My beautiful girl, Maddie.

When it comes to most major news stories I have no more expertise than the next person. Sadly, I have a better understanding than most about what happened in Newtown, Connecticut, though. There was a school shooting last day of my senior year at my high school. I grew up in a home with a violent, mentally ill parent. I am the father of 3 young children. My oldest is on the autism spectrum.

You might guess the school shooting would be the most connective event to what happened last Friday. Actually not. Even though it wasn’t a large school I attended, I did not know either of the students involved, as they were a couple years younger than me. Like the testimony you’ve had heard from people that were there at school shootings, I remember hearing a popping, almost firecracker sound. One male student, who had been broken up with by his target, walked up to her while she was taking a test in the hallway outside of French class and killed her, then he turned the gun on himself. It seems to strange to me now that I wasn’t more emotionally impacted by this tragic event, but that is my truth. It still just feels like a surreal moment that I only feel connected to because it happened in the halls I would walk every weekday.

Now what does makes me feel more connected to the trauma that was going on in the Lanza family begins with my father. He was someone who battled mental illness all of his adult life. At one point, after trying to kill himself by jumping in front of a truck, he was committed to the Iowa State Mental Institution. This was the late 70′s and the medical understanding of mental illness was not that sophisticated. He was diagnosed as being manic depressive/bi-polar. I can remember visiting him a couple times at the Nut House (what most people called it) and it was truly frightening. I was 13 at the time and I wasn’t prepared to deal with what I witnessed. People walking the halls like zombies, crying and wailing and screaming. The smell was awful. I’ve performed standup at a state penitentiary and my experience leaves me with little doubt that I would rather be holed up there than in the mental institution I visited in 1980.

When my father was released, he was not better, he was worse. The medical plan for him was to take his lithium medication to moderate his mood swings. Before this I had been a major target of his mental and physical swings, so I was glad that these drugs would help him. The problem was, like many people who are manic depressive, he wasn’t looking forward to losing the highs that his disorder gave him, so he rarely took them. My Mom, brother, and I no longer lived with him when he was released, but that didn’t keep him from terrorizing us.

My Dad had weekend visitation rights, as my parents were divorced by now, but he would come late to our apartment on many nights he wasn’t supposed to be there and bang on the door, threatening to kill us or himself. I can remember all of us scared, trying to hide in our apartment only to eventually have to threaten to call the police as his banging and yelling outside the door would make us worried we would be murdered or if not that, at least evicted from the government housing we were living in. Eventually my Mom made a very brave choice and told us we were no longer going to visit my dad on the weekends as his inappropriate behavior was dangerous, despite her knowing he would stop paying the child support, which was money we desperately needed at that time.

Why I bring up this story is that from the age of 10 until I was in my late 20′s, I always feared my Dad snapping and killing family members, people he worked with, or even complete strangers. He was the proverbial ticking time bomb. Eventually his continued anti-social, dangerous behavior had him institutionalized again. This time he was force fed his meds at higher doses. He changed after this. He was lethargic and didn’t seem like the same guy at all. It was like he became a shell of the man he was and this shell was definitely cracked. He became the man he was worried that his meds would make him. On one hand it was sad, as he was slow to move and think, but sometimes society has to make these decisions when someone is potentially dangerous to others. I’m glad my Dad’s anger was neutered. It gave a lot of peace to people who were afraid of him.

My intention is not to get into a political gun battle here. What I will say is that I’m really glad that my father never had any automatic weapons in the house when I lived with him. I totally believe his temper would have had him waving it in our face or pistol-whipping us with it. Those would have been the best scenarios because I don’t think his violent temper would have stopped there. I know the gun laws are tougher now for mentally ill people to buy weapons, but keep in mind that before he was institutionalized, his record was clean in the legal system. His record was not clean for the 3 of us (my Mom, my Brother, and Myself) that lived in fear of him, though.

Now let’s come to the my daughter, Maddie. She is the love of my life. My wife, Susan and I, spent over 6 years trying to get pregnant to have a child. Finally, through the miracle of IVF, we had Maddie. She was a happy, sweet, and as we heard from what it seemed like everyone–she was one of the most beautiful babies they had ever seen. As blissful as this time was, Maddie was not reaching her developmental milestones, so we eventually had test after test to try to figure out what was wrong. In her 2′s, she was diagnosed with autism.

Now for those of you that don’t understand autism, don’t feel badly, it’s complicated. My thoughts on trying to explain autism to the uninitiated is like trying to explain the show LOST to someone who has never seen it. Here is Webster’s Definition of autism.

a variable developmental disorder that appears by age three and is characterized by impairment of the ability to form normal social relationships, by impairment of the ability to communicate with others, and by stereotyped behavior patterns
That is a good start. What I always like to state is that autism has a wide spectrum. Sure people on the spectrum share some of the same traits, but then, so do most people who are not on the spectrum. Some people on the autism spectrum will live fairly typical lives, while others will need great assistance. I just want to be clear that what I tell you about my daughter does not mean that someone is the way all people on the spectrum are. This is my daughter’s story.

I would not like someone to try to describe me in a paragraph, but that is what I’m going to try to attempt to do in explaining Maddie as a baby.

Maddie was one of the easiest babies ever to have. She didn’t cry much, as she almost always seemed happy, except for when she had gastrointestinal issues that she battled. (This is very common for people with autism.) She laughed a lot and flapped her arms a lot, which we just saw as her being happy. Even though she wasn’t reaching her developmental milestones, which worried us greatly, her attitude was so great we were not as depressed as you might of thought.
Now when she was finally diagnosed, it wasn’t total misery, as we wanted some kind of answers, just to give us some understanding of what we needed to do to help her. While we couldn’t afford a lot of therapies we would have loved to have done, the state First Step therapists who saw her on a weekly basis were wonderful and were a great resource of knowledge for us.

Here’s a dirty little secret that is rarely discussed. When a child with special needs is younger, people are very sympathetic to them, because they are cuter and pose less of a threat to their existence. There is a sweeter innocence to them. It’s when these people with special needs get older that it becomes more difficult for those strangers not to look at these people as freakish. Freakish is a tough word to write, but I think it’s pretty accurate for how some look at my now 9 year old daughter.

Her temper started showing itself after we had our twins. Like many people with special needs, she is very sensitive to loud sounds and if you were unaware, babies are really FREAKING loud. Put that in stereo and twins were a very bad equation for our home. Maddie was 4 when the twins appeared and her frustration manifested itself in her trying to hit these fragile little noisemakers. For 2 years we never were able to let her be in the same room as the little ones without us being in between them, as we didn’t trust what she would do.

I will always remember a moment when I was changing my son Sam’s poopy diaper. His twin sister Mallory starting wailing in the middle of this. Maddie came running over to hit the then 6 month old heavy metal screecher. I sprang up and all I could do was leap and push Maddie hard to the ground to keep her from slugging Mallory. I had just pushed to the ground my 4 year old with special needs to protect her baby sister. Mallory continued to wail, as I picked her up and rocked her, my hands covered with diaper cream. My sweet Maddie was lying on the ground now, crying hard, partly because it hurt her and more because it shocked her that her Daddy could do something like this. All this noise had startled Sam enough to have him join his sisters, which wasn’t helped by him still laying naked on his back. At this point, I joined my 3 children, breaking down on the floor, emotionally wiped out. I had never felt so helpless. For those first 2 years, my wife Susan and I were in a perpetual case of nervous breakdown.

I can’t say this is the only time I’ve lost my temper with Maddie. Fortunately this was the most physically aggressive I acted out in my anger. Considering the corporal punishment my Dad handed out to me on a regular business, I guess it’s not a huge deal in comparison, but that moment still haunts me. I know Maddie can’t help her inappropriate behavior most of the time, but it doesn’t always make it easier. Many times she has slugged me, her Mom, her siblings, teachers, fellow students. It is not a weekly thing, but she will go through stretches where she acts out. Fortunately the only people she has ever left any real marks on are me. When you are hit hard I promise the first reaction you have is not wanting to calmly respond with “Now let’s make good choices”, even though that is the response you have to try to muster up.

Now do I believe she would ever try to kill someone? Not in anyway. Her rage is in short bursts, as it is done to get your attention more than to hurt you. One punch or a hard tug of the hair is her technique to achieve this. I have never shared these stories about Maddie because I didn’t want people to be fearful of her. She’s a sweet girl who most people who know her fall completely in love with. She’s fun and silly, but she was born with a developmental disability that overwhelms her at times. Like a lot of people on the spectrum, she is obsessive compulsive and it can pretty maddening to live with. We have her on some pretty strong and expensive meds, which definitely helps, but her motor is going 100mph all day until she goes to sleep. Probably not the stereotype you had of someone sitting in a corner all day watching TV or playing a video game.

As a father of young children, my heart bleeds for the parents of the children who were murdered in Newtown. I can’t imagine how devastated my life would be if something happened to any of my children. I want to also say though that my sympathies also go to the Father and late Mother of Adam Lanza, as I know the massive struggles that go along with raising a child with autism. The intense mental and physical toll it takes on you is literally a 24 hour, 7 day a week job. (often kids on spectrum don’t sleep well, keeping many parents from ever getting more than 4 hours of sleep at anytime.) When you have a child–you have dreams of them achieving many things in life. It’s pretty devastating to learn that your little son or daughter will never grow up to have any close connections with friends, never marry, never hold a full-time job, and that you will have to take care of them the rest of your life. This is the prognosis for many parents with kids of the spectrum. It is heavy burden where your focus has to be number 1 on this child who needs so much attention, which can be a death knell to a marriage.

I have a lot of understanding for Nancy Lanza, but I cannot fathom how she could fill her homes with guns, let alone take him to shooting ranges. I am incredibly sympathetic to her, as she was left to raise a troubled young man by herself, but to keep weapons and go as far as teaching a ticking time bomb like her son to shoot them at target ranges was tragically wrong. As I said, I’m not going to get into the gun control argument here, as I don’t want to catch flak—especially since I don’t even own a flak jacket. This is one of those times when both sides have some legitimate points. I will just say that the NRA should be pushing harder to preach a message that people with mental disabilities should never have access to guns. Not just lip service, but actual paid public service ads. The NRA has spent too much time doing everything possible to fight any gun restrictions. The slippery slope they have been worried about has been greased by their fighting some gun laws that make sense.

Let me be clear in saying this about people on the autism spectrum…I’m not an expert. The stories I will share at this site will be about the many highs and (some lows) that I experience in being a parent of my wonderful daughter Maddie. Don’t for a minute believe that what 1 mentally ill person on the autism spectrum did is a typical psychosis of everyone with the disorder. Ted Bundy was the boy next door. Charming and handsome. Does that make everyone who fits that stereotype a serial killer? No. Well same goes for people with autism and Adam Lanza.

While some are now demonizing people with autism, it should be mentioned that people with special needs are 3 TIMES AS LIKELY TO BE MENTALLY OR PHYSICALLY ABUSED. After years of expanding federal and state government costs, 2 areas that have been cut the most are mental health and therapies for people with special needs. States like South Carolina and Alabama have slashed their mental health budgets by over 30 percent in just the past couple of years. Often in this country we believe the best way to protect ourselves from problems is to build bigger jails, add more fences, or hire more security. Before we go after that money drain, there needs to be more money allocated to help educate and treat people with real mental disorders. It is our best defense in creating a better world for these people, which in turn makes it better world for everyone.