As I have said before raising a child like Gavin is nothing short of a challenge. What most people don't know is the toll takes on your marriage. The divorce rate for couples with an autistic child is about 80-85%. When you figure that Gavin's autism is just one of 8 different disorders that certainly adds to the strain. On top of that, the divorce rate for blended families is about 70%. We fall into both categories. I adopted Gavin after an 9 year long court battle. So we are a blended family. So the reality is that the odds are not in our favor. Add to that financial strain and other health issues and they sometimes seem like insurmountable odds. Lizze and I have always said that no one…

Sitting waiting for Gavin's blood to taken. He is doing ok but I can see the anxiety building. I'm not sure how this is going to go. He can either be really good or it can take about 9 people to drawl his blood. I really hope it goes well cause I don't have the energy to fight him right now. Lost and Tired

Sitting waiting for Gavin's blood to taken. He is doing ok but I can see the anxiety building. I'm not sure how this is going to go. He can either be really good or it can take about 9 people to drawl his blood. I really hope it goes well cause I don't have the energy to fight him right now. Lost and Tired

A random Elliott Richard photo. Lost and Tired

Sitting waiting to go into Gavin's appointment. Trying to think thru getting our computer business back up and running full steam. I just built my new tower and it's running really nice. I also got most of my testing gear together. I got external burners and external docks for just about any HDD you can imagine. I am in the process of transferring my domain to a new host and my website will be back up. I am going to be working on some marketing things this week as I have time. We never actually shut down we just stopped pursuing new customers. I still had business but we had just to much going on to focus on both businesses. When the site is back up I post a link…

So Gavin had a bad day at school today. He refused to do his work and spent time with the principle. He came home and we discussed his day. He refused to take responsibility for his actions. He still owed me time from last nights drama and in light of the path he took at school he was awarded with oatmeal for dinner. Now he didn't like this one bit so I know that it is effective. And let's be honest, oatmeal is good for you anyway. We aren't starving him. He just doesn't like oatmeal. It's really the only deterrent we have left that works to some degree. We are running out of creative ways to give him consequences for his actions. Anyone have anything that has worked for…

So we have been having problems with Gavin's school not handling him appropriately. There was little accountability for Gavin and that was a huge problem. I thought we had worked out most of the issues but apparently not. Gavin teachers are trying to teach the kids to listen to their "inner voice". I know there are some out there that are saying so what. I also know there are some of you out there saying "OMG what are they thinking". Here is why the "OMG's" are correct. Gavin has been hearing voices for a few years now. He is medicated for it but we are pretty sure he still hears them. Gavin's voices in the past have talked about killing, setting the house on fire ect. So now you see…

One of the most frustrating and draining things about raising Gavin is the fact that he lacks common sense. I am very serious when I say that. Gavin does not have any common sense. That part of his brain just doesn't work. While he is extremely intelligent it's also "think to breath" so to speak with everything else. He doesn't recognise even the most basic safety things like the burner is hot or that's way to high to jump from. Honestly, Elliott Richard past him up in that department a while back. It's hard to always keep in mind that Gavin really doesn't function very well in the real world. It's really easy to lose your patience because all you see sometimes is a 10 year old doing things that…