#lovemychildren

Is selling the story more important than the people it hurts?

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Does the news need to blame someone so much that they don’t care if they stigmatize a whole group of people who have done nothing wrong? Tonight I received a text from a colleague asking me if I heard the Sandy Hook killer had Asperger’s Syndrome? I thought I was going to be ill. I really thought the news had let go of that. I remember when the shooting happened, and a diner owner had reported that to the news. He said the mom had told him once (years earlier) that her son was being tested for Asperger’s Syndrome. TESTED!!! Tested does not equal a diagnosis, and even if it did, it does not mean that was the cause for the shooting.

The shooters own brother said he had been diagnosed with a personality disorder. That could mean so many things, but again did not mean Asperger’s Syndrome. And just so we are clear, when the brother was interviewed by cnsnews.com, he was interviewed under anonymity because he was under orders from the investigators not to disclose information to the media. All of the sources I have searched up weren’t credible enough to say for sure or even to say “could be” or “might be” or “we have an inkling” that the shooter had Asperger’s Syndrome. Where were the interviews with the shooter’s therapists and doctors? You know, the ones who were actually treating him.

Having a child with Asperger’s Syndrome, I know first hand the stigma he faces in our world without having the national news pointing a finger at him. I thought our society had out grown away from the mentality of the Salem Witch trials, but I guess I figured wrong. When a tragedy happens, everyone wants to point fingers and come up with an easy solution to the problem, even if that solution could ostracize a whole group of citizens unfairly. As long as it doesn’t affect us, why not, right? Wrong! It’s time our society grows up and realizes that not everything can be wrapped up nicely in 30 – 60 minutes like a television show. As a society we need to get off our social media and start educating ourselves on the world around us.

I am not saying that the killer wasn’t mentally ill, but that’s all that needed to be reported. Putting a name to his illness without 100 percent proof is unconscionable. Yet, tonight NBC news did it again. My colleague pointed out that the information was coming from the shooter’s father and that this time it was a major news show that was airing it, so she trusted the validity. It made me wonder too, so I went on to watch the interview. The only problem when I watched the interview is that the interview wasn’t with the father of the shooter. It was with a reporter who had interviewed the father. In other words, it was one reporter interviewing another reporter on his interpretation of the father’s words. Might I point out that the shooter’s parents were divorced, and it was the mother who had been seeking out the mental health help for her son, so now we have a reporter interviewing another reporter on his interpretation of his interview with the father who was actually giving his second hand knowledge of what the mother had learned year’s earlier. Have any of you played the telephone game as kids? How well did that information get passed around the room? Well, these are adults playing that game, yet it has major affects on a whole group of citizens from around the world.

Instead of pointing fingers at individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome and causing them to be feared like the witches were in Salem, or the Jewish people and the Japanese were during World War II, or even how the Muslims have been since 911. We are so quick to blame a whole group of people for something one or a few might have caused. It is soooo much easier and quicker. Instead we need to educate ourselves about mental health issues and find ways to help each other, instead of judging each other. The time and energy it takes to point fingers and gossip, people could put that towards lifting up their fellow citizens.

I read Frankenstein recently to a group of my college ESL students. I had never read Frankenstein before, and it brought me to tears. The monster wasn’t evil and ugly, society made him evil and ugly. Even his own master turned against him because of how ugly he thought he was. He didn’t bother to get to know him and love him, instead he banished him and sent him out in the cold to die. We do that to people everyday and then people cry out “what’s wrong with the world”? We all need to take a look in our own mirrors, including myself. Not one of us is perfect, and if we quit striving to be perfect and accept each other for who we are, we might be able to walk out of our glass houses and get to know some truly amazing people that we have been building up walls to protect ourselves from.

My husband did not want a child who was different and walked away and started a new life, pretending the first one never existed. He tossed his kids out, just like Frankenstein did his creation. No one ostracizes him! When I searched for positive, male role models in my community for my son, no one stuck with it because it’s not easy to work with a child with special needs, it’s easier to be a big brother to a child who is “normal”, or to go to a foreign country for one week a year to volunteer. Those make better Facebook photos. I never thought I would have to be afraid to say my son has Asperger’s Syndrome, but now due to sensationalized reporting, my son and a whole group of innocent people, have been stigmatized even further. I can only pray that awareness and education will one day reach others in society and that we stop hating a community for what one person did.

Happy Birthday to my lost child

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Today is my oldest son’s 24th birthday.  Some would be full of joy, but instead waking up and thinking about it, brought me to my knees.  He was my first-born and I have never forgotten the day I found out I was pregnant with him.  I was at my parent’s house, with my fiancée, addressing wedding invitations.  The phone rang and it was a nurse calling about my pregnancy test earlier in the day.  The only reason I agreed to the test was because during the marriage license blood test, I learned I had a low Rubella count and the doctors couldn’t give me the vaccine if there was a possibility I was pregnant.  I laughed at the thought of it, as I knew I took birth control, but nevertheless, the doctor insisted on the test. 

To my shock, the test came back positive.  I just stood there in my parent’s basement, holding the phone, speechless.  I did not know what to say.  My fiancée was scared something was wrong and begged me to tell him what the nurse said.  I looked at him and told him I was pregnant.  To my further shock, he grabbed and hugged me and said, “you are having a boy and his name is Cody”.

My pregnancy and delivery were extremely hard, but were all worth it when I held my beautiful son in my arms.  He was the most beautiful baby I had ever seen; he had stolen my heart. I went on to have two more incredible children, but still, no one forgets the feeling of having a first child.  It is so scary.  Children aren’t born with instruction manuals, so I was constantly worried about being the perfect mother.  I have learned through the years, I was not.   I could have given my son all of the love in the world, but it would not ever erase that I had chosen an abuser as his father.  

I didn’t know his father was abusive, that was something I slowly learned over the years.  It’s like putting a frog in a pot of hot boiling water, it will immediately hop out, but if you put that same frog in a pot of warm, comforting water and – s l o w l y – turn up the heat, the frog won’t know to jump out before it’s too late.  That is how my ex-husband introduced me to abuse.  He courted me and was charming, loving, and doting; he made me feel like I was the only person in his world. It wasn’t until he had a ring on my finger and our first child was born that he started to gently turn up the heat.  He always had reasons for the way he talked to and treated me.  I knew I could take anything he sent my way, as long as he didn’t hurt my children.  I never wanted a divorce because I may not have been there to protect my children from him if he got custody, so in my mind, I thought it was better that I endure his abuse until my kids were grown and then attempt to escape his madness.

What my husband’s abuse never prepared me for was the torture I would suffer after I had left.  I realized I couldn’t wait until my kids were grown because once he kept turning up the heat, I didn’t know if I would survive and then my kids would be left with no one to protect them.  So when my children were 17, 13, and 10, I fled; that was almost 7 years ago.   I got all of us into counseling and have worked 18 hours a day to be the best parent and person I can be.   My younger two children have flourished in our new environment, but my ex was successful in turning my oldest against me.

We were always so close, and he told me how proud he was of me that I had the strength to leave, but a year afterwards, he started talking to his dad again and I saw him being drug down into my ex’s way of thinking.  He told me that year that abuse is genetic and he had no other choice, but to follow in his dad’s footsteps.  I felt those words as if someone had slit open my chest and ripped my heart from inside of me.   When I had my children, I thought of the beautiful futures they would have; I didn’t picture them to grow up with anger and hatred.

Today when I woke up and knew it was his birthday, I pictured the boy, who when he was three, would pull me into the living room to dance to video music on VH1.  When he was in elementary school, he loved to have me play Lover Boy’s “Working for the Weekend” everyday on the way to school.   I never missed one of his concerts, soccer games, basketball games, or swim meets.  In the summer in California, we would go swimming every day and on the way home from Six Flags, we would turn on the Backstreet Boys and sing their songs, at the top of our lungs, all the way home.

Yet, one by one, we lost his grandmother, his cousin, and then my dad.  With each death, he started to build a wall that I didn’t know how to get through.  Unfortunately, that wall has grown so high; he may never reach around and grab my hand.  Even though, I see him once in awhile, we have not had an honest conversation in five years.  I miss my son with all of my heart and every year when he turns a year older, I wonder if I will ever know him again.  He lives less than a mile from me, but it might as well be a thousand.  No matter how much I loved that little boy, I cannot embrace a 24-year old man, who chooses hatred over love.  I can only live my life with honor, and then hope, one day, he will see that he too can choose that path.    Until then, I guess there will be days I wake up in tears, not just for what I have lost, but for the future, he too, deserved.