Recently, there was a news article about a couple in California who kept their 11 year old autistic son in a large cage when he was having violent outbursts. They also had two other children, 8 and 6. The couple were arrested and their children put into the foster care system.
I have friends (and hope to still have them) who disagreed with putting the children into foster care. That because the children were in good health and the two "normal" children were never put into a cage, then the parents should just be given a warning and everything else was good. That because the parents were poor, with little education and English wasn't even their language, that what the parents did was understandable. What else were they to do when faced with such a difficult child?
Learn. Ask for help. Demand help.
I still have the scars, physical and mental ones, from when my middle child was violent with me. I put myself in front of him to keep him from hurting himself and others, especially his siblings. There's nothing like having your child come after you with a shovel (and multiple other items) with the intent to seriously injure you that makes you question everything you know about God, the medical community and the educational system. But I never considered that my child was less than human. That he didn't have any rights to be treated as a human, no matter what he did.
Being poor ISN"T a valid excuse. Little education ISN"T a valid excuse. I've been on many online boards where other parents asking for advice for their children are poor and have little education as well. They want what was best for their child. Their safety and sometimes sanity were the last things on their mind. What was best for their child was their priority.
If this was any other type of special needs, would it make this behavior okay? If the child was blind? Deaf? What if it was a senior citizen with dementia, who becomes violent and likes to escape?
According to the comments that I've read, it's okay to do this to an autistic child. The second class human. It's okay to treat them as less than human.
NO! It's not. When we start assigning levels of humans, then we descend into another holocaust, where if someone is different, then it's okay to treat them as less than human. As animals.
I thought society had learned that lesson already.
