We have stopped giving Anthony the medication that might promote aggressive behavior. Yet . . . .

Anthony attacked his teacher last week without warning, and continued to try to hurt her even after he had knocked her down. Another teacher had to help to restrain him. I was told that his teacher's shoulder was rather sore after the incident.

A couple of days ago, the same teacher was outside with another aide and Anthony, and noticed behavior that signaled he might again be about to become upset. She warned the aide to move away from Anthony, but the aide apparently did not recognize the imminent danger. Anthony bit her on the back of her upper arm. The school nurse said she had never seen a bite doing as much damage. We have to take him very soon for blood work to ensure that he has not transmitted any serious diseases. We took him once previously for the same issue, but it has been more than a year so new data is necessary.

Between these two incidents, my wife met with the teachers and principal at his school for an "IEP", which stands for Individualized Education Program--I think; everyone refers to it by the acronym--required periodically for students with disabilities. Interestingly, and curiously, to me, his teachers said they could see proof of intelligence above that of others in his class. Among other indications was the ability to arrange visually words in a sentence they gave him verbally. The level of complexity that he achieved each and every time was such that they were certain of real cognitive abilities. They feel that his violent outbursts are probably due to some tactile trigger(s) that we do not yet understand.

I do not know what to think of this. It is frankly rare for me to see evidence of cognition in him above the level of a small child, and I think we treat him that way. But perhaps that is a very small part of the problem: if he does have some abilities to think like a normal person, I can understand that he would not want to be spoken to as though he were very young. I also find myself regretting the way I have reacted to him at times. I have, for the most part, dealt with Anthony in ways that I have thought were suited to his behavior, as I have done with my other two children. I am now beginning to wonder if I have been far off base and, in fact, been contributing to our difficulties all this time.