Why did Adam Lanza shoot up a classroom full of little children?

Makalakumu

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This article churns my stomach, but I think there might be something to it.

I am Adam Lanza's Therapist.

http://parenteffectivenesstraining.blogspot.ca/2013/01/i-am-adam-lanzas-therapist.html

Less than one week before 20-year-old Adam Lanza killed twenty children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut I sat with eight children in my RAD Group (children with Reactive Attachment Disorder) who shared a few things in common with one another: contempt for adults and authority, a terror of abandonment, and hatred for siblings and anyone who competed with them for mom’s affections. I frequently look into their eerie little faces that have contemptuous sociopathic smirks or estranged identities. I have learned to see injured souls instead.

I have treated Adam Lanza, Dylan Klebold, Eric Harris, Jared Loughner and Seung-Hui Cho and their mothers too. Most are in earnest as much as Liza Long, who wrote, “I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother”. Most want help and don’t know what to do. First they will have to learn where things went wrong and understand how it happened.
What Happened to These Children?

RAD children were not born RAD. They were born to love and be loved. Every child I ever met with a propensity for violence was the natural product of extremely painful treatment, usually beginning with being left in daycare too young (perhaps as newborns) and too long (daily, throughout their first years). It was so painful the child drew a conclusion that they were alone in the world, and they gave up on the deepest drive and hope of all, love. They gave up on loving and being loved and cherished. They were not loveable. They decided they were on their own and there was no adult in the world they could trust. They decided never to be vulnerable again, because it hurts too much. We all know adults who feel that way. This is why. However, our injuries were small compared to Adam’s, Dylan’s, Eric’s, Jared’s and Seung-Hui’s. It’s relative.

Sometimes a three-month-old draws this conclusion. I have seen it. The infant will arch her back and push away. If the parent tries to make eye contact or talk tenderly, she will wriggle or point to the corner in the ceiling to “change the subject”. Sometimes a two-year-old draws the same conclusion. It is a decision a child forms before the age of three when the seeds of extreme violence are set. By the same token, the seeds of resilient mental health are set before the age of five, the optimal year to let them leave home for a while. It all stems from how they are treated in the beginning years of life. It’s a decision the child makes that can be unmade, with the right intervention.

This is absolutely bombshell provocative. Could abandonment by mothers at such a young age be fueling much of youth violence that we see now? If that is the case, then perhaps we shouldn't be pointing the fingers at firearms. Maybe the feminists who urged all the mothers to put their children in child care at such early ages are the problem? Perhaps the breakdown the family is the issue?

Why shoot up a classroom of kindergarteners? If his mother took him to see the classroom she visited when she left him so often, for no pay, preferring to be with these children rather than him, as she had done in his infancy, this would be the reason why Adam Lanza targeted that class. He thought she favored those normal children over him. That must have burned inside of him, causing excruciating pain.

Without bonding, he had little empathy or compassion for others, if any. It is the experience of bonding with our primary caregiver that gives us intimacy, empathy, compassion and a conscience. If he had been sufficiently bonded to her as an infant, he would not have been threatened by this act. The less secure an attachment the more volatile the adult. Insecurely attached babies become adults who lack resilience, teenagers who get pregnant, stalkers, dangerous domestic partners or killers, depending upon the degree of infant neglect and the other types of experiences they have, especially when they get older and it becomes time for discipline.

For some children, the lack of bonding leads them to accept friendships from strangers who molest them. It can also exacerbate parents and lead to brutal punishments. The icing on the cake for Adam may have been his mother’s catastrophic philosophy of life and her possible shared apocalyptic belief that the world was coming to an end soon, coupled by her affinity for violent weapons. This would meet the mind-warping component that creates schizophrenia. To live in an environment of expected doomsday, amongst assault rifles, is a mind-warping environment. I imagine such ideation was schizogenic or to be more clear, mind-****ing.

Once again, why did Adam Lanza shoot up a classroom of kindergarteners? My tentative hypothesis can be summed up thus: He suffered from a profoundly insecure attachment and was unbearably rageful. He was jealous of the children he killed, and assault weapons were the way to go.

I've read few rational explanations for this. Most people simply say that something like this defies all explanation. It's an unspeakable and evil act with no cause. But what if this is the cause? What if Adam Lanza's mother created this tragedy by following societies expectations of her? How much pain and suffering and violence could this be causing in our society if this is true?
 

WC_lun

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I don't agree with this at all. There are many, many, many, children in daycare due to both parents working. most from just a few months old. Very few of them kill children when they become a teenager.
 

granfire

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there are enough kids truly damaged by their parents who don't go around shooting up the world...
 
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Makalakumu

Makalakumu

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I don't agree with this at all. There are many, many, many, children in daycare due to both parents working. most from just a few months old. Very few of them kill children when they become a teenager.

True, but not everyone who is damaged behaves in the same way either. Some people get depressed. Some people hurt themselves. Some people explode outward. The number of people on anti-depressants keeps rising. What if this is related to that?
 
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Makalakumu

Makalakumu

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http://psychcentral.com/news/2011/10/25/antidepressant-use-up-400-percent-in-us/30677.html

The rate of antidepressant use in the United States increased nearly 400 percent over the last two decades, according to a report released Oct. 19.
The report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics found that 11 percent of Americans over the age of 12 takes an antidepressant, with about 14 percent taking the medication for more than 10 years.
 

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