Aswad
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Joined: 4/4/2007
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ORIGINAL: kdsub
Why should I know that and why does that make a difference in your refusing to acknowledge basic problems people with autism often face.
I'm not refusing to acknowledge those problems, I'm acknowledging two sets of problems, and stating that one of those sets is greater, which doesn't diminish the other set.
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Many autistic children have a difficult time developing a moral compass and they assign guilt often inappropriately.
It's been my experience most develop a solid moral GPS that doesn't always agree with the compass, and assign guilt correctly according to what information they have, rather than appropriately. It's also been my experience that competent child rearing tends to alleviate this problem, and that sufficiently competent child rearing is rarely available to them.
There's a symmetry in this position that you don't seem to get. Basically, if I do an average of the ASD people I've been exposed to, and an average of the NT people I've been exposed to, I could use the standards of either group to make a stereotypical assertion about the other group, and that assertion would include issues with the moral compass either way. There's just more of the NTs than of the ASDs, and a prevailing perception among NTs that a majority tends to be right, historical evidence to the contrary.
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I have never said his autism was the direct cause of this tragedy but that it possibly contributed to it.
Of course. Everything he is/was was part of what he thought, and thus contributed, some of it supporting his decision, some of it detracting from it. Also, no doubt, his perceptions played a part, and as you know, autists and aspies both tend to have perceptions that don't align very well with neurotypical perceptions.
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Let me give you an example of how some autistic children react to certain situations and how it is perfectly possible that his disability explains why he killed the children.
I already said I'm familiar with some of these examples.
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We have an argument and because I am autistic I over react and become enraged inappropriately.
That's a seperate diagnosis in the upcoming DSM.
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When we confront our mother she is very busy and tells us she does not have time for our arguing because she has to get ready for her class at school tomorrow and for us to knock it off before we both get a spanking.
That's bad parenting.
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AND the children at school whom I now believe are directly the cause of my mother not having time for me.
They are directly the cause, though she of course has the option to prioritize her children over her work.
If she were a better parent, she would take the time to explain these things, and they would make a lot more sense to you; that's been my experience, across the board.
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Autistic people often inappropriately assign guilt to others.
Inappropriately, in this example, but not incorrectly; neurotypicals also often inappropriately assign guilt, by the way, just according to a different template.
Again, the parents should have explained things better.
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I am saying it is very possible this is why he could have taken his anger out on his mother AND the school children.
In the spirit of your example, let me provide you with another possible example:
The mother is under a lot of stress at work, and under a lot of stress from dealing with a struggling son with a disability, and a recent conflict over something related to the class, with four of the people at the school being the focal point of this conflict. She can't handle it, and kills herself with one of her many guns. Parents have tried to put forth having an autistic kid as a mitigating circumstance for killing the kid and even tried passing it off as a mercy killing, and teachers are often under a lot of stress, so this level of stress isn't far fetched, nor is suicide very far fetched. She does this during a brief reactive psychosis, and doesn't think clearly enough to leave a note.
The son comes home, finds his mother dead by her own hand, and he knows the source of the despair that drove her over the brink. He heads off in a fit of rage, which isn't necessarily very visible to anyone that doesn't know him, and he kills the people that caused- but, crucially, aren't responsible for- his mother's suicide. The police turn up, and he doesn't want to carry all that pain and rage to jail, so he shoots himself, being after all already distraught enough for suicide.
Most people don't kill a kid they consider to have killed their loved ones... but in the USA, that is acceptable, even to the courts.
A lot of people don't distinguish well between being the cause of something, and being responsible for something. In this example, simply teaching the kid the difference between those two might have led to a dramatically different outcome. In my experience, ASDs have little difficulty with this distinction, if they've actually been taught it, or come up with the concept themselves. Also in my experience, parents of ASDs and average therapists often fail to impart the distinction, which tends to result in a very different pattern of thinking for the ASD kid, one that appears unpredictable to the parents and therapists, but which is fairly predictable to anyone that does understand how the ASD kid actually thinks.
Note that I'm not saying this happened, as we know he tried to get a gun two days prior, I'm saying it's another example of how such a thing could have happened. Just illustrating that I can see many ways autism can contribute to a course of action that can seem to be bizarre to others. Of course, executing children seems bizarre to me, regardless of whether it's a court doing it, or a private citizen, but that's a cultural norm, I guess; ASDs have problems with cultural norms, particularly the inconsistencies in them.
It'll be interesting to see if the girlfriend and friend turn up at some point, and whether that adds pieces to the puzzle.
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Over the years with my autistic sister I have seen this particular type of behavior over and over and over. There has been on occasion violence but that has been rare…but often she blames people inappropriately for actions they had nothing to do with.
Feel free to take some examples on the other side.
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but he DID respond with rage and directed it inappropriately which at least points to the possibility that his autism was a contributing factor.
It may well have been a contributing factor. I'm not disputing that.
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This in my opinion was inexcusable given the mental state of this child.
We know nothing about the previous mental state of the child.
We also don't know if the mother had stereotyped interests, which is definitely possible, given that there is a hereditary component; if she had a stereotyped interest, it is possible she was sharing what she had to share, including her passion for guns, with him. My experience is that guns can be a positive influence on autistics.
Of course, I would never have let the kid have access to the gun safe; I think we can agree that's a game changer.
An interesting question is why he had access. If it turns out he didn't normally have access, we can't really blame the mother for much of anything. If it turns out he did normally have access, we can certainly blame her for that, but I don't think we can blame her for teaching him how to use the guns.
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There are many other ways to engage a child, with a possible underdeveloped moral compass, that do not include weapons for murder...
I'm thinking she was in a better position to judge whether or not he had a well developed moral compass than us, at the time.
And, again, storage and access are important unanswered questions.
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How about baking cookies or hiking or riding a bike...come on Aswad...guns is the only passion she had?
If she was a high functioning autist or aspie herself, then a single, narrow field of interest is not at all uncommon, nor would a divorce be uncommon, nor would it be uncommon for the kid to prefer her company to that of a presumably neurotypical father in that case. Some ASDs don't communicate affection well, while others communicate it very well with "others of their own kind", and some communicate it well with anyone.
As you said, there's a lot of variation in ASD folks.
IWYW,
— Aswad.
_____________________________
"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind.
From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way.
We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
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RE: Mental balance as humans - 
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