Gavin had a pretty rough afternoon/evening and it culminated into a decent sized meltdown at therapy tonight. The problem is that Gavin either isn't recognizing or is unwilling to admit he's making mistakes.
Mistakes are something that Gavin simply doesn't tolerate, especially in himself.
When something happens and we try to point it out to him, he very often will either deny it happened or happened the way it did. He can become very, very upset.
We had a situation arise at therapy tonight and it led to a decent sized meltdown. It wasn't a big deal but it was a great example for Dr. Pattie to see, so she can help guide us through it.
All that happened was Elliott handed Gavin a cup of goldfish crackers and for whatever reason, the cup slipped through Gavin's hand and spilled on the floor. I saw the whole thing happen and in my view, Gavin dropped the cup. Again, not a big deal at all. The problem arose when Gavin denied dropping the cup.
It was clear what happened and he wasn't in trouble at all. I was trying to make it a teaching moment but the way he reacted was pretty extreme.
We tried to talk him through it but he was too far gone.
He needed to blow off some steam before there was any chance at a rational conversation. He was very frustrated and overwhelmed. Like any other meltdown, he was purging. Once he got through that, we were able to get somewhere with him.
While he was trying to explain how he was feeling, he managed to get out that he's very frustrated because he doesn't know what to say anymore. He doesn't like freaking out over his mistakes but he doesn't think there is anything that will help him stop. It's was heartbreaking in many ways because he's struggling and hurting.
I told him that we can find new ways of helping him but he needs to be willing to try different things, even if it's outside of what he's used to.
A large part of this stems from Gavin's desire to be independent in ways that surpass his capacity to safely do so. I'm not sure how else to put that.
There are times that he takes too much initiative and it gets him in trouble. The other day, he ate raw sausage because he didn't cook it long enough and when we discovered it, he was denying it had happened, even though he'd already clearly eaten half of it.
We need to put some guardrails up for him, as safety precautions in the event he goes off the road a bit. I think of it as bumper bowling. He can still play the game but we need to help keep him out of the gutter, so to speak.
One of the things we're going to start doing or rather revamping because we already do it, is visual prompts..
He wants to make his own lunch, so we can post instructions for him to reference. We can even require him to review them before he does anything. He doesn't like that idea because it makes him feel stupid but I told him today that most people who cook, refer back to the recipe to make sure they did things correctly. Essentially, that's all we'd be doing. We just needed to frame the idea a little better for him.
One of the *blessing and a curse* things about Gavin is that he starts each day with a clean slate. He doesn't usually harbor negative feelings and often goes into each day with no memory of what upset him the previous day. That also means he needs a ton of reminders but as I said, blessing and a curse.
At the end of the day, I'm really proud of him because he was able to express how he was feeling, even though he was extremely emotional and quite upset.
I always try to reinforce all the reasons I'm proud of him, especially when he's struggling because while he might be struggling, I don't want him to define himself based on those darker times.
Anyway, that was sorta my day in a nutshell. It wasn't super eventful but it was throughly exhausting and very typical of us.. ☺
