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struggle4progress

(120,253 posts)
Tue Dec 18, 2012, 04:45 PM Dec 2012

'Anarchist Soccer Mom' cries out for help

By Ann O'Neill, CNN
updated 10:24 AM EST, Tue December 18, 2012

... A 40-year-old mother of four, Long teaches English at a small college in Boise. On Friday she posted a brutally honest essay on her blog, The Anarchist Soccer Mom. It struck a nerve in the wake of the mass shooting in which 20 children died at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut ...

For Long, the blog post was "a cry for help, a real gut-check article," she said, a way to articulate for friends the cold, gripping fear she has been living with for so long. She finally came to terms with an issue she'd been avoiding: Something serious is up with this boy. He goes into blind rages, he threatens violence and he is getting harder to control ...

On Wednesday, Long followed a social worker's advice and committed her son to an acute care psychiatric facility. During an argument over whether he could wear blue pants to school, he had threatened to kill himself by jumping out of the car. It was a line she'd warned him not to cross ...

"No one wants to send a 13-year-old genius who loves Harry Potter and his snuggle animal collection to jail," she wrote in her blog. "But our society, with its stigma on mental illness and its broken health care system, does not provide us with other options. Then another tortured soul shoots up a fast food restaurant. A mall. A kindergarten classroom. And we wring our hands and say, 'Something must be done'" ...

http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/18/us/connecticut-shooting-anarchist-soccer-mom/?hpt=he_c1

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