Where he struggled was the way he dealt with the needles. He was screaming and carrying on when he would normally not make a peep. It appeared to be mostly drama, which Gavin is fond of. We didn’t play into this and instead remained as emotionless as possible and explained that if he doesn’t calm down, he will need to go to his room until he could.

It may sound cruel but if this wasn’t needless drama, I don’t know what is.

I don’t doubt the needles hurt but he’s been doing this for at least five years and we rarely see him carry on like this. Maybe he was not coping well today? I don’t know. What I do know is it seemed like it was 90% drama and 10% something else. What that something else was, I don’t pretend to know.

All I know is it felt awful to react the way we did but we know him very well and he needed redirected.

After he calmed down, he ended up doing fine. If we had let him carry on the way he was, it would have simply escalated.

Aside from that little Oscar winning hiccup, he did a great job of putting everything together. Hopefully, he’ll continue to improve and this will be one less thing we have to worry about.