Sunday, November 18, 2007

The (autistic) kids always come last in Australia

I wonder whether Jenny Brockie will invite the "parents" of starved Shellay Ward to talk on her TV show Insight about how hard it is to be a parent of an autistic child, and to explain why they killed their child. Jenny Brockie did this in a past episode of Insight, interviewing on her show an Australian mother who killed her autistic child, after giving her a warm welcome. Maybe they did it for the attention.

These "parents" should have been brought to the attention of the law years ago. It should be a punishable offence to give a child a ridiculous name. What the hell kind of name is "Shellay"? Shellaaaay? WTF? The absolute looniest names that I have ever heard of are the names of autistic kids. It seems pretty obvious that a sizeable proportion of the parents of children who receive an autism spectrum diagnosis are mentally ill, of limited intellectual capacity or something even worse. Every pediatric diagnosis of an autism spectrum conditon should be followed up with a full psychiatric screening with IQ testing of both of the child's biological parents (if they have custody of any children). This latest horrific case of another murdered autistic child is, I believe, a compelling argument that this needs to be done.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh dear. I do hope not, I don't think I'd fare very well with an IQ test myself.
Best wishes

Lili Marlene said...

I believe that some intellectually disabled people can be good parents, especially if they are supported, but I also know that some are terrible parents even under supervision.