Peter Lanza speaks

Whacko sounds like a reliable medical term.

 

Agreed.

I think people will go to great lengths to rationalize/deny their children's behavior.

 

In the story, it mentions he had been diagnosed with a sensory processing disorder at age 5, so it wasn't as if they were unaware or ignorant something was amiss.

 

When I was in elementary school, I used to draw all sorts of gruesome stuff, including coming to school with guns and shooting people. But it wasn't because I was crazy or dangerous, it was because I was a little boy and I loved GI Joe and war movies and playing superhero, or as the case may be, supervillain. In our post-Columbine world, those drawings would have attracted attention, but in the early 90s, nobody ever said anything about it to my knowledge. Nor did they need to, because clearly I never committed any crimes. I know what Lanza did was heinous, but to assume his drawings should have been a giveaway of his dangerous nature is inaccurate.

 

Nobody's assuming anything. But, that's about as glaring a sign that exists that you should get your kid checked out by a mental health professional ASAP.

 

I think he was checked out. Many times.

(Aside: I have a cousin who was a late-talker and had some quirky, OCD-like tendencies as a young kid and she's an absolutely brilliant and seemingly well-adjusted 10-year-old now. I don't think it's a rule that just because you have a "weird kid" you have to go to 100 shrinks. Sometimes weird kids are just weird kids.)

As for the mom, I think she was a victim (long before she was shot) but she allowed herself to be victimized and basically be a prisoner in her own home. I think toward the end her pride prevented her from seeking help that she (and her son) needed.

The most stunning thing for me was that they tried medication once for a few days and he stopped taking it because of side effects. He was put on Lexapro, which half of America is on and is heavily prescribed precisely because it has so few side effects. And when he couldn't handle that for three days, they never tried medicine again? *That* was a huge failure on their part, IMO.

I've got no problem with the dad's frank talk. Some of his conclusions are jarring, but they seem real, honest and raw. And God knows, he's had a lot of time to think about it.

 

Read the piece, thought there were a lot of missed opportunities.
It sounds like the writer let Lanza dictate the course of the interviews.

 

Let's let the Sandy Hook parents come up with a description of young Adam. Wonder what kind of fancy medical term they'll use?

 

The kid was sick.

It's a tragedy for all the families involved.

 

This is not G.I. Joe fighting Russians.

 

My takeaway from this paragraph is that he is starting to defend himself from potential lawsuits coming from a 100 different directions.

If he can get people to think that the schools did not give him proper help, an outside source did, then he can deflect blame from himself and place it on the schools.

And on a bullshit meter that the school division never mentioned Asperger’s or autism until he was 13 breaks the needle. Of course, those CST documents are closed and I doubt this guy is going to allow them to be opened up.

 

Frankly, I find the plot of Hansel and Gretel to be as or more twisted than the above.