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Parenting Kids With Disabilities: How to Get Through Tough Times

May 24, 2019January 31, 2022 by Shannon Des Roches Rosa

Shannon Des Roches Rosa www.squidalicious.com Content note: This article discusses abuse and murder. Photo © Steve Silberman [image: a white woman, standing behind a white teen boy with brown curly short hair. He is looking at the camera. Her arms are over his shoulder, his arms are up and tickling under her chin.] When parents like me talk about our kids with disabilities and intense support needs, we have to be thoughtful. We need to make it quite clear that our kids are much-loved and very awesome human beings. We should never, ever state or imply that any challenges we face as a parent are our children’s fault. We need to handle their privacy with delicacy. And we shouldn’t accidentally enable disrespect towards children who are already too-frequent magnets for morbid fascination, and pity. But we do need to talk, because our parenting gig is not like other parenting gigs.…

Disability

His Hands Were Quiet: A Review

December 12, 2018January 31, 2022 by Shannon Des Roches Rosa

[image: Brown book cover. Small yellow text at the top reads, “Zachary Goldman Mysteries 2” Next, the title in white all caps text reads, “His Hands Were Quiet.” Next is an image of a yellow triangle with a silhouette of a person bending backwards and being struck in the chest with a bolt of electricity. Large yellow text at the bottom reads, “PD Workman”.] Maxfield Sparrow His Hands Were Quiet By P.D. Workman Content notes: suicide, abuse, murder, house fires, burn injuries, PTSD, Judge Rotenberg Center, ABA This book review gets all the Autistic trigger warnings. It is a gripping thriller/suspense novel that could help people understand autism and Autistic people better, and it is raw and honest about what some of the most vulnerable Autistic people endure. It will be a tense read for everyone and could be especially triggering for many Autistic people, so proceed carefully with this review and…

Disability

Untwisting Perceptions: Autism, Parenting, and Victimhood

March 2, 2017January 31, 2022 by Shannon Des Roches Rosa

Shannon Des Roches Rosa www.squidalicious.com Content note: this article discusses murder, disability, and mental health. There is a horrifyingly typical coupling of devotion with murder, whenever disabled people are the victims. A recent example is Ruby Knox, an autistic young woman, who was murdered by her mother Donella, in Blenheim, New Zealand. Donella drugged Ruby, then suffocated her. Both the reporting and the judge on the case portray Donella as a “loving mum who was driven to kill her daughter.” I’m here to say: Fuck that. I need you — and judges and reporters everywhere — to understand that, however difficult it may be for families to support their disabled loved ones, murder is never excusable. There are always other options. Always. That last message is especially important when you consider that disability-related filicides like Ruby’s are more common than the occasional high-profile story might have one suppose — according to Julia Bascom…

Disability

How to Avoid More Cruel Injustices Like the Alex Spourdalakis “Involuntary Manslaughter” Verdict

December 10, 2016January 31, 2022 by Shannon Des Roches Rosa

Shannon Des Roches Rosa www.squidalicious.com Alex Spourdalakis [image: Smiling white teenage boy with shaved dark hair, wearing a coral colored tank top.] Alex Spourdalakis was brutally murdered by his mother and godmother three years ago. Somehow, those women were allowed to plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter* and will likely be released with time served — even though they had been planning Alex’s killing for a week. As reported by Matt Carey at Left Brain/Right Brain: “When they carried out their plan, they poisoned Mr. Spourdalakis with sleeping pills. When this did not work quickly enough, the mother and caregiver stabbed him. Not once, not twice, but four times, including two stabs to the heart. When even this proved not fast enough, the mother and caregiver slit his wrist. Slit so deeply that reportedly his hand was nearly severed from his arm. When Mr. Spourdalakis finally passed, the mother and caregiver…

Disability

When Parents Murder Disabled Children: What You Need To Know

October 27, 2015January 31, 2022 by Shannon Des Roches Rosa

Shannon Des Roches Rosa www.Squidalicious.com “Stress is involved in almost every incident of serious child abuse, but it should not be seen as a mitigating factor more than any other source of stress should be seen as a mitigating factor. By and large, parents of people with disabilities are able to take care of their children without trying to kill them.” –Samantha Crane Whenever a news story breaks about a parent killing (or trying to murder) a disabled child, reactions to the story are almost as disturbing as the story itself — because media and blog accounts tend to empathize with the parents, not the child victims. In fact the children in these cases are almost universally depicted as trigger for their parents’ acts, rather than human beings with feelings, friends, interests, and rights. We need to change those conversations. Photo © Shannon Des Roches Rosa [image: white teen boy…

Disability

We Do Not Cross the Line

September 11, 2013January 31, 2022 by Jen Myers

Jennifer Byde Myers jennyalice.com Just after the recent murder of Alex Spourdalakis, yet another parent has attempted to murder her autistic child. Services to help families are not available to the degree they are needed, often leaving parents of children with intense needs feeling abandoned, depressed, suicidal and, in some cases, homicidal. I just sincerely wish these conversations could be separate. They must remain separate. I know how it happens, how the conversations seem like they should go together. As parents of kids with intense needs, medical, mental or physical, we are each slogging through life, with easy days and hard days and harder days, until something really bad happens, then we are triggered to say to the world, “See, look how hard this is. Why doesn’t anyone care?” But the problem is that caregivers say this at the very same same time that someone was trying to kill their…

Disability

Autistic Lives: Not Less Valuable

September 7, 2012January 31, 2022 by Shannon Des Roches Rosa

Shannon Des Roches Rosa www.squidalicious.com www.blogher.com Two days ago, Patricia Corby was ordered to stand trial for the murder of her four-year-old autistic son, Daniel Corby. During testimony, the local District Attorney’s Office Investigator said that Corby “…felt like she had no life. She wanted Daniel to be normal.” This seems like a good time to revisit the post below, which I wrote for BlogHer.com after another Autistic, George Hodgins, was murdered by his mother Elizabeth — just three weeks before Daniel died. —- Obviously, I’m feeling angry and confrontational. Explosively so. With good reason: George Hodgins, a young autistic man from my son’s school, was murdered by his mother Elizabeth (who then committed suicide) earlier this month. Mainstream media reports have focused almost exclusively on how difficult life was for his mother, framing parents killing disabled children as an understandable tragedy, while parents killing typical children is considered a…