Unfortunately some children are born broken. At this time that appears to be the case with the shooter. We see children like him every day. They come in the doors at five years old and we know. We do our best but most can never be fixed. We support them and nurture them and hope the next level of educators will do the same. Tragically for all in this terrible instance, this young man remained broken. The horror is
unfathomable.
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“The horror is unfathomable.” Such a true statement. What in the name of God possessed this young man to shoot his mother in the head multiple times and then to go to a school with which he has no connection, to kill innocent children, babies, with a high powered semi-automatic rifle. I am actually devastated at this act of wanton horror. Mike Bloomberg is so terribly wrong on education but he is very right when it comes to gun control.
If this child is broken it is at the hands of We the People. If this child is broken it is at the hands of presidents, governors, state and federal legislators unwilling to commit the appropriations necessary to research, understand and provide targeted treatments for children born with the early onset of psychiatric illness and neurodevelopmental disorders. If this child is broken it is due to the lack of access to psychiatric medical care and interventions; psychosocial therapy and interventions; in-patient pediatric psychiatric beds for short-term and long term. If this child is broken it is due to 37 years of egregiously insufficiently funded and implemented special education programs and services for children with complex neuropsychiatric disorders, executive functioning deficits and learning disabilities. If this child is broken he or she may have a mother or father who is also broken for the aforementioned reasons and so many more, and unable to advocate for the medical, community-based and school-based services. If this child is broken, we all need to look in the mirror and say to ourself that I will no longer be silent about psychiatric illnesses and disorders. I will no longer force parents that have children with the early onset of psychiatric illness to live in painful and isolated silence. I will lobby my state and federal legislators and every president beginning with Barack Obama to recognize the National Institutes of Mental Health as equal to the National Institutes of Health and I will merge them into one and provide equal access to federal appropriations and grants. I will never again be an accomplice and stand idly by while children and adults with a mental illness live in poverty, on the streets, in state-funded abusively-run homes and facilities. I will use my voice, pen and presence to fight for “this broken child” until children are no longer considered broken and throwaways. “This child” could be my son and yours.
Amen. My brother could have been this guy. He was (still is) probably somewhere on the autism/Asperger’s spectrum, although never diagnosed as such. He was a hellion to raise, but he had two major benefits: (a) our mother was a special education teacher who had at least some inkling what was wrong and how to deal with him and (b) when he was about 6 our father had really good insurance that paid for him to attend a special day school at Children’s Public Hospital in Ann Arbor. The school especially made a noticeable difference in his life. He’s still a bit of an odd duck, but quite socially adapted, social and happy. Why shouldn’t all parents and children have access to programs like that, not just those with good insurance or those who can afford to pay out of pocket?
It’s unpopular to say it, but the shooter may be just as much a victim in all of this as anyone else. Maybe his life (and 27 other lives) could have been different if people had recognized his needs and been able to help him.
I have a child with Aspergers. He is 31. He sent me a text today to read the letter that is going around on FB and other social media. Then he called me. He said he was just slightly better than the shooter in terms of his own mental issues. He had some difficulties when he was in school but no to the degree that was talked about in the letter. He takes meds the same way I take meds for diabetes.
The difference of 10 years makes a difference. When he was small little was known of chemical imbalances in the brain.
He said it was too bad the shooter did not have access to appropriate drug intervention coupled with appropriate therapy.
There is a serious issue in this country about people with mental issues. I don’t suggest drugging everyone who has an occasional outburst. But just like people are treated for diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol and other imbalances in the body, people need to know that the same holds true for the brain.
I will never believe that children are “born broken” in this way.
I don’t know if they are born broken, but they are somehow troubled. I don’t have a word for it, but I recognize it when I see it in a student. After 16 years in special education, I can spot it in a 2 year old. They don’t know how to fit in socially and no matter how much adults intervene and try to teach social skills they never quite “get it” . Only those of us with the training and experience come close to understanding them, but still we never fully get them to fit in. As they grow older their behavior causes them to withdraw and positive results become more difficult. Most often success stories come from being diagnosed as early as 2 yrs old. And only with intense therapy that is integrated into their school day and parents are educated early. As education Deform continues, these are the services that disappear. There was a time when these children had access to needed services within their school settings. When school budgets are cut, these are the programs that are cut first. It is time to talk about children with mental health problems. They are in our schools. They need help. We need help to help them. Their parents need help. There are no throw away kids. Every child deserves our love and care. No matter how “damaged” they are.
I absolutely agree that some kids are born with brain pathologies and that many of us teachers KNOW long before any official diagnosis is made. See this spring’s NewYork Times Magazine article “Is Your 9 Year Old a Psychopath?” about the emerging science. We should treat these kids with humanity, but also with rationality. The fact is they often wreak havoc on their siblings, parents and schools. As a seventh grade teacher of 200 kids annually, I encounter one or two young psychopaths a year. As one who has to mete out consequences for their misbehaviors and face their rage, I feel vulnerable.
Possibly they are born broken. But there’s a lot of days between “born” and five years old. What we can say is that we can tell by five years old. What we need to know is what happened between Day 1 and five years old. There is the possibility that the wrong that happens, happens during that time because of the character of the mother. Alice Miller, the great Swiss psychiatrist, writes that children can be saved by a single person showing them genuine love. Her thesis is that Hitler had none, that Stalin had none. Seemingly Adam Lanza had none. That’s where other family members can definitely help, and even teachers, even though they come late to the game, even in Kindergarten. I don’t know enough about child development to absolutely assert that children are not born broken, but I do believe that in a lot of cases the children are broken by their families by the fifth grade.
Not one word written will bring one precious child or one magnificent education
professional adult murdered in Newtown, Connecticut, back to their families or to the world in which they made a difference and had so many dreams. Instead, they are free of the pain felt by those that loved them and others who care. A nation will now collectively have to grapple with the reality of the crime and the dissection of how to make sense and enhanced changes for the living. All that can be offered for the grieving are condolences and the hope they can survive this tragedy.
There is a commercial on television that illustrates that Depression is painful. It is
isolating and numbing. One of the worse ways to hurt another person is to ignore
them and humiliate them. As an advocate for the disabled, especially the mentally
ill and neurologically challenged, I see how they are taunted, ignored or isolated,
bullied and punished by the presumably normal and supposedly higher level
people, by children and adults alike throughout their lives. Often those that
are different are shunned and endure the insult of life filling them with hurt,
sorrow, sometimes rage and lots of pain.
This transcends from mild to severe disabled whether identified or not.You can be in a crowded room and be alone, especially if there isn’t anyone trained to identify the struggling learner or worker. Compound that with a brain wired without social intelligence or empathy, and yet an intellect that can learn content and absorb information, and you have the potential for a tortured and misunderstood individual. Not understood by normal family or community but asked to survive as though they are like everyone else. They are not.
Over and over I read where there were quotes about, Adam Lanza, the young man
who murdered so many, that he could not feel pain either physically or mentally.
This is a presumption unknown to anyone else other then himself and by his very
act denotes that he either was filled with pain and wanted to enact pain on others, or wanted to kill them to take them out of the world filled with pain as he may have known it. The guns gave him power to do either and also brought him recognition. We will never be able to know what was in his head (unless he wrote a journal). But we
know what he did and we should be alerted to the needs of the mentally challenged.
Reading the varied quotes and conversations about this nightmare by others from all types of backgrounds has been illuminating. From civility to insanity, the rage of some to the forgiveness of others, the pain of all palpable. The most disturbing are those who
want to find blame by punishing others and being sanctimonious and presuming to
speak for and through God. In nature things can go wrong and altered brains and
behavior can and will continue to happen. How to divert or help minimize these
tragedies is now the question and finding the answer should be the quest. Whether
it is a mass murder, or where the numbers grow by building one on one through
street crime (like where I work in in an Urban environment), and people are maimed
and lives changed, we need to change. There are enough gun laws to sink a ship and that need to be enacted, However, there is not enough information, services and resources for the mentally ill and their families.
Inclusion before readiness was in my opinion, the stepping stone to open
the door towards an abandonment of the public school system for the market
share corporate initiative of the Charter school movement. Corporate and
government are looking for the value added learner without problems as the
global worker for both. The golden days of special education identification and accommodation are gone or near gone, and the why is a simple matter of follow the money and the change in a badly or deliberately manipulated economy where the money has evaporated or been moved to other uses. Schools have always kited
special education funds to other uses within their needs and it has always
been grossly underfunded by the Feds and the states. Ignoring the tsunami
of neurologically involved citizens, whether children on the Autistic Spectrum or Vets
returning from global wars, we would be fool hearty not to put funding back
towards helping and working with these human beings. Community should demand
for the protections and human dignity of every person that we proceed with reasonable
and measurable goals and objectives when looking for answers to violence and
reasonable societal behavior. Some fail safes are still possible but there will never
be a full safe world to live in. That is reality.
Calling a child “broken” is not ok. I don’t care what their issues are. I don’t know this young man’s story, and I probably never will. And unless we know a person’s story, we can’t profess to know what made them do something.