Assault

When your child is diagnosed with autism, your concerns about your child's future changes.  It's nothing new for parents to worry about their child and what life they have before them.  As babies, you worry about their fevers or that they just put a penny in their mouth.  As they get older, your heart leaps into your throat when you find them on top of the table. . . again.  When your child acts out and is particularly stubborn, you may worry about what kind of student he or she will be, whether they will be horribly rebellious teenagers, whether they'll harm themselves with abuse of drugs and alcohol.  Will they get their heart broken?

When your child is autistic, you find that you have new worries.  Some of them are just magnified versions of the "normal" worries and others are unique to their circumstances.  For instance, some autistic children can be overly trusting and familiar with strangers which is frightening when one considers how many pedophiles could take advantage of such naivete.  Also, since autistic children often stand out from the crowd, they are often victims of bullying.  A parent of an autistic child must be vigilant to ensure that their children are protected as much as possible from such abuse but there is only so much parents can do.

One concern that particularly concerns me is how our autistic children might be perceived by law enforcement.  Although children with Asperger's are usually very law abiding and are actually likely to follow rules (almost to a fault), they are seven times more likely to have an encounter with law enforcement than a neurotypical person of the same age according to Dennis Debbaudt, author of Autism, Advocates, and Law Enforcement Professionals:  Recognizing and Reducing Risk Situations for People with Autism Spectrum Disorders.  As a parent of a child who is often misunderstood by others, it is frightening to imagine our children in a situation involving armed police officers.



Perhaps if reading that statistic weren't frightening enough, then the story about a 7-year-old who was charged with assault after attacking his teachers might be.  The young, 1st grader attacked a teacher and a teacher's assistant in two separate incidences.  The assault of the teachers was definitely unfortunate and egregious but  what concerns me from reading the story about the attacks (see:  http://www.theautismnews.com/2010/03/05/falmouth-7-year-old-avoids-assault-charges/ for details), is that the school was denying or ignoring the child's diagnosis of autism. 

I can't pretend to know the details of this particular story since I don't know how this child was diagnosed and why their school district was disputing the diagnosis but if the diagnosis was correct and the district was not accepting it, the child should not be held responsible for being in an educational setting that was inappropriate for his needs.  Thankfully, as the article indicates, the charges have been dropped.  The 7 year old no longer has to worry about being prosecuted in a court of law over behavior that likely was due to his condition and an inadequate environment.

One would hope that this type of situation is rare.  Thankfully for this child his age may have helped protect him from prosecution.  How would the court have treated this child if he had been a large 15 year old kid who was capable of inflicting more harm?  It's thoughts like that which send parents into a panic as they watch their precious child grow.  No one will love their child more than them.  No one understands them like they do.  How can they protect them as they enter into the world that may misinterpret their behavior and may not see the beauty within them?