> "[stuff] is left out of the story, again, to save Alex embarrassment."
Judging from many of the comments here, leaving out a lot of that stuff makes Alex and his parents come off looking worse than they probably were. The full details might be unnecessary, but mentioning the involvement of "police, courts, and medical professionals" in making the decision would have drastically improved my perception of the parents and the kid.
The parents could have done a better job, but that's true of all parents. It's a difficult job involving a lot of judgment calls and a lot of mistakes. IMO the article would be greatly improved if they were more direct about those mistakes and about the struggles they went through in making those decisions.
To put it another way: if my kid had that condition, I wouldn't ask for advice for the pushover-parents and out-of-control kid as described in the article, but I would ask for it from the hard-decision parents and struggling-but-eventually-grew-up kid as described in the comments.
Judging from many of the comments here, leaving out a lot of that stuff makes Alex and his parents come off looking worse than they probably were. The full details might be unnecessary, but mentioning the involvement of "police, courts, and medical professionals" in making the decision would have drastically improved my perception of the parents and the kid.
The parents could have done a better job, but that's true of all parents. It's a difficult job involving a lot of judgment calls and a lot of mistakes. IMO the article would be greatly improved if they were more direct about those mistakes and about the struggles they went through in making those decisions.
To put it another way: if my kid had that condition, I wouldn't ask for advice for the pushover-parents and out-of-control kid as described in the article, but I would ask for it from the hard-decision parents and struggling-but-eventually-grew-up kid as described in the comments.