i know why the caged mommy kills her child and then herself
It’s happened again.
People are wondering why.
I don’t. I know exactly why she did it. The problem with mothers of autistic people is that they’re human beings. We require a minimal amount of sleep and potential solutions. We perform best when we have hope and get grouchy when it runs out.
Without realizing it families of autistic people often isolate themselves. When you’re caring for someone with an illness where symptoms are intensified by the world you tend to avoid the world without even realizing it. You stay home and keep the world out. You’re so overwhelmed and feel like you just want to be left alone a little while to catch up, to catch your breath. You’re holed up with this cacophony of madness. You lose the few but essential scraps of hope, perspective and support the community may want to provide, and the community isn’t there to witness the lonely spiral.
You truly go mad. I don’t think moms tend to snap more because fathers aren’t attentive or just as overwhelmed, but my experience has been that you’re faced with a million where everyone is looking to mommy for an answer. And often there’s just no answer. You eventually just try to handle everything on your own.
There’s no good answer for it. It just sucks.
It also seems like this is happening as kids are coming of age. Or when they should be coming of age. A couple of years ago I would hate running errands with him because his symptoms just looked like bratty behavior to civilians. The last year I’ve noticed people seem a lot warmer to us. It’s partly because he’s improved, but also because he’s older, so it’s clear there’s “something up” with him. Autistic people look normal, so as they get older their weaknesses become more pronounced. Lord of the Flies will be nine in July, and I’ve been thinking a lot more about whether he’ll graduate from high school, college, live on his own, get married or have his own family.
These women are likely facing the reality that their predicament will likely last the rest of their lives and the worry about what will happen to their children after their gone.
I know exactly what you mean. My deepest darkest secret thoughts have traveled this path, especially in those early years. Most people simply cannot comprehend that level of utter helplessness. We can.
Yeah. You know we’re still at my mom’s because our house hasn’t sold, and I’ve been wondering lately if we should have just stayed put, but this reminded me why we had to move to where we have support. I was going nuts.
And it’s not like I’m really needing to call on people a lot, but just knowing I have people to call who I don’t have to explain the situation to is such a load off.
I think part of the problem is that no one knows how adult autistic children will act or what kind of treatment they will need because autism hasn’t been a real diagnosis that can be tracked in adulthood. Of course there have been autistic people for decades, it’s just that no one knew that because they were misdiagnosed and likely sent to institutions.
I can’t imagine how hard it must be for a mom to wonder who is going to take care of their child when they die or even how it’s going to be paid for. And with being isolated or at least feeling isolated, they feel they have no other choice.
It’s very sad that mothers of autistic children have to feel so alone and without help. This needs to change.
There’s been another case like this since I wrote this.
I have a cousin I’ve never met who was born severely disabled in the 50s. I think there was an accident with the umbilical cord. My aunt and uncle kept him home as long as they could, but finally had to institutionalize him. She died in the 80s. I always felt for how hard that must have been for them, but now it just chills me.
I can’t imagine how awful it would feel to not be able to care for your neediest child. And that used to just be how things were done.
Back then, if you had a child with any disablity, the doctors pressured the parents to institutionalize from birth. Down’s Syndrome kids were considered mongoloids and basically vegetables. They used to sterilize disabled girls in those places! How sad it was for those kids until the first few parents said, “NO. I’m taking my child home to raise.”