As I noted above, I have been in contact with Katie’s grandfather, so anything I say about this case is very much tinged with my personal perspective; as regards this case and trial, it’s probably very hard for anyone not to have a lot of feelings.

Kristina, I think that most people who use the term “desperation”, have never been in a truly desperate situation. Very few people have ever been in a truly desperate situation. A situation where one truly feels one is in a life and death struggle. It can be extremely difficult to understand unless one has experienced it. Just like being depressed, just like being suicidal, just like being in love, just like being a parent. Unless you have experienced it, it is extremely difficult to understand. Andrea Yates didn’t have a child with a disability but she found herself in a desperate situation and killed all 5 of her children.

autismdaddy, huh? Have you ever been in a desperate situation? How many people have you actually seen in a desperate situation? Usually people try to hide that they are in a desperate situation because a common and usual response (by NTs) is to bully such a person to try and make it worse. This is the reality that people on the spectrum face each and every day. They need to pretend they are doing ok because if NTs find out they are not doing ok, the NTs attack and bully them and make it worse.

The most usual response to a truly desperate situation is a suicide attempt. The most usual response by the family of a suicide victim is to deny that the victim was ever in a desperate situation.

My statements are only about generalities and physiology. I make it clear that I have no knowledge of the specifics of this case. If what I write makes you so uncomfortable that you need to somehow refute it and attack me for “pontificating” and call my ideas “rubbish”, then perhaps you need to examine what it is about your views that makes you so uncomfortable to read what I have written. “Pontificating” denotes arrogance and dogmatic views. If you bothered to read what I wrote, you would know that it is filled with facts and logic and references peer reviewed literature. Perhaps it arrives at a wrong or mistaken idea. If so, I would appreciate knowing where the error is in the chain of facts and logic that I have laid out so I can correct it. It is not arrogance to have confidence in a well researched and well thought out idea. It is arrogance to dismiss such an idea without facts and logic.

There are many who invoke the “desperation” of raising a child with autism to justify chelation, aversion therapy, giving children electric shocks, exorcism, and any number of horrific treatments. Michelle Dawson has no shortage of horrific stories of how she has been treated because of her autism. Many autistic adults have similar stories. There are some parents who have justified risky treatments by saying their child would be better off dead than with autism. Autism Speaks has even glorified a parent’s wish that his autistic child would drown by making a video of him saying it (Autism Every Day).

And yet you don’t let that stop you pontificating. Fascinating.

From what I’ve read, the people who do know the individual circumstances of this case, are agreed that Karen McCarron is someone who was about as far from desperate as you can get. Certainly the fact that several doctors have examined her and found her to be not in any way unbalanced either now or then tends to indicate that both you and she are talking rubbish.

What I meant by writing “desperation should not be a fact” is that being a special needs parent does not mean one has to feel “desperate.” But then I recall how many times one hears that “autism is a devastating diagnosis”; that one is told that one’s child “will never do X”; when relatives and friends say “I feel so sorry that this happened to you” etc. etc. —I think we’ve all read similar statements and had them said to us. There is an unspoken societal message that having a disabled child means (1) your life is going to be terrible and (2) you should feel bad and are deserving of sympathy. I’ve been through (who hasn’t?) these sorts of feelings but I don’t feel this way anymore and (this is me; I am a pragmatic person) when not feeling like this has, in my very specific experience, helped me do better by Charlie. Teaching Charlie and seeing him learn and grow has been an ever-affirming experience.

I don’t think anyone can read about this case without feeling something very overwhelming.