13 Year Old Autistic boy dies after being restrained by school staff in California.

God needed an angle in heaven.

A six foot long, fifty-four inch wide GORILLA angel.

[quote]The 13-year-old boy, who deputies say was 6-feet tall and about 280 pounds,

Seriously, a 6' tall 280 lbs person cannot be sent to a school that is not specifically equipped with staff and trained to handle someone like that.

I'm sorry the kid is dead, but who thought it would be a good idea to send the kid to a school that was meant to handle someone who is such an extreme outlier.

I bet you anything he was extremely violent.

r2, precisely .

Sure, it's traumatic for everyone involved, but this uncomplicates the parent's lives a bit.

I am sure r5.

I don't understand why the profoundly autistic are allowed in public schools. Their proclivity towards violence is frightening and they can't learn. Why are they not in a group home?

OP please resubmit your article with a headline like "Restraints? NO FANK YOU!"

Ha r8! Oh Fank you, you fixeded our social life.

Violent children, autistic or not, ought not be in the regular school system. They should be the responsibility of the parents, special teachers/schoold and (ultimately, in some cases) the authorities. Teachers should not have to deal with that type of thing on top of everything else.

This looks like a *special* school, where ones sends one's autistic children, hoping (I guess) that trained professionals will deal with special needs children in positive, nonlethal ways. Some autistic kids become too much for parent/s to handle, and some autistic kids are sent to schools and homes where presumably there is a team of people who can provide 24 hour care for the most difficult to manage. It's a no-win situation: parents fail because they become worn out, institutions fail because they are businesses, operating on the cheap, with low-skill, low paid workers that fuck up. Bad results can ensue in either scenario.

Autism is wildly over diagnosed.

Whack 'em across the ass with a nightstick & see how quickly they become verbal.

This particular case may have involved a special school, but I can tell you that MANY kids are "mainstreamed" in public schools and they have ZERO business being there for reasons already mentioned. It is a huge burden on teachers and a large part of why they leave teaching, even if they don't feel comfortable saying that publicly. Too much time required on a student who is big, violent, nonverbal and is NEVER going to get better. That is time not spent on students who could success if given the extra attention.

could succeed*

My nephew is severely autistic (mostly non-verbal) and big (6'2, 200 pounds at least). He was beginning to act out in his mid-teens - not so much with violence towards others, but in self-harming ways. - banging his head on something, biting himself. My sister was fortunate enough to have a language therapist who had learned a new method of communication called Rapid Prompt Method. (RPM). Autistic kids can learn to communicate using a letter board (Basically a letter stencil board). Their fine motor skills are not usually well-developed enough to write, but they are good enough that they can stick a pencil through a letter to indicate an A or an S. He was able to learn this method in about a week. The first sentences he wrote were "get me out of special education. My mind is dying. I want to know about astrophysics and nuclear engineering, not spelling CAT three hundred times a day".

We were floored - and CRUSHED. We'd been treating him as a retarded kid for years, because he was non-verbal. Imagine how guilty we all felt. His self-harming behaviors stopped almost immediately, because if, for example, he had a horrible toothache, his mom would ask him, and he's spell it out.

Unfortunately, there's a strong lobby against using this method, because there's a whole group of education professionals dedicated to the proposition that unless an autistic person learns to speak FIRST, the method is not valid. And of course, the vast majority of non-verbal autistic kids never learn to speak unprompted. It doesn't matter how much testimony these kids present and how much evidence of their life improvement with this method - it is rejected by school boards in many areas of the country.

R7 = OP = artistic = sociopath troll. F&F.

R7= OP = autistic = sociopath troll. F&F.

r16, r17 is Autistic who can't see the FULL picture.

Awful that this kid died. That must have been one hell of a restraint. Are tranquilizer darts too un PC?

Well, I might be autistic, but I managed to get through public school without biting, stabbing, or throwing books at my classmates or teachers...all of which I have personally witnessed. The method that R15 describes sounds very promising, and it would be fantastic if it could be implemented more extensively, but that's not a burden that an average public school can (or should) carry.

I feel for him. Hope my whore mom don't do that to me...

r20 rocks!

That's fantastic r15.

How did he get to nearly 300 lbs? Indulgent parents that let him eat whatever he wanted, in whatever portions he wanted? What would he have weighed at 18? 500 pounds?

r24, a lot of parents of autistic children will do anything to placate their Frankenstein child.

He probably had a tiny female behavioral assistant working with him. Of course he needed something more to control him. Parents probably didn’t want it.

Is the school Christ-Centered? Did they try to pray the devil autism out of him?

So he died WHILE they were restraining him?

I figured he was left restrained, struggled and asphyxiated himself.

What the hell were they restraining him with?

Who cares r28. ?

Is retard strength an actual thing or just a cruel joke?

Another joke is that Special needs aides, who work in these settings are literally paid anywhere from $8.00- $10.00 an hour, with little to no training. Even assuming that the child has the *best* most loving parents, many in this day and age do NOT have medical insurance or choose to not put them on medication which could help regulate some of the more overt, violent behaviors.

And to those of you nasty assholes, commenting on some of these kids weights, one of the chief side-effects of these mood altering medications, is massive weight-gain. These kids are screwed six-ways to Sunday.

Yeah, I'd bet anything that he was being violent.

If so, better the monster kid should die than he should kill someone else.

People who are that obese have trouble breathing. A normal person being "restrained" wouldn't have died. But for someone obese like that, being restrained impedes their already impaired breathing.

I imagine a violent meltdown .

Autism is a horrible affliction .

Sad big angel RIP

R15 I thought facilited communication was debunked when Frontline did their expose “Prisoners of Silence” in ‘93, which showed that the “facilitator” was actually consciously or unconsciously guiding the kids’ arms for a Ouija board effect, essentially feeding the answers to the autistic children like a bad psychic. Under controlled conditions, RPM failed, and us considered junk science by most experts.

R15, that is horrifying. My husband and i were talking about our nephew, who is not even two, but has profound delays. I always speak to him as though he is cognitively typical, even though we don’t know how “with it” he is. I have the fear that he’s one of those people who’s “trapped”.

I think the objection to facilitated communication stems from the insane stories about its abuse. The story at the link is unbelievable. You HAVE to read it.

My sister works with special ed teens. She’s about five feet tall and maybe 105 lbs. She has been hit and kicked and spit on by students with autism.

She was also asked to take a quadriplegic student with the brain function of a two-month-old into a swimming pool for recreation. She refused to, because she wasn’t physically able to do the lifting and guarantee the student wouldn’t drown. (This student was about to age out of the public school system and was placed in an institution for care).

Her experience has been that the parents of these kids are all too relieved for the respite. As taxpayers in a very wealthy town, they are entitled to a free education for their children. But for some, it’s just respite care. For the more high-functioning students, it’s a great program that prepares them for jobs, and some go on to a local community college. Sometimes it’s rewarding.

Some children are more than just a handful.

Imagine what he would have been like when he knew what his penis could do.

[quote]I don't understand why the profoundly autistic are allowed in public schools. Their proclivity towards violence is frightening and they can't learn. Why are they not in a group home?

There were three kids like this in my public school system. Their respective parents were all in complete denial that their kids were damaged goods and wanted them to have a "normal" education with "normal" kids even though it was totally inappropriate to have them in a public school. This was a small town with limited resources. Yes it was completely fucked up and totally unfair to the faculty and students but public schools cannot legally turn kids away. The parents for these three kids were constantly having meeting with teachers and administration and threatening to raise hell. It was a nightmare.

Couldn’t they have simply set phasers to stun?

Heaven needed another angel.

And society needed one less burden.

r41 It's a common enough issue with these kids, that they have teaching resources specifically made for that very thing.

Get me out of this diaper and into the astrophysics lab!!

^^ Seriously - how did you suddenly gain such a keen interest in microquasars and galactic nuclei after being stuck in special ed classes your entire life?

IT’S A MIRACLE.

What does this have to do with a gay board?

Seems strange and out of place. Perhaps to push an agenda?

Back in olden times we called severely autistic children “profoundly retarded.” You couldn’t communicate with them, they were uncooperative and sometimes they were violent. A friend of mine worked in a group home while she was a nursing student and one of the patients grabbed a nurse’s aide by her pigtail and snapped her neck, making her a quadriplegic. That’s when my friend decided hospital nursing was a far better job than any group home setting.

I hope they find a cure someday so things like this don't keep happening and so people will stop turning these kids/people into PR monsters.

The real crime here is not knowing why this is happening and then burdening the schools with the treatment responsibility that the HMOs have abandoned for kids like this. "Read the fine print on your contract" I was told...."we don't cover developmental disabilities." So until they find a physical, biological reason this is happening that can be considered a physical disability, these kids and their families will be consigned to social oblivion and the misunderstanding of someone like the OP.

RIP, kid. You did not deserve this. Damn, this is awful and tragic.

A big fuck you to all the assholes insulting this kid, his family, and autism in general. Cowardly fucking bullies. It's people like you that make me wish there was a reincarnation. I'd damn you all to the hell of living like this.

[quote] Seems strange and out of place. Perhaps to push an agenda?

Of course. It’s a favorite topic for trolls and OCD sufferers, both of which Datalounge has in spades.

Other troll topics —> Pit bulls, successful females in the entertainment industry (especially comics & former stand up comics), t.rans, m.uslums, j.ews, bl.acks, Aldi, chain restaurants, millennials, boomers, gen x, Bernie Sanders, Hillary, vegans, vegetarians, food allergies, tipping, and whatever male actor or porn star is currently attracting OCD stans

[quote] there was a reincarnation. I'd damn you all to the hell of living like this.

So if reincarnation existed, you would somehow be in charge of it?

These topics bring out the worst trolls...those who want to make fun of people with disabilities. I'm kind of curious what someone gets out of that. I mean, what is the reward for expending the energy to make fun of someone who already has obstacles in life?

Those of you who like to use the word "burden", what do you suggest we do? Euthanize them like the Nazis did? (The Nazis wanted to euthanize gays, too.) If you had a child, would you just abandon or neglect the child if he or she weren't perfect? The good parents will fight for their children; its' instinct.

R48 There’s an anti-breeding sentiment here despite us being products of it ourselves. That’s the “agenda.”

"Back in olden times we called severely autistic children “profoundly retarded.” You couldn’t communicate with them, they were uncooperative and sometimes they were violent. A friend of mine worked in a group home while she was a nursing student and one of the patients grabbed a nurse’s aide by her pigtail and snapped her neck, making her a quadriplegic. That’s when my friend decided hospital nursing was a far better job than any group home setting"

Most are profound delayed . But the most violent ones are the so called high functioning ones, or they are secretly devious .

a Frau I worked with had a difficult, potentially violent "spectrum" child but she did very little medically as she didn't want to taint his future insurance needs with pre-existing conditions( and she was a Trumpster).