. The seizures have completely wiped away most of her greater skills even with medication. So even being medicated may not take away the real problems, which is why you need a plan, which apparently Lanza's mother didn't have. Most of the kids I have run into over the years with these kinds of problems are some of the sweetest kids around, as long as someone is actively working with them and they feel cared for. I've met a few here and there who don't have a good family support system and you can tell.

[arayder]

Thank you, James.

Your comments remind me of the several parents with kids getting what the rest of us think of as "mental health treatment" who came forward after Lanza was repeatedly characterized as a monster against whom every school teacher needed to arm themselves.

As I recall one message of these parents was that their children are, indeed, humans deserving of love and care not hate and bullets.

Bless you, James. I know you are doing good.

[LPC]

People who don't have to deal with mental issues on a day to day basis really don't know what it entails,

I've come to believe that most of the advances in civil rights for LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) came when LGBT individuals came "out of the closet" and people began to realize how many of their friends and relatives were affected by discriminatory laws, policies, and attitudes. For example, when I ask people about same-sex marriage, I find that almost everyone now knows that they have a friend or relative in a same-sex relationship.

Similarly, I think that attitudes about psychological issues will change when people and families are more open about the issues, and people realize that almost everyone they know has a friend or family member with some psychological or emotional disability or differentiation.

[JamesVincent]

Similarly, I think that attitudes about psychological issues will change when people and families are more open about the issues, and people realize that almost everyone they know has a friend or family member with some psychological or emotional disability or differentiation.

Not just that but admitting that there is actually a problem. One of the biggest issues is that people have some of the stupidest ideas that mental illness can be cured by "being more positive" or "thinking better thoughts" or "just paying attention". A good example is my own mother. She refuses to believe that her own grandkids have anything really wrong with them, outside of Mary's seizures. She says they're just lazy and I am not hard enough on them. She does not even believe in Alyss' seizures since they're not of the type where you can actually see it happen, I guess you have to be an epileptic to qualify. When I see Alyss stare at the wall for 20-30 seconds and all of the sudden she shakes her head and finishes the sentence she had started before she stopped talking, I realize there's an issue. And OCD, for example, can show up in some really weird times and places. I was at Walmart the other day with Mary looking at shampoo and realized Mary was gone. Knowing she never leaves my side I started to panic and looked down the other aisles real quick. I found her two aisles other with the fingernail polish display half torn apart as she, not only arranged them by color, but arranged them by SKU. She could not walk by it and leave it. And the only thing to do is let her finish or it will torture her that it was left undone. Happens on a pretty regular basis.

And it's not isolated to any particular type of issue. Anything dealing with mental illness has such a stigmata assigned to it that people either don't want to deal with it or refuse to believe in it. Whether it's depression, Autism, ADHD, OCD or any other diagnosis there's a feeling that anyone like that is either broken or faking it, they're not really an issue. Lord help you if you try to tell someone that, yes, it's real and, yes, it can be disabling. I've seen it in my own kids, have seen it in other kids, and I saw some of it myself as a child and still do as an adult. We have come a long way from the time when my uncle was thrown out of school in the 7th grade because he was Dyslexic but we still have a long way to go.

edit: added in something.

[Patriotdiscussions]

by making a living I can pretty much assume you mean working to buy nice things to impress people. We don't suffer from that, we keep our bills low so not to making a living as a workaholic.

I don't know about you but my kids were pretty damn expensive, especially considering I had 3 in diapers at the same time and all 3 were lactose intolerant, which meant special formula that was even more expensive. As far as impressing other people if you haven't figured out by now that I could give two shits less about impressing others then there's even less hope for you then Famspear thinks. Making a living is paying the bills and paying for the things that make you comfortable.

BTW, I was concerned about a bunch of our people dying (one of the people who died in 9/11 lived less then 5 miles from where I'm sitting right now, if you go into town you will see a plaque with his name and a tribute to him. He was also military. ) so I re-enlisted and went back in the military, to help protect against others who would want to try it again. I sure as piss didn't sit around and piss and moan over something I never had the clearance to fully know. The day of 9/11 I watched the planes hit and called out of work right then. Then I volunteered myself and several other friends volunteered to drive into DC to help at the Pentagon, since DC was about 500 miles closer. A good friend, with whom I worked, was there for several weeks and was one of the ones that stayed on to pump out the water from the basement of the Pentagon. I went there on and off to help out when I could.

Regardless, a fulfilling life is just that, a self fulfilling life that creates it's own joy and doesn't need any outside forces to make it fulfilling. My ex never understood that, she only understood money and her "friends" which is why I am divorced and which is why I have custody of our kids (if you had ever bothered to go back through old threads you would have known that, I talked about it a good deal here and there, especially the legal parts of my custody over the years.) I drive a 15 year old work truck, have a nice little house on top of a mountain and my kids are happy and healthy, that's a fulfilling life. I have a drive to help others, which is what brings me to Quatloos, to help others. These kinds of things work against sitting around all day on the internet trying to "examine" evidence and "debating" a bunch of crap that you never knew to start with.

Ok so sort of how I work two jobs most of the time to take care of my stay at home wife so she can homeschool our girls?

Yeah I understand a fulfilling life seeing as I'm living it. While it seems that you feel the truth is something feed to you by the government( there are those pesky beliefs you don't understand), and you have trouble finding time to spend time on important matters.

It was nice of you to sign over your life on an event you like most Americans have little clue about.

I am always enlightened by the party not in office talking about how corrupt and lying the government is, unless of course it is their party in office, then the government can be trusted.

What cracks me up is people who do not believe the government story are conspiracy theorists, sadly for the ignorant, by DEFINITION the government story is a conspiracy theory.

Except no one is confirming the governments theory.

How is it that according to the mist report the recovered metal was stronger and more heat resistant then they thought?

How is it the metal tested from the wtc never got anywhere near as hot as they needed for their raging inferno story to hold water?

Why the need to ship off and melt down evidence before the investigation got started?

Maybe you can brush those off, but some of us want the correct answer, not a 30 min Fox News update.

[arayder]

PD, I am amused as to how much you think you know about what other people think and know even though you haven't bothered to ask them what they know or think.

Your presumptions of superior knowledge and intelligence run counter to your claims that you are only a humble traveler on a journey that seeks the truth.

By the way, PD, the thread is about Sandy Hook.

If you want to start a 911 thread, be my guest.

[Patriotdiscussions]

PD, I am amused as to how much you think you know about what other people think and know even though you haven't bothered to ask them what they know or think.

Your presumptions of superior knowledge and intelligence run counter to your claims that you are only a humble traveler on a journey that seeks the truth.

By the way, PD, the thread is about Sandy Hook.

If you want to start a 911 thread, be my guest.

Even someone with a passing understanding of psychology and beliefs could of seen thru his "I grabbed my gear and hustled to defend our freedoms" rant.

Belief noted.

[Judge Roy Bean]

New mantra for so-called truthers:

We the willing, led by the unknowing
Devine the improbable from amidst the rumored.
We have argued so much for so long about so little
We are now able to prove anything with nothing.

[arayder]

PD, I am amused as to how much you think you know about what other people think and know even though you haven't bothered to ask them what they know or think.

Your presumptions of superior knowledge and intelligence run counter to your claims that you are only a humble traveler on a journey that seeks the truth.

By the way, PD, the thread is about Sandy Hook.

If you want to start a 911 thread, be my guest.

Even someone with a passing understanding of psychology and beliefs could of seen thru his "I grabbed my gear and hustled to defend our freedoms" rant.

Belief noted.

PD, whenever you want to start talking about what it is you want to talk about, please let us know.

I am going to play with my cat now.

Have a nice day.

[Patriotdiscussions]

Why would I start a 9-11 thread?

It's more then clear what your beliefs are, should I forget I understand psychology and waste my time with you folks on this subject?

Tell you what, when you find ANY test done on the wtc steel that got 500oC for 20 mins, then we can speak about 9-11.

When you can bring some REAL evidence of YOUR conspiracy theory we might talk more.

Btw I know what temp nist put in the computer model of the collapse.

What I am asking for is the test done on the recovered steel, what did they say the temps reached were?

I of course know the answer, which you can find in the nist report.

[Patriotdiscussions]

Lets talk about your signature, what does it mean do you think?

[Pottapaug1938]

Why would I start a 9-11 thread?

It's more then clear what your beliefs are, should I forget I understand psychology and waste my time with you folks on this subject?

Tell you what, when you find ANY test done on the wtc steel that got 500oC for 20 mins, then we can speak about 9-11.

When you can bring some REAL evidence of YOUR conspiracy theory we might talk more.

Btw I know what temp nist put in the computer model of the collapse.

What I am asking for is the test done on the recovered steel, what did they say the temps reached were?

I of course know the answer, which you can find in the nist report.

To tie a bowline, hold the rope in your left hand (lefthanders: switch "left" for "right" in these instructions). Form an overhand loop so that the "running end" (the end with which you will be tying the knot) is on the top side of the loop is hanging downward. Next, take the running end and pass it up through the loop. Then, pass it around the "standing part" (the upper end of the rope), from right to left, and then pass the running end back through the loop.

To finish, grab the standing part with one hand, and the loop in the other, and pull gently.

[Patriotdiscussions]

Great post, I have Been learning knots lately.

[arayder]

I still have a problem with and am critical of the lack of care that allowed him access to the .22 that started the whole thing.

Here are links to two different organizations talking about safe gun storage:

--- The Harvard Injury Control Research Center http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firea ... p-and-use/

I linked the section on suicides since many consider Sandy Hook to have been a murder/suicide. There are several informational tabs in the linked section. There is also a gun storage section: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firea ... c-opinion/

---The NRA http://training.nra.org/nra-gun-safety-rules.aspx and;
http://eddieeagle.nra.org/information-for-parents.aspx

"Store guns so they are not accessible to unauthorized persons.
Many factors must be considered when deciding where and how to store guns. A person's particular situation will be a major part of the consideration. Dozens of gun storage devices, as well as locking devices that attach directly to the gun, are available. However, mechanical locking devices, like the mechanical safeties built into guns, can fail and should not be used as a substitute for safe gun handling and the observance of all gun safety rules."


-------

I hope this helps.

[JamesVincent]

Even someone with a passing understanding of psychology and beliefs could of seen thru his "I grabbed my gear and hustled to defend our freedoms" rant.

Belief noted.

So what exactly did you do that made an actual impact on anything? BTW if you think that's a rant you really need to get out more.

[Patriotdiscussions]

Even someone with a passing understanding of psychology and beliefs could of seen thru his "I grabbed my gear and hustled to defend our freedoms" rant.

Belief noted.

So what exactly did you do that made an actual impact on anything? BTW if you think that's a rant you really need to get out more.

You mean did I go and f up two counties that had little if anything to do with 9-11?

Tell me, exactly how many of the 9-11 terrorists were from afganistan or Iraq.

Oh wait, you were bringing them freedom right?