One of the most haunting problems I feel as a parent is when people have spent "time" with Gavin and say he was a perfect angel. You're probably saying to yourself how could that be bad? The truth is I hate to hear that from people. The reason being that it makes me feel like a failure. Gavin does so well for "them" it must be "me". It is so demoralizing. The reality is that most people see Gavin as this sweet innocent child. They see him this way because no one ever spends enough time with him to see everything. That's not meant to be a slam on anyone either, just a fact. The problem lies in the fact that when he is "visiting" someone they tend to entertain…

You want to see who Gavin really is? Here you go. This is not pretty but I think it gets the point across. Sweet, innocent Gavin died many years ago. This is what we are left with. So please don't tell me how perfect he was or how well behaved he is. He DOES NOT just need understanding or anything else. This is the ugly, dark reality of what our lives are like. We are prisoners in our own home.This whole thing started because he wanted his pencil sharper. His pencil was just fine. He was trying to manipulate us and we weren't allowing it. I told him it was fine and to go do his homework. He started freaking out on the steps. I told him "we're not having…

Well Lizze has been home resting. The kids came home tonight. Elliott Richard is sleeping on one couch and Lizze is on the other. Emmett John is up stairs with me. Gavin seemed to do ok at my parents. He had a bad day at school Friday. He was in the principles office at least twice. That is not good. We are still having issues with the school at this point and I am not sure what we are going to do. I want to thank everyone that helped with the kids (not that any of you actually read this) the past few days. Also thanks for all the prayers for Lizze. Tomorrow will be fun. Lost and Tired Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

Wordpress shut my blog down because they say it violates there terms of service. That blog was an exact port of this one. I don't see the problem....Bye Bye wordpressLost and Tired

So I have been toying around with the idea of opening up a little more. Being just a bit more honest about everything.  Let you all in on what it’s like to raise a child with autism or other spectrum disorder. It’s not like you see on TV most of the time. In our case it’s extremely dark and challenging.  I think I will do this in parts because honestly this will be very difficult and emotionally draining for me. Here is my disclaimer: Gavin is no simply autistic.  He suffers from aspergers syndrome. Typically this means high functioning autism. In Gavin’s case this is not always true. Gavin is very unique in that he floats on the spectrum. This means that he can be high functioning (brushes his own…

We can't resort to violence like spanking with Gavin (even though he has it coming at times) for a few reasons. We don't believe in spanking because there is no progression from there. Gavin will associate violence as a way of dealing with anger. The biggest reason is because Gavin witnessed his biological father beat Lizze for the first year of his life. So we have come up with something even better and more satisfying. When Gavin makes a lot of bad choices and needs to be kinda put in his place we substitute his next meal with oatmeal. He isn't real fond of oatmeal when it plain. It's effective most of the time. He never learns from it which really makes it a pointless consequence but we have to…

Today has come and gone and where are we? Eliott Richards party was moved home from grandma and grandpa's house. Lizze and Emmett John were both sick today so we needed to change the venue. I think it went over quite well actually. Elliott Richard was very happy and is currently exhausted. Gavin is a different story all together. While we haven't seen any fits today we were constantly repeating ourselves. He was on the verge of being out of control all day long. Dr. R has increased the Zyprexa to 15mg in the am. He is still on 10mg at night. This is being done to hopefully silence the voices in his head. As with any med change we will have to watch him for a few days to…

We are celebrating Elliott Richards birthday today. We were also supposed to have Gavin's blood work done this morning. As every single day before this plans change. Gavin is having a rough morning so there is no way we would be able to get him to and from the lab without MAJOR drama. So it will have to wait because Elliott Richard deserves his special day without Gavin raining on his parade. Lizze is out of her meds so she is in extreme amounts of pain. We are waiting for the refill to be called in from pain management. Today is going to be very hard on her so adding to the chaos is not an option. Over the past few years we have had to shift from what's best…