Griffin Has Been Drawing A Great Deal

 Instead of spending all of his time on the computer, the cell phone browsing the Internet, or watching TV, Griffin has devoted his time to his artistry and animation and I am so very proud of his accomplishments and dedication. He wants to be an animator when he grows up, to make cartoons and animated movies. I believe that is a great aspiration for him. Whether he will have the emotional maturity to manage a job is another thing...that may take a few years down the road but I have high hopes for him. I keep telling him that he can accomplish anything that he wants to because he is perfect, the way that he is meant to be regardless of what anybody says to him.

 I believe that Griffin is gifted and talented with his artistic ability, the only deficits that he has is that he does not understand how the world works and his mother has a hard time helping him with that because she doesn't either. Griffin's mother sees the world through the eyes as a child, naive and easily taken advantage of. In fact, Griffin just told me the other day that he wished that his mother wasn't like a child. What can I do? That hurt! I am his friend yet his mother but he sees straight through me as someone who has autism. He sees that I am emotionally sensitive, often taking things personally because my self esteem is so low. I don't want Griffin to be this way so I am always giving him kudos, building him up with words of praise and encouragement, while at the same time setting boundaries to show him that when you love someone you have to say "NO!" sometimes in order to prove that you care.

 I finished my article for Answers.com but I don't have the link yet. I suppose that you could just go there and look up Lora Aspiotis and find my article on Depression and Its Many Faces. I don't know exactly when it is going to be published. I have an ongoing article about depression at least until I branch out to something else.

 Still having sleep issues, Griffin is getting up in the middle of the night to eat and waking me up to be with him for several hours, then going back to sleep. Then he cannot wake up for the bus or to go to school, he wakes up around 1:00 p.m. then it is pretty much useless to go to school. Sometimes I make him go anyhow. But it is a horrible meltdown if I do because of the messed up schedule. His meds are still messed up, we still do not have them right. I am keeping a chart of his behaviors, meds, sleep patterns, and teacher's messages. I am hoping that with this it will be useful to the doctor when taking into consideration the medications used and which dosage used for each one, also we can figure out what time of the night is best for his bedtime in order to keep him from waking up in the middle of the night. He will soon be on a lower dose of Risperdal then nearly off of it subsequently he will stop eating so much.....thank goodness.

The Intensive In Home team is wonderful and are helping Griffin a great deal as always, they know him well by now. Last time they worked with him for 6 months before they got him to the point of becoming stable....and that is after having to go to the hospital (in patient care). Now Griffin knows that he never wants to ever go back to the hospital so he minds his P's and Q's most all the time and hasn't done any hitting. What's happening now he has absolutely no control over, it's all meds.

Do you recognize these cereal characters? They are from the past, Griffin loves retro-advertising icons. He just loves anything adverting or commercials. Sometimes it is charming and sometimes it is unnerving but I love him for it anyhow......he's my buddy!