Jani's at the mercy of her mind

[Maddy]

I have the entire blog copied to date.

[Nordic]

I lay there, wondering nervously if she would try to open the windows in her room and jump. Suddenly, BANG. She was throwing something against the door. I breathed a sigh of relief. At least I knew what she was doing. The last time she was silent in a time out, we opened the door to discover her halfway out the window.

Let me get this straight. This guy once walked into his daughter's room and found her halfway out the window, presumably to jump and splatter herself all over the sidewalk below.

So what does he do? Well, this guy gives her the perfect opportunity to DO IT AGAIN.

Then sits back and waits. Listening .... waiting ..... for what?

I am speechless.

I'm gonna have to stay away from this thread for a while.

[Nordic]

I lay there, wondering nervously if she would try to open the windows in her room and jump. Suddenly, BANG. She was throwing something against the door. I breathed a sigh of relief. At least I knew what she was doing. The last time she was silent in a time out, we opened the door to discover her halfway out the window.

Let me get this straight. This guy once walked into his daughter's room and found her halfway out the window, presumably to jump and splatter herself all over the sidewalk below.

So what does he do? Well, this guy gives her the perfect opportunity to DO IT AGAIN.

Then sits back and waits. Listening .... waiting ..... for what?

"Here Timmy. I know you tried to shoot yourself the last time you played with this gun, but I'm going to give you another chance. Mkay? "

I am speechless.

I'm gonna have to stay away from this thread for a while.

[justdrew]

surely they've somehow locked the window?

see here:
http://www.januaryfirst.org/www.january ... ayed..html

This isn't a test for the internet, it's a test for the whole country.
I'm afraid this is just the utter and complete failure of our so-called civilization, CA is bankrupt and about to not be able to make any payments to anyone. Shit is going to hit the fan and the first people to start dying from it is going to be the most vulnerable population that needs special care.

First I blame the republican party and the mindless uneducated selfish greedy disingenuous assholes that comprise it. Second I blame the democrats, for being basically... nothing. There's nothing there but opportunistic do-nothing assholes who are incapable of being leaders. We've failed, utterly. There's nothing left now but chaos and doom for this once promising nation.

one day in a decade those of us left alive will be sitting in the camps and think back... and this story will be the moment when we finally knew, in hind-fucking-sight finally knew that shit was not going to work out. Americans hate each other and we're doomed. I'd say 'god help us' but the only answer this nation would hear is "go kill all the muslims in My name" or the chinese. we've got no clue, and the few who do are so badly outnumbered and powerless as to be irrelevant, possibly worse than irrelevant, because they get used as symbolic scapegoats to rouse more hatred and ignorance from the rest of the idiot masses. America is over. and as more people realize that, guess who they're going to turn to...

the very same people who chose to make this happen.

[MacCruiskeen]

Some recent comments at his blog, including my own. I tried to express myself as carefully as I could, at the risk of sounding eighty years old:

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Matthew Holford
I have a question for you. Given that you have had "expert" diagnosis of Jani, are you still able to consider the *possibility* that she is not schizophrenic, at all, but merely a healthy, normal child, reacting to abnormal, extreme circumstances (your violence, for example)?

You see, your world view will probably have as great an impact on Jani's behaviour as her own [world view] - she will not behave like an angel if you do not treat her like one.

Matt
Tuesday, July 7, 2009 - 06:09 PM

#########

MacCruiskeen
I want to register my wholehearted support for Matthew Holford's remarks. (I had already made a similar point under the "Wait for me, Jani" thread, but have so far had no response to that comment.)

Mr. Schofield, over the past two days I have read more than half of your blog, and I have to say that what you report there, at enormous length, has shocked me and other people I have shown it to; not just the repeated physical abuse, and not just the constant (over-)medication, but perhaps above all your incessant browbeating of January to obey your will.

I have to ask you, very urgently, to reconsider the way you are treating your six-year-old child. She clearly spends a large part of her life in a state of severe emotional pain, but I see no sign anywhere that it has not been caused, very largely if not wholly, by your refusal to acknowledge that she is a child with a child's mind, and a mind of her own. At the same time, her powers of resistance are extraordinary, and admirable; she is fighting as hard as she can to live her life, as any healthy and **unbroken** child would.

The diagnosis of "schizophrenia" is clearly false, which is why you had to struggle so hard to acquire it. Drugging her so heavily on the basis of that misdiagnosis is damaging her and may well eventually kill her.

PLEASE take these remarks in the spirit in which they are meant. Please get some help, if you possibly can, for yourself. You have cried out for it in your blog more than once, and there is certainly no disgrace in that; on the contrary. The only disgrace is the state of the psychiatric profession and the way your entire family has been left in the lurch.

And please, please, please: Leave January in peace. That has to be the very first step towards her recovery.

Yours very sincerely.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009 - 06:57 PM

##########

naomi
Matthew Holford and McCruuskeen,
Life with a mentally ill child is agony and nobody in this situation can stay even keeled all of the time. You are missing the larger story of this father's love for his daughter and using his honesty as a weapon against him. Maybe someone hurt you when you were a child, this is not the same situation. Jani is well loved.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009 - 07:19 PM

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Saint Kicks
Dear Matt, Mac and other mindless advice givers,

There are about 6 months of prior blog entries that discuss many of the things that the Schofield's have tried, explicitly expressing frustration with the one-sentence solutions that armchair geniuses continue to provide, like:

MAYBE SHE JUST HAS ALLERGIES?
MAYBE SHE JUST NEEDS VITAMINS?
MAYBE ITS JUST BEHAVIORAL ?

No, he just decided to place his precious child in a psychiatric ward and subject her to staggering doses of potent anti-psychotics because everything else seemed too easy and not hazardous enough.

Oh and Matt, I'm sure he greatly appreciates having someone explain to him that children might ACTUALLY be influenced by their parent's actions. What preternatural insight you have! Anything other mysteries of the mind you'd like to unravel?
Tuesday, July 7, 2009 - 08:04 PM

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Robert
Matt and Mac, who I expect are the same troll, you must have been reading a different blog than I have. The only violent acts I see on this blog are in my own thoughts after I read your inane comments. Go away.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009 - 08:26 PM

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I tried to post another very carefully-phrased but unambiguous comment (featuring several unambiguous accounts of serious abuse from his own blog), but it didn't appear. I suspect he is now silently banning all comments from my address. (Or maybe - maybe - it was just a technical hitch.)

NB: If anyone else tries to comment there: please take very good care with it. Please no abuse or name-calling, it might only endanger his child further. The guy is clearly on the edge, as are most of his supporters.

[MacCruiskeen]

Some sane comments here:

http://www.furiousseasons.com/archives/ ... _girl.html

Also some desperate "don't blame the parents" stuff.

Words fail me, not for the first time. "Oh Jesus, make it stop."

[MacCruiskeen]

[url=http://bipolar-stanscroniclesandnarritive.blogspot.com/2009/07/los-angeles-times-reporter-defends.html]Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Los Angeles Times Reporter Defends Child Abuse of 6 year old schizophrenic[/url]

[MacCruiskeen]

Derrick Jensen quotes his own mother:

I came back to the conversation with my mom, and heard her say, “That was part of your father’s problem. He had no solid identity of his own, which was one reason he was so violent. Because he wasn’t secure in his own identity, in order to exist, he needed for those around him to constantly mirror him. When you or I or your siblings didn’t match his projections—when we showed any spark of being who we actually were, thus forcing him to confront some other person as someone different than himself—he became terrified, or at least he would have become terrified if he would have allowed himself to feel that. But to become terrified was too scary, and so he flew into a rage.”

I just looked at her. I’d never heard this analysis before. It was very good. I was thinking also that if my publisher were present he would probably be tearing his hair out at her penchant for making parenthetical comments, just as he does with mine.

She continued, “His lack of a secure identity is also why he was so rigid. If you’re not comfortable with who you are, you have to force others to confront you only on your own terms. Anything else is once again too scary. If you’re comfortable with who you are, however, it becomes no problem to let others be their own selves around you: you have faith that whoever they are and whatever they do, you will be able to respond appropriately. You can be fluid and respond differently to different people, depending on what they need from you. He couldn’t do that.”

This same thing happens on a larger scale, of course. Deadened inside, we call the world itself dead, then surround ourselves with the bodies of those we’ve killed. We set up cityscapes where we see no free and wild beings. We see concrete, steel, asphalt. Even the trees in cities are in cages. Everything mirrors our own confinement. Everything mirrors our own internal deadness.

“One more thing,” my mother said. “This lack of an identity is one of the reasons so many abusers kill their partners when their partners try to leave. They’re not only losing their partners (and punching bags) but their identities as well.”

http://www.endgamethebook.org/Excerpts/ ... %20pt2.htm

Found via this blog:

http://diffthoughts.blogspot.com/2009/0 ... ustry.html

- which looks well worth reading, as does Jensen's book.

[chiggerbit]

Mac, I caught your comment, before you erased it, that you were going back and editing out your most stinging comments about this father. The only reason I can think that you would do that is that you deliberately were trying to lead him back to this board to read comments made about him here. Have you even considered the possible ramificaions? If one tenth of what you believe about him is true, he is mentally ill, a child abuser, wife abuser, depressed and suicidal. Don't you get the news where you are about the increasing number of murder/suicides here in the US?

[MacCruiskeen]

Mac, I caught your comment, before you erased it,

I did not erase it.

that you were going back and editing out your most stinging comments about this father. The only reason I can think that you would do that is that you deliberately were trying to lead him back to this board to read comments made about him here.

Chiggerbit, you really try my patience. Of course I was doing absolutely no such thing. CHECK THE THREAD.

Have you even considered the possible ramificaions?

Yes. And how. Have you?

There's a child involved here too, you know. You've barely mentioned her, in nearly 20 pages.

If one tenth of what you believe about him is true, he is mentally ill, a child abuser, wife abuser, depressed and suicidal. Don't you get the news where you are about the increasing number of murder/suicides here in the US?

Check the thread. Check what I actually wrote here, from page one onwards. Check how often I said he badly needed help and shouldn't be demonised, and so on, and so forth, and so very carefully indeed, while you were sitting carefully on the fence for 15 pages or more, being judicious, as you are now.

Check it please. Then get back to me. This is getting old.

[chiggerbit]

Yes. And how. Have you?

There's a child involved here too, you know. You've barely mentioned her, in nearly 20 pages.

Again, have you considered the ramifications? Specifically, the (admittedly small) possibility of a suicided parent, two dead children and a dead wife? Have you left tracks back to this board?

[Nordic]

Yes. And how. Have you?

There's a child involved here too, you know. You've barely mentioned her, in nearly 20 pages.

Again, have you considered the ramifications? Specifically, the (admittedly small) possibility of a suicided parent, two dead children and a dead wife? Have you left tracks back to this board?

Don't be so hysterical. A few comments on the internet isn't going to push this guy over the edge. They'll probably barely register, if at all, in the guy's mind.

And why are you so concerned about "this board"? You seem to to have a paranoid thought that somehow you could be culpable in any of the nightmarish scenarios you describe.

What's up with that?

Listen, the guy is deliberately engaging the entire universe through his blog. He's not gonna be sent over the edge by some comment on it. If anything he's subconsciously looking for criticism so that he can invent defenses against it and thereby justify his own fucked up views to himself.

[bks]

chiggerbit, I don't understand your line of inquiry here. What does the comment "tracks back to this board" mean?

His name is MacCruiskeen online. Pretty distinctive. Google it, and I'm sure much of what would come up are posts on this board (I haven't tried it).

[chiggerbit]

By Mac using the link provided earlier in this thread to to make his comments on the blog.

[chiggerbit]

Don't be so hysterical. A few comments on the internet isn't going to push this guy over the edge. They'll probably barely register, if at all, in the guy's mind.

And why are you so concerned about "this board"? You seem to to have a paranoid thought that somehow you could be culpable in any of the nightmarish scenarios you describe.

What's up with that?

Listen, the guy is deliberately engaging the entire universe through his blog. He's not gonna be sent over the edge by some comment on it

Possibly you're right, Nordic, and maybe I'm reading too much into this family's strange story. Or maybe not. Who can know? That's my point--we cannot know. What if Mac is right, and this father has turned a perfectly normal child into a 6-year-old who has now been diagnosed as schizophrenic? In this case, we are not just talking about a case of narcissism. We do not know, have absolutely no way of knowing, what we are talking about. If the man is that sick, direct meddling could possibly, just possibly, have serious consequences.