Update From the Wolf Den: Sober View

It's been an interesting few days in Anchorage; indirectly related to Wolf, but powerful incidents in our little comfortable cushion of reality, reminders of just how much lies at stake for Wolf's future.

Earlier this week a young man grew upset with his former girlfriend for dating someone else. He lured her outside the high school bulding with the promise of a ring, then, while her eyes were closed, stabbed her 29 times in her young body. A passing skier on the adjacent trail system heard the girl's screams and stopped the attack. The boy, caught after a wild chase through the woods, told police the girl made him "mad" because she wouldn't date him anymore.

Immediately upon posting on the Anchorage Daily News web site, comments flooded the page with statements like "we should instate the death penalty for kids who commit such grevious acts", and "these crazy people have no place in society", etc., etc.
There was a time I would have said this, too.

But I have been given a gift, one that allows me to look beyond the action to the reason for it, perhaps with a broader understanding of the root cause, and events preceeding that could have made a difference in a child's life now ended due to a tragic, impulse-laden, and absolutely wrong choice. The window I look through as the mother of a child with three different diagnoses, all presenting impulse-control deficits, is decidedly foggy with the confusion of a system that does little more than refer parents to services but fails to follow up. This boy's grandmother said as much, and I agree with her. And I am more familiar with the system than most.

I would like to believe that my kid would never act in such a way, but the reality of his disabilities is such that his life and decisions are constantly in flux and always will be, and thus, so are ours. Our collective "team" must try to remain one step ahead of any decision he might make that could ultimately result in harm to him or someone else. This is why we are so adamant about his tenure at CHYC, and why we are so carefully crafting a post-CHYC scenario that will indeed protect him from himself, for lack of a better phrase.

It's not always easy to implement the "this is for your own good" mantra into a teenager/young adult's life, but in this case, it is critical. And it might possibly have worked for the young man who now is in an adult jail, awaiting attempted murder charges, game over.