Liza Long wrote an article at http://thebluereview.org/i-am-adam-lanzas-mother/, which created a firestorm of controversy. In it, she described herself as being in the same situation as Adam Lanza’s mother. Long, too, has a son with mental health issues. She describes her interactions with him, which are becoming more belligerent over time, and she basically is pleading for help for America to understand the mental health issues that many children and teenagers are facing these days.
One controversial aspect of the blog post she wrote initially was that she included a photo of her son. He is now 13 year old, but he is only 7 in the picture, and she says he looks different now, so it is not really an invasion of privacy. She is just trying to put a face to the issue, it seems.
She says that her son scares her because of the way he talks to her now. Although she does not specifically address it, a teenaged boy enjoys a great physical advantage over a woman, even an adult woman, in a lot of cases. He has threatened to kill her. One difference between this situation and the Lanza situation is that Ms. Long is not a gun enthusiast. She seems to be very organized and careful, with a plan that her other children are aware of, for whenever her eldest son loses control of his sanity. On a particularly frightening occasion recently, Michael (a fake name) was rushed to the emergency room, where he was prescribed the drug Zyprexa.
One similarity between this boy and Lanza are that both are intellectually gifted. Adam was 2 years ahead in school, and Michael, according to his mother, is well versed in subjects as diverse as Greek mythology and the fine point of electronics.
All of the organization in the world, and all of the plans, are not enough to know what sets this troubled young man off. Imagine living day to day without knowing what your son is going to do, what he is going to react to, etc. Especially when something like the Newtown, Connecticut mass shootings occurs. Ms. Long has been advised that her only hope is to basically wait until her son commits a crime which puts him in jail and effectively isolates him from the rest of the world.
This blog post was a plea on the part of Ms. Long to have people talk less about guns, and more about mental health issues that are afflicting so many of today’s youth. She is Adam Lanza’s mother, and the mother of every other disturbed individual who has done what Lanza did, or something similar. She is Adam Lanza’s mother because she is terrified that the same fate that trapped Lanza is about to trap her own son.Â
