Gosh, I hate to be controversial but I can't help but notice that lynne, aloha, and several others are talking about 12 year old children or 5th graders. I have a valid question,
I think. James is 22. Shouldn't we expect that by that time he has learned coping skills and could control himself better? I mean I get that he is excited that Daughtry is a Christian. The Asperger's makes him excited and makes him post it. But the Asperger's doesn't give him the thought that a Christian is worth double the points. Does it?
I seriously am not trying to be confrontational here. I just am having trouble comparing a 22 year old's behavior to that of a child, regardless of Asperger's.
You do have a valid point. I mention my son in 5th grade because that time was a time of
realization for ME, but at 26, he is still very much ADD, and still deals with issues resulting from that on a daily basis that are annoying, and that I don't think will ever get much better. At his studio the other day, he went to his car 7 times to retrieve things he had forgotten. This is the way he is, and he has lost jobs, and annoyed and inconvenienced many people because of that. Fortunately, he is charming and talented enough that most people put up with him anyway.
AS is a diagnosis with a huge umbrella of variation. Every person's individual situation is different. My brother in law, who has Aspergers, is never socially inappropriate with his
language. He is brilliant, is a lawyer, and to most people would mainly seem a little bit
reserved/eccentric. Although he self reports feeling very different growing up, he was
generally well accepted by peers and adults. For others, this isn't the case.
My sister's daughter is autistic, with classic symptoms. She is very bright and verbal, but none of her language use makes sense to others. My husband's nephew is autistic with
completely different symptoms than my sister's daughter. He has no language at all.
To complicate things even further, one person's abilities to cope and deal with Aspergers or Autism or ADHD, or any of life's challenges, really, is very different than another's ability to
cope, even if they are dealing with the same symptoms. Environment, nurture,
educational opportunities, parenting, other personality traits and different neurochemistries impact everything. One person's experiences, his successes or his failures, can't be
generalized to another person with even the same observable challenges accurately.
I do not know what JD's challenges are. I do know he has Aspergers and Tourettes. I do not excuse his behaviors or his views about Christianity. I was never a fan of his music.
But I can see that he struggles.
The other night, in his series of tweets to Adam I felt first amused, then annoyed, then dismayed with him, a bit sickened by him and for him, and sorry for him, and I felt all of those things at the same time.
I lived my son's entire high school years advocating for him with people who felt that
because there can be no excuses, there could also be no different learning curves.
There are some things I am still learning, and that I will probably be learning all of my life. I struggled with them in the fifth grade, I struggled with them at 12, at 22, at 26, and I will likely struggle with them forever. Most of us are like that.
That does not excuse me from consequences and accountability and does not excuse
others from consequences and accountability. The consequence that James will face if he
continues will be natural ones in that he will disenfranchise many of his own fans and
backers. He has, and will, make people angry. Those are real world facts that will be a part of his learning curve.
In the real world, my son had many moments like that with teachers and authority figures. The best way he really learned from those experiences, however was inside of his family, with love as the tool. When he made mistakes and hated himself because of them, I told him that was a cop -out, and that he had to love himself enough to work harder to
change. I let him know I loved him enough to stand by his side while he made changes.
I guess that is why all of this has me stirred up. I do not condone negative behavior, but I
don't want to behave negatively myself, even with James.
On a broader spectrum, love overcomes hate, not easily, not quickly and not always... But I truly believe it has the best chance.
Not everyone in this world gets that kind of love.
Ultimately, that is why judging others is flawed. You can judge if a dive is done well or poorly; that is somewhat absolute. But you can not judge the level of difficulty it takes each individual to do the dive. One person's real technical difficulty might be exponentially more difficult than another person doing the exact same dive.
Life is not fair. We are not all equal, we are all imperfect, and only ~imperfectly perfect to those who love us, and somehow, that should all go into the balance.
I love all of you and the wide varieties of viewpoints you all represent.
<3
*Sorry this is so long; it is an old thread, so not many will see it anyway.
