I came to a depressing realization today. I was reminded. of just how infantile Gavin is. The reality is that Gavin is a 2 year old in a 10 year olds body. Elliott Richard is more emotionally mature.

When you get past Gavin’s physical size/age and look at him for who he is you see a baby or toddler. Gavin has fits or meltdowns just like Emmett John does. The problem is that Gavin is as big and strong as a 10 year old pubescent boy. I have a really hard time seeing this most of the time. Honestly, I usually just see an out of control 10 year old boy. I fail to recognise his “true” age and I don’t know how to remember that. It’s impossible to understand what I mean until you see a 10 year old boy completely melting down like a 2 year old. Your instinct is to react as though he’s 10 years old but in reality he isn’t.

Regardless Gavin has to be accountable for his actions. He will simply continue to get more and more dangerous if we don’t curb the behaviour now. If he throws a fit in public when he’s older (16,17,18,19 or 20 years old) he’s going to get arrested. No one is going to see (let alone care) that he’s a toddler in an adults body.

One of the things most people don’t know about is the gap between physical age and emotional age. The common assumption is that kids like Gavin are poorly disciplined or just spoiled brats. As with many things Autistic kids are more then meets the eye.