[rfinney]

I can understand why those of you with a son or daughter who has Asperger's are so upset when they appear to abandon their "real" life in favor of the "virtual reality" of SL. I am no fan of John Lester. Even if he did not technically take people's money and divert it to SL, I firmly believed he abandoned all the good folks of BT. I find his attitude and behavior nothing short of reprehensible. And as far as I know, he never provided an accounting of the monies he took in, however I will take DocJohn's word for what happened.

I also do not want to stand up for SL. I have a number of questions about how "members," especially those who may be vulnerable, like those with Asperger's, are recruited into SL. I have heard some of them proclaim the value they receive, but I wonder just what that value is and what it does for them.

However, I do think we should all be careful in assuming that SL has had a malevolent influence on these individuals. You may not like that your son or daughter appears to have given over their life to a virtual reality site. But what we don't know is what would their life be like if they were not involved in SL. I am not hearing that these individuals went from a higher functioning life to a lower functioning life. I know of so many cases where the individual was essentially isolated from their family and not effectively functioning or relating in the "real" world.

I am a clinical psychologist and I got to see the pain and heartbreak, and it is both horrific and tragic. The real culprit here is the disorder itself. Individuals so afflicted may really have no other choice than to live the kind of life they live. But the pain for parents is almost unimaginable, and the person with the disorder just can't understand, let alone empathize with their parents.

Who knows what these folks would be doing now if they were not involved in SL? I have no doubt that some would be dead, others would have serious alcohol, drug, or gambling problems. It may be that for some of them SL has become like a virtual halfway house. Maybe they can get enough structure and support to keep them going and to keep them away from worse things.

I would just clarify again that I am in no way defending SL. I have lots of questions and doubts. But I have seen this exact phenomenon quite a few times, except that instead of SL, it was some other group or outlet.

What hurts me the most is that we in mental health really do not yet have the answers to give to parents whose lives have been wrenched in this way. You might think that we are just a short step away from the breakthroughs we need to deal with such disorders. You can read about this neuroscience discovery and that pharmacological development and so forth, but none of it as yet adds up to anything that is remotely close to the kind of breakthrough that will truly make a difference.

I can certainly understand the anger at SL. No one has any answers and no one can really help very much, if at all. Most parents in this kind of nightmare have been given the run around, along with a heaping dose of uncaring professionals and overworked social service workers. When a target like SL comes along, I think it might be irresistible for so much of the frustration and uncertainty to get directed towards them.

I hope the best for all those who have a child in this or a similar scenario.

rafi

[cyclelops]

I am a medical professional and my daughter was into studying bugs. She knew everything there was to know about bugs. Had she not been introduced to this addictive crap on the net, she might be an entomologist.

So if I get the reasoning here, is, Crack is OK, it is just that some people can't keep their lives in order. It is OK for 'adult' sites that exploit children to be on the net, because, it is just the sickos that get into it who ruin their own lives...oh, and the lives of innocent kids?

It is hard to believe that cartoon characters could be addicting. TV, chat rooms, casinos, booze, food, exercise you name it....do we ban it all? We can't do that.

No autisitic spectrum person is better off for living in a virtual world. Aspergers kids, especially, can relate to eachother, real world, real time. They can become experts at many things if they don't get hooked on these ethereal characters that drain their budgets.

I didn't allow my kid on the net, so I am irate that others did. Eventually she would have found it as an adult, but I was hoping before that we could help her use her incredible brain for the betterment of her life and humanity. I would rather hear every detail about every genre of dragonfly than hear one word about some 'avatar'.

She will likely end up dead or in jail trying to get money to support this habit. She has lied, stolen, and manipulated to get on the net and get access. It isn't just this website, it is others like it, you can feed your 'pet' or 'build a new you' whatever.

Unlike a gambler, or alchoholic, she has a brain that will not yield to treatment programs. Promoting living in a fantasy world is not much different than leaving a schizophrenic untreated. Sorry I disagree with the premise that lives are improved by living virtually instead of living fully. We should concentrate our efforts on linking Aspergers individuals together as real people, and concentrate on assistive technology to free the more severe cases of autism of their blocks to communication.

My motto. Get real.

[MelodyL]

I completely agree with Cyclelops:

If my son had never gotten that computer and stayed on it after school, well, actually, it began with the nintendo games, the playstations games.

You see, moms are tired, and when they see their kids in front of the tv or playing a game, and the kid is quiet, well who is tell them, go outside and bring your kid to the park so he can play with other kids. I did that by the way. Every day after school, I took my son to the playground. EVERY DAY!!!

When he got old enough, we got the computer. No computer games then by the way. By then, he had the playstation, the super nintendo. And it kept him quiet and isolated. Now I had only one child. How would it have been different if I had more than one, I have no idea. The same way, that I would not know how it wouldn't be different if Frank had not had aspergers. If he didn't have aspergers, and he got the playstation and super nintendo, he might have invited some friends over and they would all be in front of my tv playing the games.

But after a while Frank liked his isolation. Sure, we had him in therapy, we took him to the Jewish Board of Family Services to be evaluated. They said "social anxiety disorder". He would not go on anti-depressants. He would not go to groups. He just went to school, came home and went on the computer. Now if one of those PROFESSIONALS had had the decency to tell us about ASPERGERS, maybe would have thown out the computer, and put him in a therapy program geared to his Aspergers. You see, Aspergers WAS ON THE DSM 4 Manual for mental health. Frank was 15 or 16 then and he threatened to kill his father. I now know much about Aspergers. I know that MANY OF THEM HAVE RAGES, ARE MANIPULATORS, and can get exactly what they want. The difference between a person with Aspergers and a regular person is the Aspergers person is so smart, he can manipulate his way around anything.

I will always wonder why my son's psychologist at the Jewish Board of Family Services never told me "you know Melody, there is a disorder named Aspergers, and it was named after Hans Aspergers, in 1944, and he was a doctor who watched kids playing alone, and they always wanted to be by themselves. Why wasn't I told this?

Now kids are in special programs geared to their specific gifts. And boy do they have specific gifts. They are usually computer geniuses. They say Einstein has Aspegers, and Bill Gates has Aspergers.

Many people in prison are wrongfully imprisoned because they should not be in prison, they should be in a group home getting ABA therapy.

But was I told any of this? NOOOO!!!! I just went from therapist to therapist, from wrong diagnosis to wrong diagnosis. By the way, all these kids getting the ADD diagnosis and the Oppositional Defiance Disorder diagnosis, well MANY OF THEM are now found to be Aspergers.

To me, if a kid has a predisposition for an Obsessive Compulsve Disorder, the worst thing you can get them is a video game, or let them go on the internet.
They will get money any way they can to fuel their obsessions.

My son's obsession is gambling and Second Life. He lives, breathes and exists just for these two things. He couldn't care less about what this has done to his family. How could he? His brain has been fueled by all this Second Life Nonsense. You want to know what he might have been had he never gone on Second LIfe?

Well, since my son had never gotten less than 100% on any test he took in school, and since he got a full scholarship to college, and graduated with a degree in web design, well he could have been a web designer.

But the fact that gambling is so readily available and Second Life is so addicting, well forget it.

I would tell any parent of a kid with Aspergers, to move to the Amish village where there are no tv's internet, or dvd players. I would tell them to get their kid to use their hands, to build, use their minds and brains to learn to socialize. Get them involved with group activities. Anything but tv, and the computer and video games.

I know, I sound crazy. WE need techology, but with an asperger person, they have to re-wire their brain first. They can learn the technology AFTER THEY GROW UP!!!

This is just my humble opinion. And I'll never post about it again.

But it does destroy families, believe me.

Melody

[cyclelops]

Mel

Your son is 10 years older than my daughter, and I probably had more info than you did, but it was me, not a doctor, or shrink who contacted a world reknown doctor and expert on Aspergers years back. Dozens of shrinks, therapists, neurologists, and no one could figure out what caused every day to be 'Ground Hog Day' as the movie goes.

Back a few years, AS was thought to affect only boys. Girls have it too. No one believed me that this was what she had.

I had normal kids who could use computers and video games and then go outside and play in the country (so thankful we had land). They did normal things, music, track, soccer, gymnastics....not this kid. Like I said, my kid had no computer access, I knew it would lock her in forever. She knew a ton about bugs and dinosaurs, until some well meaning person decided it was great for her to have unmitigated usage of the net. She even told the shrink sometimes she thinks she is a cartoon character. It is like the movie 'Tron' if I remember correctly.

This my last word on it too. Sites like that sell an addictive product to a very vulnerable population and there is probably little that can be done about it. Not very many normal kids or adults are building creatures on the net that they have to pay to feed...(most of us our busy feeding ourselves literally not virtually.) Now there is an idea....virtual feeding weight loss systems! Hey-some wizard should take that and run with it! Eat your virtual 2 lb burger for $5 worth of 'intestinal incentive'. Put it on your visa card. It is worth $6 when it comes out the other end...that is what these sites are selling. That stinks.