Pulling My Hair Out

Leelo has been in a most interesting space lately. Some good language, like being able to generalize and identify grocery stores, and telling me, "Not okay! It's not okay!" when I attempt to end a walk on our street before we get to one of his stim stops. New language is good.

What is not good are the new behaviors he's added to his aggression arsenal: he now pinches skin and/or pulls hair when he gets mad. His therapists are trying to ignore him, but I cannot downplay the hair pulling and will pull an alpha dog on him as needed. While this hold is not harmful, he finds it very aversive--and it is definitely not the kind of attention he is using his outbursts to seek.

I'll talk about his aggression some more this afternoon with Supervisor M; we will also talk about how Leelo is starting to hit friends of Iz's such as Merlin and Violet. It would break my heart if Leelo's behavior escalates to the point where Iz's friends don't want to come over.

I am hoping that Leelo's behavior will improve now that Seymour is back from his glorious trip to Utah. I hope I improve, too. It is not impossible to be on my own with the brood for four days, but it is trying--especially when therapists get sick, kids get sick, kids decide to do tag-team sleeping, kids have guests spend the night, and I get no rest. Then my brain starts to deteriorate and I forget really important things. Like calling my mom back after she returns from a month abroad. Or calling TLF to plan out our upcoming weekend together (yay!). Or the fact that Leelo had a speech therapy session with Sage at noon. Whoops.