Gavin has been telling Elliott Richard horror stories. We keep correcting Gavin and even punishing him but he just keeps doing it. Gavin earned himself oatmeal last night because he thought ER would like to hear about vampires. So he told ER that vampires come out at night and bite your neck so they can suck your blood. Guess who didn’t sleep last night. Ding Ding. You guessed it, Elliott Richard. Nightmares AGAIN…

When ER was at Dr. Patti’s this week she said his anxiety is through the roof. I can’t imagine why. Gavin keeps doing this crap and I’m honestly starting to think he’s doing it on purpose. He knows he’s not supposed to do that but he doesn’t seem to care. We monitor as closely as possible but things still slip through the cracks.

Last night we had a monstrous meltdown. We have nothing that works for him but the oatmeal. The problem is that we have to be willing to take it to the end. Nothing else we have tried works. The only other option we have is to keep him in his room. Rewards don’t work and neither do choice charts. While they are all great ideas they simply don’t work with Gavin. This is probably due to the fact he has many other underlying mental health issues.

As of this writing we are engaged in oatmeal warfare (for lack of a better word). Now he’s saying his tummy hurts. Most likely he is playing us and he is very convincing. On the other hand what if something is actually wrong? It’s so hard to know what to do when you can’t believe anything he says. His eye is all healed up and he hasn’t had his Tylenol 3 for a few days. The whole thing smells like BS but as a parent your natural instinct is to believe your child even if you know better.

For me this is one of the hardest things about being a special needs parent…

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