We talk about learned behavior…right? How about Emmett puked tonight right after taking his meds. I never want to be to quick to blame Gavin but this is EXACTLY what Gavin does. Gavin will make himself vomit and does so in a very dramatic fashion as to bring as much attention to himself as possible. So Emmett has witnessed this quite a few times.

Now we are dealing with Emmett running to the bathroom and sitting down in front of the toilet and making himself puke. Now if we get to him in time we can distract him and he’s first e bit if we are to slow them, like tonight, he will vomit. I hate this because it just muddies the water. We don’t know if he vomited because he was sick of because he made himself do it.
We still struggle with this and have for many years with Gavin. More recently Gavin’s vomitting “may” be tied to his GI issues but the problem is that if Gavin thinks he’s going to vomit he will make himself vomit because in his mind that’s the next logical step.. So again, we are trying to figure out what to do because if he made himself puke then we need to NOT bring attention to it but if he’s really sick we want to comfort him.

With Emmett, the language barrier is significant enough that he can’t tell us what’s going on. Is Emmett simply mimicking Gavin’s behaviors or is something he is doing on his own.  I have to say that time like this I HATE Autism. I LOVE my boys but HATE the Autism. I just want to know when they are sick or in pain so I can comfort them. I f@cking HATE having to pick apart behaviors so we don’t inadvertently make something worse…………sigh