PORTLAND — Cindy Gaspard knew something was different about her son, Dylan, when he was 6 months old.
As an infant, he would line up toys in a row and throw a fit if the order was disrupted. He didn't like to be held. He couldn't speak until he was 3.
Dylan was diagnosed at age 7 with autism, a brain disorder that affects communication and social interaction. For Gaspard, the finding explained years of communication problems and outbursts, and helped her learn how to deal with many of his behaviors and to fight for services for her son.
She is fighting for him again.
Dylan, a sixth-grader enrolled in a special-needs program in Sumner County schools, was recently handcuffed, arrested and put in juvenile detention after an outburst in school. He was charged with two counts of assault for biting and scratching teachers.
"I disagree with court or jail as a placement for a mentally challenged child, when what he clearly needs is psychiatric treatment," Gaspard said of her 12-year-old son. "For Dylan, sitting in jail meant nothing to him. Treatment and assistance at a hospital will help him attain the skills he needs."
The case reflects an ongoing debate in Tennessee: How should school officials handle and defuse behavioral outbursts of developmentally disabled students at school?
Federal law prevents school officials from discussing students' cases, said district spokesman Jeremy Johnson.
But he said school district policy is that police will be called for children under certain circumstances, including when the child leaves school grounds, when the child's behavior cannot be controlled by teachers, and when a crime is committed.
"When a child is admitted to the therapeutic intervention program, parents are notified that we could have to call police," Johnson said.
Dylan, who has been in the hospital for a psychological evaluation since the episode on March 9, is not the first child with developmental disabilities to be arrested.
"Statewide, we have had several cases of children with disabilities being arrested and being taken to Juvenile Court for behaviors in school," said Sherry Wilds, staff attorney for the Tennessee Disability Law and Advocacy Center. "It's the answer a lot of systems have."
Seclusion boxes gone
Gaspard spoke out for her son in 2007 about seclusion boxes — small, dark rooms made of plywood where special-needs children were put to control behavior in Sumner County schools. She found out Dylan was put in one and helped bring their existence to public attention. The district has since removed the boxes.
A state law went into effect in January that is designed to prevent students from being subjected to unreasonable, unsafe or unwarranted discipline by prohibiting methods that include sitting on students as a restraint or putting them in a locked room. The Tennessee Board of Education will hold a public hearing April 30 on the rules for the restraint and isolation statute. April is also Autism Awareness Month.
Gaspard said Dylan had just been enrolled in the program at R.T. Fisher Alternative School in Gallatin a week before his arrest. He was placed there to better serve his educational needs.
But new situations and changes to routine can trigger his explosions, and school officials were aware of that because it is in his education plan. Methods that work best for him are taking him out of the situation or turning his attention to another activity, his mother said.
Boy had asthma attack
Gaspard said after her son was arrested she learned that Dylan was in the gym running laps, and he had an asthma attack. He was allowed to stop to use his inhaler. When the teacher tried to get him to start running again, Dylan got frustrated and ran out of the school, saying he was going to "get hit by a car."
She said teachers were able to get him back in the building, but when they were restraining him, he acted out further.
Police said Dylan bit one teacher and kicked and scratched two others.
"If the child is so out of control that the teachers can no longer handle him, we are going to have to respond," said Lt. Kate Novitsky, spokeswoman for the Gallatin Police Department. "If the child is biting, scratching and kicking, the child is going to have to be taken into custody."
Gaspard said restraining Dylan can backfire because, like many children with autism, he doesn't want to be touched. He banged his head against the table and had a bruise on his head the size of a golf ball.
Dylan was handcuffed, put in the police car and taken to juvenile detention. Police were not told he had autism.
Johnson, the Sumner County schools spokesman, said the district is not allowed under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to release that information to police, "even in an emergency."
Wilds, the Tennessee Disability Law and Advocacy Center attorney, disputes that contention, saying laws don't typically apply in an emergency.
"If you are getting ready to throw a child in the back of a car and take them away, you would want to know please handle this child carefully, they can't communicate that well," she said.
Arrest stuns advocates
Wilds said public and private lawyers are not always trained to handle these cases to fight for the child in courts. A behavioral analysis should be done on many of these children before police or court become involved.
"That way you can have a behavior intervention program in place when something happens," she said.
Holly Lu Conant Rees, chairman of the Disability Coalition on Education, said she has a lot of questions about the episode, including what plans were in place to help Dylan before the situation escalated. She does not believe arresting him was the answer.
"I believe it's unconscionable to arrest a 12-year-old child for behaviors that were clearly manifestations of the child's disability," said Conant Rees, who advocates for children of disabilities.
As for Gaspard, she is trying to figure out what the next step for Dylan will be and how to help him.
"Dylan is a very loving, funny child, and people are drawn to him and his big smile," Gaspard said. "He is the light of my life, and it's hard when you feel you are always butting heads with someone to get your child help."
Watching how a toddler responds to animations could help diagnose autism, research has suggested.
Babies usually start paying attention to movement soon after birth, and pick up information from the cues they see but children with autism often do not.
A study, published in Nature, where two-year-olds were shown manipulated animations found those with autism focussed on movement linked to sound.
UK experts said a test of this kind could help pick up autism early.
In the Yale study, researchers created five versions of animated children's games such as 'peek-a-boo' and 'pat-a-cake' where points of light marked movement, each with sound.
On the other half of the screen, the same animation was presented upside down and in reverse, but with the same audio as the upright version.
Previous studies have shown that, normally, children's attention is drawn to such changes from around eight months old.
Twenty-one toddlers with autistic-spectrum disorders (ASD), 39 who were developing normally and 16 who had developmental problems but did not have autism were studied.
Both the toddlers who were developing normally and those with developmental problems showed a clear preference for looking at the upright animations. However the toddlers with ASD showed no preference and looked backwards and forwards between the two halves of the screen.
But when the toddlers were shown the 'pat-a-cake' animation - where the figure repeatedly and audibly claps his hands - those with ASD showed a marked preference for the upright animation, where the sounds were in time with the movement, choosing it 66% of the time.
The other children continued to prefer the upright version.
'Grabbing their attention'
Dr Ami Klin, of the Yale Child Study Center, who worked on the research, said: "Our results suggest that, in autism, genetic predispositions are exacerbated by atypical experience from a very early age, altering brain development.
"Attention to biological motion is a fundamental mechanism of social engagement, and in the future, we need to understand how this process is derailed in autism, starting still earlier, in the first weeks and months of life."
Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health - which helped fund the study, said: "For the first time, this study has pinpointed what grabs the attention of toddlers with ASDs.
"In addition to potential uses in screening for early diagnosis, this line of research holds promise for development of new therapies based on redirecting visual attention in children with these disorders."
A spokeswoman for the National Autistic Society said: "This is a really interesting study which suggests that children are on a different learning pathway from other children from a very early age.
"We warmly welcome all research which helps us further our understanding of autism, and how best to help and support those with the condition."
Proponents say music can be a creative outlet for higher-functioning students, for others it can reduce anxiety.
At the Kennedy Krieger School in Montgomery, Md., Austin Hall, right, plays with music therapist Leanne Belasco, on guitar.
By SUSAN BIDDLE | THE WASHINGTON POST
When it's bath time for Janna Simpson, her mother sometimes throws together a tune. "Take a bath, take a bath, take a bath," Judy Simpson might chant, luring her daughter into the water.
Janna isn't a toddler, and her mother isn't simply singing along. Janna is a 15 year old with autism, a speech impairment and a seizure disorder. Music, Judy Simpson says, has been key to getting her to engage in such everyday activities as taking a bath; it's also an alternative to verbal instructions in helping her overcome social and behavioral problems.
Janna, who never developed normal speech, receives formal music therapy at West Virginia's Hedgesville Middle School, where she is enrolled in a classroom for students with autism. Her mother, a former music therapist who is director of government relations at the American Music Therapy Association, based in Silver Spring, Md., continues with that therapeutic approach at home.
"Latitude, longitude, looking through a microscope: Such skills are not important," Simpson explains. "She needs basic skills to live, such as brushing her teeth, taking a bath, the pragmatics of engaging with people. This is a difficult thing to teach."
Simpson's confidence in music therapy is based on her own experience and that of other parents of children with autism who are eager to find ways to increase their children's ability to function.
But exactly how and to what extent music therapy works is not well understood. Just over a year ago, a session titled "The Autism Agenda" at the American Music Therapy Association conference stressed the need for more research and for practice to be based on evidence.
Despite the limited data about its effectiveness, making music has become an integral part of many programs for children with autism. Leanne Belasco, a music therapist at the Kennedy Krieger School's Montgomery County, Md., campus, says music gives structure and a predictable rhythm to verbal directions. When Belasco strums her autoharp to her students, she sings encouraging, instructive lyrics such as, "I know I have what it takes; I am a good listener" and "Be flexible."
At the school, where all 37 full-time students are enrolled in music therapy, Belasco begins her 30- to 45-minute sessions by singing a refrain: "Hello, everybody, it's time for music today."
She wheels around the group seated in a horseshoe formation, addressing each student in song as she does so.
A 16 year old, who regularly wears headphones in class because of his auditory sensitivities, responds with apparent enjoyment, as does a younger boy, who strums the autoharp with seeming pleasure as he rocks back and forth in his chair.
Despite the benefits associated with music, there are special challenges for children with autism.
"Some students are sensitive to sirens and vacuums; some are sensitive to music, to specific instruments or the frequency of the instrument," says Linda Brandenburg, director of school autism services at Kennedy Krieger, which is based in Baltimore. The music therapist gradually eases students with such auditory sensitivities into the group.
For higher-functioning students on the autism spectrum, music can be a creative outlet in addition to helping regulate behavior, therapists say.
At Frost School in Rockville, Md., for children with emotional disorders including those on the autism spectrum, ninth-grader Donny Toker has enjoyed music from a young age and now composes jazz and rock pieces, which he has performed at family gatherings and at school.
His mother, Nancy Toker, says music helps him focus and relieves anxiety and frustration.
"When he is in a musical environment, he is able to interact with his peers, and his conversational skills are appropriate, " Toker says.
Catherine Lord, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan specializing in autism research, says, "We know that music therapy treatment is associated with improvement, but we don't know what the cause of that improvement is."
Studies suggesting positive results for music therapy, she says, typically "don't control for what you need to control to find out what causes the change."
Students may improve because of factors such as the therapist's enthusiasm and attention rather than the music itself.
Lord notes that she would support the use of music therapy only if it could be shown that it helped to decrease problem behaviors and also if it was clearly determined that students with autism enjoyed the therapy.
Many people with autism lack forms of entertainment and relaxation, so providing effective behavioral treatment that is also pleasurable would be worthwhile, she says.
Every parent has dreams for their children, but when autism strikes, those dreams seem out of reach. Read Laura Shumaker inspiring story of raising her autistic son from a baby to young adulthood- The challenges, the rewards, the heartaches and the joy. Autism affects 1 in 150 children. You are not alone. Learn more about growing up with autism at http://www.laurashumaker.com
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For years I thought of his autism as beautiful and mysterious. But when he turned unspeakably violent, I had to question everything I knew. by Ann Bauer
On Feb. 14 I awaken to this headline: "Professor Beaten to Death by Autistic Son."
I scan the story while standing, my coffee forgotten. Trudy Steuernagel, a faculty member in political science at Kent State, has been murdered and her 18-year-old son, Sky, has been arrested and charged with the crime, though he is profoundly disabled and can neither speak nor understand. Sky, who likes cartoons and chicken nuggets, apparently lost control and beat his mother into a coma. He was sitting in jail when she died.
This happens to be two days after my older son's 21st birthday, which we marked behind two sets of locked steel doors. I'm exhausted and hopeless and vaguely hung over because Andrew, who has autism, also has evolved from sweet, dreamy boy to something like a golem: bitter, rampaging, full of rage. It happened no matter how fiercely I loved him or how many therapies I employed.
Now, reading about this Ohio mother, there is a moment of slithering nausea and panic followed immediately by a sense of guilty relief.
I am not alone.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Andrew started life as a mostly typical child. But at 3 and a half he become remote and perseverative, sitting in a corner and staring at his own splayed hand. Eventually he was diagnosed with high-functioning autism, a label that seemed to explain everything from his calendar memory and social isolation to his normal IQ.
We got him into a good program and there was a brief, halcyon phase of near normalcy -- a time I long for still so ardently that I feel hungry for it at a cellular level -- from ages 12 to 17. Andrew aced algebra, became fluent in Spanish, played the cello in the school orchestra, and competed on weekends in tournament chess. I occasionally even referred to him as "cured."
But in the months before turning 18, Andrew grew depressed and bitter. Huge and hairy -- a young man who grows a beard by twilight -- he suddenly became as withdrawn as he'd been at 4. Many of his old symptoms returned: the rocking and "stimming" (e.g., blinking rapidly at lights), the compulsion to empty bottles of liquid soap. Sometimes he would freeze, like a statue. Classic catatonia, the experts told us. We tried a series of medications, but that only made him worse.
Once during this phase, he beat me. A neighbor heard me screaming and called 911. But I blamed this on the drugs. Despite everything, my son had always been gentle and sweet. This was no twisted adolescent squirrel killer who kept a pile of carcasses under his bed.
On the day he should have graduated from high school, Andrew was instead being treated in a psychiatric ward at the Mayo Clinic. But he seemed to improve, and we were hopeful. Upon release, he was placed in a series of behavioral health centers and group homes. This is where his real education began.
He'd quit progressing in school, but now my son soaked up new information like a toddler learning to talk. Every placement in a succeedingly tougher environment gave him new skills. He shoplifted like a pro, traded his belongings for sexual favors, and dined and dashed so often some local restaurants had his picture posted in their kitchen under the words, "Don't serve this man." I told myself at least he was thinking, making his own bad choices, experiencing adult consequences. A part of me was even proud.
But he'd also quit reading, conversing, learning people's names, or keeping track of the day of the week. He ate like some gnashing beast: stuffing food into his mouth until his cheeks bulged and food dribbled out onto his clothes. And after moving to the rural group home selected by a judge because it was miles from restaurants or businesses where he could steal, Andrew morphed again, the warty monster from a Grimm fairy tale, demolishing everything in his path.
His destruction was utterly senseless yet brilliantly thorough: He submerged his computer, stereo and iPod in water; threw puzzle pieces and Styrofoam cups into the toilet and flushed them, plugging the pipes literally dozens of times a week; and urinated on every square inch of his room: bed, walls, floor, closet, everything but the ceiling and that only because he had not (yet, I suspect) figured out how.
When I asked him why he did these things he would say, eyes narrow like a night creature, "I don't like being caged."
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Then came Sept. 2, last fall. This was to be Andrew's first day of his final year in public school. He hated school -- a so-called transition program -- because it was demeaning. Lessons about how to cross streets and take buses and punch time clocks. My son had completed pre-calculus; now he was being taught how to make correct change.
But there was nowhere else for him. He'd failed to hold the two jobs my husband and I had found for him; the private job coach we hired said Andrew was the most challenging client he'd ever worked with -- right before he quit. We were financially tapped out and the state would not pay for vocational training until Andrew turned 21. Transition school was the only choice.
I'd explained all this. But when I showed up at the group home that morning, he was drinking coffee and pacing and still not dressed. I went into his room, took some clothes from the closet, handed them to him. And hinting at what he was about to do only with a small sigh, as if to say, "I've had enough," my son picked me up and threw me across the room.
I had three broken ribs and a bit of damage to my liver that made my doctor fret. Still, who among us hasn't wanted to toss our mother across the room when she's nattering on and making cheerful sounds in the morning? I dismissed it as an aberration until a couple weeks later when Andrew decked his elderly tutor, knocking her onto a concrete sidewalk and breaking her hand. He went on to attack several staff members at the group home, grope the mentally handicapped young women who attended his transition program, and finally to accost his 14-year-old sister right in front of my eyes.
It was Christmas Day. I watched him enter the room and fix his gaze on my daughter. Then he rushed her, and I screamed. My husband -- two inches shorter and 50 pounds lighter -- somehow intercepted Andrew and knocked him to the ground. After he had been escorted from our family dinner in restraints, we sat at a table heaped with food growing cold, where my elderly parents wept and my daughter shook silently. I comforted them all and after that was done -- the meal reheated and people eating -- I drank every drop of alcohol in sight, even draining the half-full wine glass my mother always left. The next morning, through a headache of steel knives and bad music, I got on the phone.
I called the man who was supposed to be my son's psychiatrist to ask for an emergency appointment. Andrew was becoming dangerous, I told the nurse, and he was going to hurt someone. But the doctor was too busy; he was on vacation. There might be an opening in late January. No one else was available, no matter how many numbers I dialed.
Secretly, as if committing a sacrilege, I searched online using keywords such as "autism" and "violence" and "murder." What I found was confusing. There were roughly a dozen recent articles about heinous acts committed by people with autism and Asperger's syndrome, but each was followed by editorials and letters written by autism advocates vigorously denying a link. There were a few studies from the '80s and '90s, but the results -- when they showed a higher rate of violent crime among people with autism -- appeared to have been quieted or dismissed.
On the other hand there were, literally, thousands of heartwarming stories about autism. A couple of the most widely read were written by me. For years I had been telling my son's story, insisting that autism is beautiful, mysterious, perhaps even evolutionarily necessary. Denying that it can also be a wild, ravaging madness, a disease of the mind and soul. It was my trademark as an essayist, but also my profound belief.
Now, despite the constant calling and late-night research, I could not accept what was happening. I could not write about it; I could not speak of it. Not even my closest friends knew what was happening inside my life.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
My husband and I were on our way to an inauguration party the night Andrew finally came apart.
It was January, a week of cold so wicked I was dressed in long underwear and wool sweaters, scarves, a parka, and two sets of gloves. It took me a long time to scramble through all the layers when my cellphone rang. But missing the call was not an option. I'd already had four panicked messages from the group home that day: Andrew's violence was escalating. They were mandated by state law to stay inside because of the weather, and he was going stir crazy, terrorizing the house. No one knew what to do.
"Yes?" I answered.
"I'm so sorry," is how the voice on the other end began.
It was Andrew's counselor, calling to describe the situation. My son was in an ambulance circling the Twin Cities, sedated and strapped down to a bed. He'd been in there for a couple of hours and the medics just kept driving; they couldn't stop because all the psych wards were full.
"Yes," I croaked again. Other than this one low word, I'd been struck mute.
They'd had no choice but to call the police, the counselor said. After dinner -- which was served in the group home at 5 o'clock, leaving long hours to kill before bed -- Andrew made a pass at a young female staff member. Petite, blond, around his age. The girl rebuffed him, reminding him probably for the 8,000th time that day about the "no touching" rule. And then he went off.
My son reportedly leapt on her -- his 260-pound body surprisingly nimble -- one hand around her throat, choking her, and the other in her mouth, pressing down, cutting off her air two different ways. It took four men to pull him off and by this time the girl had passed out.
"Is she all right?" I asked. And this mattered for so many reasons: There was the basic human one, then the legal, also the fact that my own fate hung on the answer. While lying awake earlier that week, I'd made the decision that if my own child were to kill someone I, too, would have to die.
"She's bruised," he said, "and scared."
That's when I breathed. Nothing irreversibly evil had yet been done.
My husband wanted to turn around. But I was afraid that in the quiet of our home I might sit and think about my perfect, rosy-cheeked baby and actually go insane. So instead we went to the party and, as on Christmas, I drank as if it were a task I need to accomplish. Steadily, with steel. While my husband watched over me with his worried face, I hugged people and talked and tried to participate in a game the host had devised: Obama trivia. What movie did he take Michelle to see on their first date? Which brand of computer does he use? How big are his feet?
I failed to answer a single question and wondered why everyone around me seemed to know these things. Where had I been? Through my shimmering stupor, I surveyed the crowd of happy, shining faces. People were wearing buttons, T-shirts, even necklaces that spelled out "hope." This struck me as sinister and somewhat rude. Hope was bullshit. Hope was exactly what had been lost.
In the car on the way home, I asked my husband if I had fooled everyone at the party. Was I speaking normally? Did I at any point shout or cry or whimper? He assured me I had not. But for the few moments at the end when I'd looked as if I might collapse, I'd been pale but appropriate.
"I'm sure I'm the only one who knew," he said, shifting so the seat made its cold, leather groan and taking my hand.
I thanked him and leaned back, thinking dumbly that, of course, there was one thing he didn't know: I'd been secretly stockpiling the sleeping pills my doctor prescribes like Pez. I had about 80 saved up, which would probably be enough. The ambulance was still out there, driving through the dark night on frosted roads, holding my son inside. For now I could live. But the following morning I recounted my supply, just in case.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Back when Andrew was in junior high school, my mother had a friend whose adult son had only recently been diagnosed with autism. He'd been dysfunctional since childhood, failing at school, unable to make a friend or keep a decent job. At 35 he was still living at home, collecting carts at the local grocery store, and taking anticonvulsants (Tegretol was the unofficial treatment of that era for outbursts) to control the violent urges he'd been having for 15 years.
"You think he's better now," my mother's friend once said as we watched a young, laughing Andrew out the window, playing tag with his brother and sister in my parents' backyard. "But wait 'til he's older. Then you'll understand. "
I hated her and was furious that she wished for our downfall -- also that her dumb, psychopathic son had been given the same label as my beloved child. Autism had become oddly fashionable; my mother's friend was wealthy. Clearly she'd gone "diagnosis shopping." My son, I vowed, would be nothing like hers.
When Andrew finally landed at the county hospital, after 10 hours in the circling ambulance and another three in the E.R., I was still looking for a different answer. This wasn't autism. Surely he had a brain tumor, a seizure disorder, or a delusional condition such as schizophrenia. Maybe, on one of his crime sprees, he'd gotten ahold of some PCP.
But the psychiatrist assigned to my son said no. The MRI was clean; the EEG normal. The doctor's specialty happened to be schizophrenia, and he saw none of the signs. Street drugs would have left Andrew's body by now. This was isolation, frustration, hormonal surges, poor impulse control and hopelessness. It was adult autism, the psychiatrist told me: one awful direction it can take.
Monday, I went to see my son. He was in a bare white cell behind a steel door with a window, like Hannibal Lecter. The only thing missing was the mask. Two male nurses and Max, my 18-year-old linebacker son, walked with me into the room. Andrew was beached on a bed, his glasses the only thing on the shelf alongside. I touched his shoulder and woke him, taking his hands after he'd lifted himself to sit. "I'm here, sweetheart," I told him. "I want to help."
He looked at me with bug-eyed wonder and squeezed my hands, hard, "I might kill you," he said. That's when Max pushed his way between us and ordered me from the room. Sobbing, he wrestled his brother to the bed and held him there.
I spent Tuesday at a friend's house, as planned, in front of the TV, watching the Obamas walk and wave. Once, when someone asked why I was so quiet, I mentioned that one of my children was in the hospital, quite ill. She touched me and said something kind. I knew she was thinking of something like leukemia and I wanted to tell her I would hack off my right arm in return for something as simple as cancer. The flickering beauty of a sad, pure, too-early death sounds lovely. Instead I nodded, silent and dumb.
The one thing I held onto, through all of this, was the sudden appearance of this county psychiatrist: a small, bespectacled, Dustin Hoffman-ish fellow who’d spent years on a kibbutz before going to medical school in middle age. I found him magnetic, I trusted him. He became my talisman, my Obama, the only reason to hope. It wasn't that he had any magic solutions -- I've learned by now that no one does -- but he was openly upset, diagnosing Andrew simply as "someone in pain."
We sat in the doctor's lounge and he gave me a slice of banana bread to eat while he kneaded his forehead and read his notes. When he asked me what I wanted him to do, I told him: Whatever it takes to make my son stop. The threat of harm to my son's body was superseded by black stains on his soul. The doctor agreed, but he had made a list in ascending order of risk: Ativan, high-dose Prozac, Depakote, electroshock, Clozaril, Riluzole. A drug called Lupron.
I reached for my single semester of Latin. "Lupron? You want to take the werewolf out of him?"
"Exactly," said the Israeli. "But it's our last resort."
There were days spent in court, one swimming into the next, like a series of nightmares. Because my son was vulnerable, nothing could be done without a judge's order. Exhausted after this process, my husband and I went to Chicago and spent three days walking in icy sunlight, eating in no-name diners, going to sleep at 9 p.m. By the time we returned, Andrew had been given buckets full of dangerous, doping drugs and two sessions of ECT.
When we arrived at the hospital, he shuffled sleepily out of his now-unlocked room. We gave him money to order pizza (it turns out Domino's delivers to the psych ward), a sketchbook and pastels, two books. He could have nothing sharp, no cords. This ruled out a CD player, laptop, or ballpoint pen.
I asked tentatively if he remembered what he had done and suddenly he began to cry, tears running down his giant, furry face, jeweling his beard.
"Beware," he said through ragged breaths. "I'm bad now, I can feel it. I can't help the things I do."
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Whether there is a definitive link between autism and violence -- between Trudy Steuernagel's situation and mine -- I cannot say.
And even if it exists, the cause is not clear. Our adult son's behavior could be the outcome of living daily in a world where everything hurts and nothing makes sense. It could be the result (as some scientists have postulated) of excess testosterone on the autistic brain. It could simply be wild coincidence that I ran across this particular story during a time when I was looking for answers. Any of these is possible. I just don't know.
The chairman of Trudy Steuernagel's department rose at her memorial service to proclaim, "Autism doesn't equal violence." And this probably is mathematically correct: Autism does not always equal violence. But I do believe there may be a tragic, blameless relationship. Neither Sky nor Andrew means to be murderous -- of this I am sure -- but their circumstances, neurology, size and age combine to create the perfect storm.
It is warmer, finally. Outside my window ice is melting off skeletal trees. I sit in the pale morning light, drinking tepid coffee and reading about this woman whom I suspect I would have liked. A fellow academic and writer, Steuernagel, too, insisted on finding beauty in autism. Her legacy includes an editorial about Sky's loving nature and relevance, how he led her through life along "a trail of sparkles."
Mine, I decide, must be in part to break the silence about autism's darker side. We cannot solve this problem by hiding it, the way handicapped children themselves used to be tucked away in cellars. In order to help the young men who endure this rage, someone has to be willing to tell the truth.
JACKSONVILLE, FL -- A Kernan Trail Elementary teacher accused of abusing an autistic child in her classroom has parents speaking out in support of Rhona Silver.
Silver was arrested last week, charged with child abuse. Police say the 30-year classroom teacher restrained a child, with his pants down, for three consecutive school days in a Rifton Chair. The chair is a toilet chair with restraints.
Tanya Tsoutsos is one parent who voiced her support for Silver. She says her daughter was in Silver's class at Kernan Trail.
"She's a sweet lady," said Tsoutsos.
"She's good with kids, she loves the kids, kids love her. She's personable, she comes to kids' birthday parties and special events we have."
In police reports, a teacher's aid and a student teacher in Silver's classroom said they witnessed what they called abuse.
Silver was removed from the classroom last October. She remains employed by the district in a non-teaching position while the investigation continues.
Amanda Peet and Jenny McCarthy are beautiful women with lots of money, great bodies, and terrific makeup artists. They're also spokewomen for what have become opposing "teams" in the autism wars.
Peet, according to an article in the Momlogic blog is once again speaking out in favor of fully vaccinating children. Here's a quote from Ms. Peet - which, to be honest, really does sound an awful lot like fighting words:
"Also, I hope parents understand that when they do not vaccinate their kids, they are able to make that choice only because most of us are vaccinating," says Peet. "We are creating a barricade around their un-vaccinated children and that is what keeps them safe. That's a fact."
Meanwhile, Jenny McCarthy has come out with yet a third book on vaccines and autism. This one, called Healing and Preventing Autism, certainly SOUNDS like a medical guide.... from what some (including me!) would consider an unlikely and unpromising source. Still, I haven't read the book yet, so can't make a definitive judgement (and really did find Louder Than Words a great read).
The sad thing to me is that the autism debate has come down to a star v. star popularity contest. Of course, there's much more to it. But much as anger over the economic crisis has focused, laserlike, on a group of wealthy AIG execs, anger over autism-related issues has focused on a debate between two actresses.
Sure, it's fun to watch the sparks fly. But if we need Amanda Peets to be the ultimate spokesmom for the war against infectious disease - or Jenny McCarthy to raise awareness that vaccines are not always harmless - something's awry.
I believe that the time has come for technology to direct more attention to social issues of great importance. To that end, I have created a unique web browser called ZAC Browser (www.zacbrowser.com) that was built solely to protect and enhance the life of its young autistic users capturing both cutting edge technology and addressing social well being at the same time. ZAC Browser provides safe internet access intentionally directed to meet the specific needs and limitations of the 750,000 autistic children who benefit from using it.
John LeSieur
President & CEO
People CD Inc.
http://www.peoplecd.com
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