First of all demanding obedience to a school dress code is inane,
Secondly, "you can't" she says to him about three things, and yet he did, he is, and he was. So she's just f'ing not connected to reality to say "you can't" after he already did.
Thirdly, she's clearly an omega with an alpha son, and being an alpha does not make one a mass murderer.

I can't believe a mother actually post this tripe and tries to compare it to what's going on. She's just trying to get attention at her son's expense.

Lastly your link doesn't work, so if there's more to the story than the bs here, it can't be accessed.

here: http://anarchistsoccermom.blogspot.com/2012/12/thinking-unthinkable.html

I stand by the concept that she's an omega raising an alpha, and she's doing a piss poor job.

If you clicked on the link - which works fine for me - you'd learn he is in a special school for emotionally disturbed kids. Uniforms and lots of structure is common in those kinds of schools.

they understand things won't go as they hope every moment, and the mother is an omega with an alpha son she doesn't have the personal strength to handle. It isn't necessarily her fault, but it also the boy doesn't sound mentally ill, just real alpha and he knows how to work his mother. Yes, he may grow up to be a mass murderer, and she'll be partly responsible for never learning the proper parenting techniques for a strong alpha male. Many mothers figure it out, but she clearly isn't.

The author is describing what it's like to live with a child with mental illness and how difficult it is to get help. Although the essay does start out with perhaps not the best example (a better one might have been when this kid's siblings had to follow the "escape plan" when he was asked to return some library books), she's not actually comparing a fight about a dress code with murder.

having to "escape" a child that size, she needs help too.

She would have a fear of hurting him. His lack of self-restraint would make him very dangerous.

Plus, she didn't escape from him--she got the knife away from him. I'd have been terrified of a fearless, out-of-control person of any size with a knife.

I grabbed his wrist, flipped him around into my arms and put the knife to his neck and asked if he really wanted to play this game... he said no. But I'm an alpha, and I would never expect anyone else to do what I did. Surely there's an even better solution, I just didn't know it at the time. I did know that I could not for any reason let him get the upper hand though, not at that age and doing a violence. And this is over simplifying a bit, because it fails to present the facts that as a family we always were discussing and completely honest, even me, even about Santa and EB,et al, which I catch a lot of shit for, but my point is, that our lives, my son, my parenting should not be whittled down to this one moment presented here. Yes, what I did worked, but surely there was a better option, though to this day I have no idea what it would be.

I think too the fact that the whole incident was over in under 30 seconds probably took all the drama out of it for him, so there was no point in a rematch. I think that was one of my parenting mainstays, "take the drama away, and they can't work ya'". So a screaming toddler at the store, no problem, cover their mouth with a hand and quietly tell them they have the right to scream and everyone else has the right not to hear it, let me know when you're done. (Note: be sure to remove hand often enough for intake of breaths as their noses usually fill with snot). "Why why why?" was met with that's a great question, now's not the time for answer, we're on a clock and you know my answers are always whys (pun intended, kids loved the pun), I'll answer later. (Note: remember to answer later or you lose credibility.) And so on.

Take the drama away. Be true to your word as a parent. Anyway, I ramble on. This has been a weird event for me. It's struck a lot of chords, very similar sounding woman to my mother, I hate my mother, she's evil and I don't even believe in evil. She was a teacher. I left the house within hours of pointing a gun at my father over thirty years ago. Anyway, I guess I really need to break from this whole thing for a while.

And as a non-alpha person, I also admire your saying that this might not have worked for everyone.

It sounds like you are a very good parent, which may not literally be the hardest job in the world but can be right up there sometimes. It's SO EASY to be (even unintentionally) a bad one--to not be honest, to not give kids the respect of following through on a promise to answer later, and to not show them who's in charge. And considering how it sounds like both your parents were not ideal role models (you're pretty explicit about your feelings about your mom, and a dad who gets a gun pointed at him was probably behaving in a way that needed to be corrected), I'm very impressed. I had fantastic role models for parents and I still screw up as a mom a lot. It's really admirable that you take parenting so seriously when you didn't have that yourself.

And yes if there was ever an uncontested, oft said thing about me back then, and I heard it from everyone, "you take parenting too seriously." And usually I replied that they didn't take it seriously enough.

I think the overall honesty helped too, because I was not perfect and made mistakes. Being honest about my confusions about finding a "right way" to handle things allowed them to forgive me. I'd put a line up and say, "see this is where I started," and put a dot way at one end, "and this is perfect parenting", putting a dot at the other end. "Now I'm about right here," putting a dot roughly in the middle, "I'm aiming for here," put a dot about 3/4, "but that's about as far as I'll make it because I started here" and put a dot very close to the first one. So it will be up to you two to fully end this family legacy since you'll start here," out a dot between half and 3/4, "you'll be in a better position to be closer to perfect parents."

Interesting thing is, now that we discuss such things as adults, the times I thought were "my bad" the kids didn't have a problem with and some of what they do have a problem with, I didn't think was a problem at the time. Usually they were more annoyed when I let them get away with stuff than when I became a hard-ass and really punished them. I think when most kids try power plays they really hope to lose, because if the child is really the strongest and of course the child knows inherently it isn't qualified to be the strongest, their whole worlds feel unsafe and akimbo.

Are you talking about pack dominance? Brave New World allusions? Marvel Comics references? Some other connotation that escapes simple lookup on Wiki or Google? A little elucidation might be helpful.


Because otherwise it kind of sounds like you're praising your mighty tiger blood while dissing the woman cited in the OP, so I suspect that I'm missing what it is you're asserting.

Wait--I've got it! You're an Indigo!



No?

In no way did I glorify being an alpha, and oft said that I was sure there were better choices, at the time I couldn't think of them.

You are focusing on what you want to feel enraged about, not reading the whole thing. I get it, you truly dislike me, always have always will. So you throw up these little titles to make it look like the overall of what I said can be whittled down to one or two comments out of context. It's a trick for those of weak minds to follow your lead and also only focus on certain aspects. You do this all the time to everyone you dislike.

Honestly, you weren't even on my radar prior to your alpha:/omega musings, so it's not a matter of disliking you so much as it is a matter of finding your tone kimd of annoying. The fact that you leap right to full-on double persecution mode is unexpected but amusing nonetheless.

I don't know which "weak minds" you're talking about, either; you'll have to take that up with them.

As for "whittling down" what you wrote, I would observe that your tone was aggressively self-righteous and seemed far more interested in attacking the woman in the OP than in actually discussing the points raised. Not sure why you'd want to do that; is that one of your alpha superpowers?

Oh wait! Maybe it's one of those fox vs hedgehogs allusions? Or perhaps an arcane secret of Scientology? Regardless, you could easily have explained your terminology rather than dressing up a severe and dangerous interpersonal conflict in cool, edgy buzzwords.

Maybe next time.

The picture is of a much younger kid than the 13 year old the story tells about.

Last edited Sun Dec 16, 2012, 02:58 AM - Edit history (4)

But there never should have been a "pants incident":

And God knows I respect the challenges and the hardships of raising a mentally ill child. And I don't wish what happened on anyone, including Lanza's mother.

But at the same time I can't see how anyone would think that it would be a good idea to keep a small arsenal in the house that the mentally ill child had easy access to.

... and honestly, it wouldn't matter if they took every sharp or pointy object out of the house, the kid would find something. I once worked with a kid that was so dangerous that his only school supplies were paper and crayons. He wasn't allowed to ride the bus to school because he tried to bite the throat of the bus driver while she was driving, and when his Grandmother would bring him to school in the morning he had to be wearing sweatpants with no pockets and sandals.

We had so much control over his environment at school that we were relatively safe. He would occasionally bite, kick, or punch us when we weren't expecting, but you learned to be on your guard around him. At home though, his aging Grandmother didn't have such control. She had learned to remove all knives, scissors, utensils, tools, glassware, etc., but what she didn't realize was that when he would go outside to play in the backyard, he was taking sticks and sharpening them against the brick on the house.

One afternoon, she walked in on his shoving one of these sharpened sticks through the body of a pet fish. When she admonished him for this, he grabbed his 5 yo brother and placed the sharpened stick to his neck. The Grandmother eventually got the stick away from him, but not before he had stabbed her in the forearm. After being disarmed though, the kid began trying to break his brother's neck. The Grandmother called the police, and was able to throw herself on the kid to restrain him until they arrived.

He was out of the house for about a week, until he was returned and a similar indecent occurred after only a few days. This was a repeating cycle, until he was arrested for trying to burn the neighbor's house down and placed in a juvenile detention facility.

Kids with some emotional disturbances are just dangerous. It's a shame our mental hospitals are in the state they are in, because a lot of them do not belong on the street.

We're not talking about sharp objects. If he didn't have access to these weapons he wouldn't have been able to kill 26 people. I don't buy the "well he just would have used something else" nonsense NRA talking points. He was trained to shoot and knew fully well that those guns would give him the easiest path towards killing large amount of people.


It was completely irresponsible to keep these guns in the house.

I thought you were referring to the article where the woman had sharp objects in the house.

Many of us have a Beloved One wih a mental illness, and knows how difficult (at times impossible) it is to recieve any kind of help.

It's especially hard when it's a child. Been there, done that.

My heart goes out to this Mom and anyone else trying to navigate the school, police, insurance, courts, etc. to find answers.

poorly secured enough that Michael can get his hands on any of it, seemingly with very little trouble.

I've been reading more and more with the sneaking suspicion that maybe Adam Lanza was a nerd who might not have shown much pathology. he sounds a hell of a lot like my high school friends, introverted and smart.

I do know that if he'd shown any signs of illness, there was nothing his mother could have done to get him into treatment if he hadn't agreed to go.

Leaving the arsenal around was her fatal mistake.

If you have a child like that

A mentally ill person with a knife or baseball bat can't kill 27 people.

So you kinda missed the point.

killer's mother did ?

...I'm not sure taking him out of a gifted-student program and putting him in a "most-restrictive" one which is essentially "free babysitting" with lots of rules is going to do anything but make his situation worse.

And she should probably be happy she lives in a state where making threats of suicide can get a teenager hospitalized; here in Washington, if she were taking him to the hospital in such a scenario, they would be required to ask Michael if he REALLY intended to kill himself. If he said no (and, after calming down, most teens would), the hospital would have no legal right to do anything but release him.

... or monopolize all the teacher's resources.

When I worked with emotionally disturbed children, we had plenty of kids that tested 2-3 grades above their grade level, but there is no way you could mainstream them without absolutely destroying the chances for learning of every other child in the classroom. Just because they are placed in the "least restrictive environment" doesn't mean they aren't educated to their level.

Or Haldol??

She makes NO mention of full time meds for her little demon.

Odd, that.

... doctors never seem to keep kids on the same psych meds for long to the kids' detriment. The kids will be on a med program that seems to be working, and then someone will notice a side effect like weight gain, reduced appetite, dry-mouth, or difficulty getting the kid out of bed in the morning, and the doc will change their meds.

Next thing you know, the kid is out of control for about a month until the new meds take effect. Then, someone will notice weight gain, reduced appetite, dry-mouth...

Rinse and repeat.

There is obviously something going wrong with the mental processes of this child. And if the processes are related to a disfunction of the brain then how is punishment going to change anything? You cetainly wouldn't punish a child for having symptoms from diabetes would you? No, you wouldn't. You would teach that child what the symptoms of the condition are and how to deal with it in such a way that is helpful instead of harmful.

I know from my own experience with severe anxiety that the only way I can change anything is to learn my symptoms and change my behaviour and responses accordingly.

Why aren't they teaching this child what responses and behaviours are symptoms of the disorder and then teaching him strategies for correcting that behaviour? In the post, she talks about how the child is aware that he is not behaving well, and he applogizes. But I suspect, that he is not in full control of his behaviour, that is what makes it a disorder. Did it ever occur to anyone that perhaps the one most hurt by this disorder, or psychiatric condition is the child himself because he sees himself behave in ways he cannot always control. I mean, how scary is that when you are 10 years old? Then to punish him on top it seems to be, sorry to say for those who believe punishiment is the correct response, abusive.


I've said it before, though not here, and I'll say it again, I don't believe that our current metal health system just does not know how to deal with certain mental health circumstances. There is a foundational, whether acknowledged or not, belief that mental illness is a choice. It is not more a choice than arthritis.