We had a few massive meltdowns today. One was courtesy of Emmett, one thanks to Elliott and a third by none other than Gavin himself.
Emmett’s meltdown was easily the most difficult. He was freaking out because the caramel apple he was going to eat, wasn’t perfect after he peeled the paper off. Some of the caramel stuck to the paper. He completely lost it.
To make things worse, he soon realized that he had forgotten his tablet at school.
Lizze called the school to make sure there was time for me to head back and retrieve his tablet. By the time I made it back home with his tablet, he was in a much better place.
Unfortunately, I no sooner walk into the door than I faced with another problem.
Apparently, while I was gone, Gavin dropped an f-bomb and a loud one at that. He claims that he said freaking but he definitely said fucking. The funny thing about it, he wasn’t even going to be in trouble. All I was going to do was talk to him about it and take away YouTube for a little while because that’s where he’s hearing the bad words.
He usually does okay with not repeating what he hears on TV or YouTube, but when something like this happens, we remove the offending source to help him understand that we don’t use those words.
All I did was approach him about it and he lost it.
I tried explaining that we know he didn’t mean to say it and that sometimes we slip-up and use words we shouldn’t. He wasn’t mad at us for calling him on his use of language, he was mad at himself for using said language.
Incidentally, he did use the word correctly. At least there’s that. 😁
As far as Elliott goes, he’s going through a rough time. Puberty isn’t fun for him and he’s been freaking out over everything anyway. This has been a constant challenge for some time now. Hopefully, we’ll work through this phase at some point.
Days like this are so extremely exhausting.
Emmett’s meltdown left me completely drained and barely able to survive Gavin’s. When it came to Elliott, I was done. My ability to cope was nonexistent and the only thing I could do was come up with some kind of major redirection.
That redirection came in the form of ordering pizza for dinner and sitting everyone down to watch Big Hero 6.
It worked for the most part and we were able to salvage the better part of the evening.
I’ll tell you what though, I’m completely devoid of any even resembling energy. Autism Parenting is a job that will kick your ass up one side of the road and down the other. My ass was seriously kicked today.
