I'm not sure what's going on with Gavin but he's seriously struggling. He's not functioning at a level that's typical for him. His cognitive ability has seriously declined and his temper is out of control. We don't know if it's temporary or more long-term. Historically, he's regressed but sometimes regains at least a portion of the skills he lost. It doesn't always happen that way but there's a little hope here.
Anyway, yesterday was really, really, really bad.
Gavin's making a lot of mistakes and he doesn't tolerate that well. He needs to be corrected in order to try and help him learn but no one judges him. He's not in trouble or anything like that. He requires a great deal of repetition in order for things to *click *for him. He's always been that way and we've just sorta built our lives around that.
When Gavin makes a mistake, he absolutely *loses it. *He screams, stomps, self-injures and looks for something to hit or bang his head on. It was really scary during the first 14 years of his life but over the last few years, he just sorta stopped reacting like this.
Unfortunately, he has been reverting back to this short fused, violent, loud and destructive behaviors lately. I would say for the last year or two, it's been a slow decline.
Yesterday was by far the worst it's been in at least half a decade. It's also a lot more serious because he's almost 19 years old and a whole lot stronger than he was back then.
What triggered yesterday's outburst was giving himself a haircut. He simply lacks the capacity to do that effectively. He basically shaved off patches of hair and would come downstairs and ask me how it looked. I would have to send him back up to look at what he did again and again. Eventually, he got most of it but left a patch of hair on the side and back of his neck. He shaved his head with a number 2 guard but I told him to consider taking the guard off to get the patches of hair off the back and side of his neck.
He went upstairs and came back down a few minutes later, feeling confident that he'd finally got everything.
Unfortunately, this is what he actually did.
He completely missed his neck and shaved all the way up that back of his head. No there was no choice but to completely shave his head.
I had to take the picture because it was the only way he could see.
He absolutely lost it. I told him that he would need to shave the rest of his head. I was happy to help him but he had wanted to do this on his own and it's a good thing for him to be able to do.
I totally admire that he didn't give up. Unfortunately, he doesn't see that he didn't give up. He just sees all the mistakes.
After a few more times of trying to get his head shaved but completely missing the mark, I shaved it for him. He was so angry that he couldn't do it on his own and he got incredibly loud and aggressive.
To make things worse, at some point, he shaved off a chunk of his left eyebrow. I don't have any idea how he managed to do that but when he realized this, he actually lunged at me.
It was absolutely awful.
I had to trim his eyebrows in order to sorta blend it in. If I didn't, everytime he looked in the mirror, he'd freak out.
It took forever to calm him down.
All the above is problematic for obvious reasons but the really scary thing was that he decided to wet his hair before using the electric razor. I don't know how he didn't electrocute himself. Truthfully, he would have likely tripped the GFI before hurting himself but the fact that he mixed water and electricity is terrifying. Clearly, he can't be allowed to do this again.
The entire process was exhausting and it has left the household on edge because there wasn't anywhere you could go to escape Gavin's outbursts. The whole house could hear and feel it.
Lizze and I have been really struggling with his outbursts lately. We've actually had to put something back on the table that we'd previously taken off. That's revisiting whether or not Gavin would be better off in a group home type environment. Safety has to be a priority and as much as it crushes me to even allow myself to think about this, Dr. Pattie thinks that there will quickly come a point where we are simply in over our heads with Gavin.
This is a truly shitty feeling. It's heartbreaking and soul crushing.
I don't really want to talk about this anymore, at least for right now. It's been an absolutely shitty day and I'm going to bed.
