I will close by saying that I continue to be upset at the lack of regard for the child’s feelings in this situation and for the impact on him. I continue to be concerned that a great deal of energy is being expended defending his mother and very little is being expended defending him. I continue to hope that people will one day wake up and realize that there is a great deal of territory between hiding in silence and shame, on the one hand, and breaching the privacy of a 13-year-old on the Internet, on the other. And mostly, I hope that the young man gets the help he needs to heal, to deal with his feelings, and to feel good about himself, because he’s clearly a brilliant young man who deserves the very best.

I’ve also been a friend, an ally, and a supporter of the parents of disabled children for several years, many of whom have commented in support of this post. So I’m well aware of what people go through, and I’m well aware of what it takes from them.

Going back, I see all too well the problems in the way she went about voicing her own desperation. I wonder what her son’s experience is, and I wonder what channels he has for making his experience understood. I wonder if her son has a voice. I wonder if he is allowed to use it. But much of this comes from my own memories of being a sort of troubled child who took years to find any voice at all and who, long after childhood, is still sometimes terrified to speak.

Like most here, I do hear the mother’s pain, and I see her desperation for some sort of response from her community that would offer something other than drugs and/or jail. But underneath it I see her son’s pain broadcast in the third person and then reamplified to nearly an infinite extent, and without any indication that he had a say in whether this would have been made common knowledge at all.

And I also wonder if we know what we are doing with this internet, you know? This sort of instant, total, permanant exposure of oneself and others has never been possible on this scale, and it availability as a medium only grows, only gives more and more “regular people” a way of revealing everything to everybody with one keystroke.

I dunno. It’s like I want to cut this mom some slack, given that we are all new at this particular form of communication. But at the same time, her post was, unwittingly perhaps, painfuly symptomatic of the very problem she is asking for help with: our cultural disposition toward mental/emotional/neurological difference.

It may be that I need to write my own blog post. But I did want to say that I appreciate your tenacity with this. We have to learn how to have these conversations, as painful as they are, without rushing to shut each other down. Thanks for making this space.

I also have real issues with how negatively she talks about her child. I agree with you that one day he will read what she writes and I can’t imagine the damage. Yes his teachers, friends, therapists also will read everything she writes. The possibility of terrible ridicule is so real it is frightening.

What is worse is that the fact that she thinks her child is headed for being a mass murdered. Simply because he is having issues doesn’t mean he will become a monster. Her attitude towards him is despicable.

This woman is one of those types of parents I despise the most. Someone who makes their child’s issues all about them. Her blog is not about the failure of the mental health system to help her son. Its most definitely not about her child. It is look at me me me me.

You bring up excellent points. Even more important, you write very well, which, I must say, is a lost art these days, especially on blogs.

Well done.