Lizze and I met with the social worker at Akron Children’s Hospital this morning. Over all I feel it was a positive experience. They are still hung up on the oatmeal “issue” but they’ll just have to get over it. They have Gavin in the “FYI” program, don’t ask cause I don’t know what “FYI” stands for. Basically, they have removed almost all social interaction and his time is literally spent reading and doing work. Gavin has spent the entire time trying to manipulate his way out of this “FYI” program and the doctors and staff simply aren’t having it. So kudos to them.

They said Gavin needs to have in-home behavioral therapy on top of everything else. The don’t like the fact the oatmeal is the only form of punishment he have for him. They simply haven’t had enough experience with him to understand why this is necessary. The one thing I did agree with is that IF we had other disciplinary options then we WOULD use them. The problem is that no one can give us anything that actually works. So we are “stuck” using the same measures over and over again. It’s not that we are stubborn or set in our ways, it’s more like a lack of options. Does that make sense? In theory the behaviorist would be able to give us additional options we could add to our repituar. While we are open to the idea of adding yet ANOTHER specialist, I’m not sure how practical it is. My understandoing is that they would have to come out of the Cleveland arean and I’m not sure if they come down this far. I’ll have to make a few phone calls.

I have to admitt that I was pleasantly suprised with how today went. I also recieved a phone call from one of the staffers because Gavin was upset that we weren’t coming to visit tonight. As I mentioned to you all as well as Gavin and the staff at Akron Children’s Hospital, we are taking a “tough love” type of approach to this. He knew that if he did this and was sent to Akron that we would NOT be there to visit him this time. We’re hoping that the idea of not seeing us make the thought of going back FAR LESS appealing. The staffer I spoke with on the phone wanted to be sure and that’s why she called instead of Gavin, himself calling. I thought they handled that quite well. Despite the “tough love” approach, we already saw Gavin thins morning AND he’ll be discharged at some point tomarrow so he will survive. Hopefully this help to send the sespatetly needed massage that there are VERY REAL consequences for his choices. Probably won’t have the desired effect but we have to try. This is NOT easy to do but I truly it to be a necessary evil at this point.