I know the title is a bit dramatic but I at the time of writing, I was a donkey on the edge. 

I wish I had positive news to share with all of you. I wish that I could say that Gavin came home and we had no problems.  Unfortunately, I can’t say that. 

When Gavin got into the van after school and I went around asking each of them about their day, I cringed as I got to Gavin. 

He proudly said that he had an awesome day.  I was like, thank God.

I asked him if there were any problems today and that’s where things rapidly went downhill.  I asked him how his homework from last night went.  He informed me that he never turned it in. It was that point that I felt it best to pause the conversation until such a time that I wasn’t behind the wheel of a car. 

When we arrived home, we got the two E’s a snack and sent them upstairs so we could chat with Gavin and figure out what the heck just happened. 

Lizze asked him if he’d turned in his homework and he told her no, he hadn’t..

Feeling the vein in my forehead throbbing, I asked him why he hadn’t turned it in.  He said it wasn’t done and he knew had two problems left. 

This is where I got really frustrated because if you recall, when we went through all of this last night, he had been simply making up answers because he either didn’t know how to do the work or didn’t want to the work.  There’s no way to really know for sure which it is. 

I wanted to know why he even cared about the last two problems when everything else was made up answers?  Why didn’t he friggin turn it in?

The answer I got just totally blew me away and all I wanted to do was run away screaming and waving my arms in the air. 

It turns out we were talking about two different things, although I’m not sure how he got these two things confused. I really think he’s messing with us, I truly do. 

He claims that he thought I was asking him about his homework for today. 

I was very, very specific about referring to the homework from last night but he insists that he never heard Lizze or I say that. Whatever, it’s not worth me having a stroke over. 

Anyway, when asked again about his homework from last night, he said, oh, I gave that to my teacher but he said he could no longer accept it because it was from last grading period. That’s right, last grading period.

When I asked him of He had homework tonight, he said that he did.

However, his homework tonight isn’t really homework.  It’s in class work that he didn’t finish in time. Instead of turning it in, he told his teacher that he give it to him tomorrow, after he’d had a chance to finish it.  The openly admits to this.

This conversation led to a tantrum because he knew that he was busted again.

Lizze and I just stared at each other, unsure of what to say.  In truth, it was more like we were trying to refrain from saying something we’d later regret.

As a result of this and other reasons I haven’t shared just yet, we had to remove a few privileges until the homework situation is straightened out.  We also have reason to be concerned about contact with the boys again.  That will be a whole other post but this is just the way it is. 

After being reminded about boundaries again tonight, he got too close to Elliott and so he ended up losing his choice of dinner tonight and instead had oatmeal.

He was really pissed off now, not because he did anything wrong, but because we were holding him accountable for his actions.  So began the second, more violent tantrum of the afternoon.

I’m so frustrated right now and I just don’t know what to think.

At this point, we know for sure that he’s been lying.  We know that. We also know that he’s been lying to and manipulating his teachers and fellow students. We know for sure that his teachers keep saying that he’s doing great and we have nothing to worry about.  However, we also know for sure that he’s not doing his homework and at least some classwork. 

What we don’t know is if the cognitive regression plays a role in any of this or if this is Reactive Attachment behavior.

Personally, I’m seeing this as at least mostly free Reactive Attachment related because he’s been caught several times trying to pit Lizze and myself against the school. This happened as recently as last week. 

I don’t know what to do.  I feel like I’m going crazy and This problem is getting bigger and bigger.

This site is managed almost exclusively from my Samsung Galaxy Note 3. Please forgive any typos as auto-correct HATES me. 😉

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