One of the things Anthony does when he is upset is to throw himself on his bed--not just fall down on it in anger, but throw himself on it as hard as he can.  He has done this so many times that I noticed the box spring was damaged beyond a salvageable state, so I have put some boxes and other materials under the bed frame and put the mattress on top of the frame.  It's better than having the mattress on the floor, I suppose, at least from the standpoint of the occasional bug or spider crawling on it.  I think we will eventually look for another box spring, but, knowing he will likely break that too, I am hesitant to put money out for it right away.  In the meantime, I have to at some point dispose of the old box spring.  It is currently standing on end in his room.

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Late in the evenings, Anthony will often take off his clothes after he has gone to the bathroom in anticipation of taking a shower--which of course I have to help him with.  Sometimes I am not ready for him to do that, but I try to accommodate him.  Lately, however, he seems to be losing track of the time of day: we often see him sitting on the toilet, completely naked.  Sometimes we even hear him flushing the toilet and go to find him standing in the tub.  That can be a problem if I tell him it's not time for a shower and instruct him to put his clothes back on.  I hope this is just a phase that will shortly pass; I don't need yet another type of situation to provoke his anger.

Both I and my wife separately had business outside yesterday morning before Anthony wanted to get out of bed, and I anticipated that he would get up on his own and our younger son would have him go to the bathroom before I got back.  When I came back about 10am--my wife got back about the same time--Anthony was still lying in bed.  We never know if it is OK to nudge him out of bed if he acts like he doesn't want to get up, although of course we do on weekdays to get him up for school.

Well, it turned out yesterday that it wasn't a good idea to get him up, as he was upset and gave us enough indication of malicious intent that we decided on a major change of plans, with my wife going in my place with our younger son to the second of four soccer tryouts on consecutive weekends.  For some reason, all four of these tryouts are at least close to an hour away--the one last week was two hours away--despite ourselves living in the central metropolitan area of the state.  The tryouts themselves are scheduled for three hours, so yesterday's tryout involved a good five hours away from home, which was time that my wife had planned for several other things she needed to get done.  Ultimately, although Anthony did not go off on me while my wife and younger son were out, I suspect he would have if my wife had remained here by herself instead of me, as he had "that look" for some time before his mood changed.

Late in the evening, though, we had another incident right before bed time, and this really makes me wonder what I can do with him.  He wasn't able to go to the bathroom right when he wanted to, so he got upset.  When he did go to the bathroom, he was not contented by that and instead chose to scream and try to bang his head as he did so.  He also attempted to engage me by scratching or hitting me, which of course I didn't permit, and that infuriated him more.  I finally got him up and tried to wash his hands without allowing him to come after me, but because I was holding on to his hands, he of course was close enough to come after me with his head.  I kept trying to pacify him without retaliating, but realized that wasn't working.  Each attempt from Anthony increased in viciousness to the point that he nearly bit one of my extended fingers.  Prior to last night, he hadn't tried to bite me in a few years because he knows the reaction it can get from me.

What I have seen from Anthony, which is highly counterintuitive to me--not to mention seeming like abusive parenting--is that he will not stop coming after me until I do something violent back to him.  I can sometimes defuse the situation without retaliating by locking him in his room for a while, but it takes time to get him to calm down, and that is after he does his best to break everything in his room.  In this case, it was late and everyone was trying to go to sleep, so I grabbed him by the head and slammed it four times into the counter.  That sounds far worse than it really was, because his resistance makes the force only about half of what it would be otherwise.  But he calmed right down.  Actually, I wanted to see if he was calm, so I tried then talking to him reasonably, and he still tried to put my hands up to his head to hit him, which I didn't want to do.  I took him to his bed, and he started screaming again, so I used his own fist to hit his head several times.  After that, he was completely calm and didn't make another sound.  And I continue to feel guilty and be quite baffled by that.

We somehow managed as a one-car family for a few years until about this time last year, when we were able to acquire a second that was new enough to spare us used-car worries.  That has helped immensely as our younger two kids increasingly need to be in different places, often at the same time.  But Anthony occasionally plays the wild card that sets us back to our one-car days.

My wife asked recently if I could get off work early enough to be home to meet Anthony off the bus, then go to pick up our daughter while my wife attended to another scheduled activity involving our younger son.  Anthony came home, went to the bathroom and urinated as usual, then I had him finish so we could go.  It was immediately clear something was amiss when, before he stood up, he slammed his head into the adjacent bathtub--where he has already broken off several pieces of the bathtub skirt; still trying to determine the direction to go with that issue--and I realized he probably needed to sit longer to finish his business.  I had him sit back down, but because he was angry he sat down with a lot of force and broke the other side of the toilet seat (I wrote about this a month ago) and separated the pieces.  I tried to put the front half of the seat back up against the back half, but Anthony didn't like it and whimpered as he sat there.  I called my wife to let her know the situation, and she let our daughter know she would have to wait an extended time before being picked up. 

I ultimately went out later to pick up our daughter, and together we made a side trip to get a new toilet seat.  I'm starting to wonder if I should look into buying them in bulk. 


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 My wife had her MP3 player hooked up to speakers, and went downstairs for a time.  After a while, she noticed that the music coming from upstairs didn't seem to be anything she recognized as being on her player.  She went upstairs, saw that her player had been turned down, and Anthony had inserted a CD purchased for our daughter into the laptop on the counter.  We didn't know he knew how to do that, but he must have seen it done at some point.  I still wonder why it is that he can figure out things like that, but can't follow simple instructions from us.  I guess the auditory receptors that translate words into ideas in his brain just don't work. 

In the interest of improving my younger son's soccer skills, we occasionally go out to watch rival teams play.  Yesterday was one such instance, and I made the mistake of saying something to Anthony before I went out with his brother, so he came toward the door.  I told Anthony that he would not be going with us (since I didn't want him disrupting the sidelines of fans we didn't know), and thought that would be the end of it; he would just go back to his room. 

My wife told me later that Anthony didn't go back to his room.  He just stood there.  And stood there.  I don't know if he didn't understand me, or thought I had just gone out to the car briefly and would be coming back in to put on his shoes, but he clearly didn't get it.  My wife felt sorry for him, so she took him outside with her and our daughter, and later to a frozen yogurt shop.  We met them there after the soccer game when my wife told me what had happened.  I don't know what Anthony thought, or felt, but I was very sad for him.  I have to be careful going forward to not get his attention if I have to go out, or we need to make accommodations to take him out too. 

I try to take Anthony with me when I need to go outside, partly for his perceived benefit and partly to get him out of my wife's hair.  Even if I have another of our children with me, I put Anthony in the front seat so that if he a) sneezes, it will not be on the person in front of him and b) if he gets angry, he will not reach in front of him to try to scratch his siblings or pull their hair.

However, Anthony unnerved me yesterday by pushing the floor-mounted gear shifter into neutral while I was driving.  I of course told him forcefully that he couldn't do that.  A short time later, however, he reached for it again.  So I raised my voice considerably at him, which, of course, made him very upset.  It's a good thing car windows can sustain some impact, because we otherwise would have a broken window to deal with as well due to his head banging.  I guess he will either remain in the back seat going forward, or he will not go out with us at all. 

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We are now having to remove toilet paper from the bathrooms when Anthony goes in by himself.  We have found more than once recently the toilet clogged because he has emptied whatever was remaining of the roll into the toilet--as well as removing the metal cylinder from the toilet paper holder and putting it into the trash.

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Anthony likes puzzles, and we sometimes try to keep him out of the kitchen--where he is prone to sneeze on things--by sending him to his room and breaking up multiple puzzles for him to work on.  Today, I found our younger son was in Anthony's room with him, and asked him what he was doing.  He said Anthony had grabbed his hand, took him into his bedroom, and tapped the table where several puzzles had largely been finished.  Our younger son obliged by breaking them up again so Anthony could start over. 

I have mentioned that we try to give Anthony latitude in regard to choosing what to wear.  But that continues to present challenges for us.  For instance, he has come out of his room several times ready for the day wearing some pajamas we recently put in his drawer.  They are nice, even stylish, pajamas, but they aren't something that Anthony can wear to school.  Of course, Anthony doesn't understand that, and he can get upset when we make him change into something else.

Speaking of something else, since Anthony has a tendency to rip his T-shirts when upset, we have built up quite a varied collection of them through thrift store purchases and donations of used ones from extended family.  But rather than choose T-shirts randomly from his drawer, we have noticed Anthony quite often chooses from the two or three shirts related to the college our family roots for, even rummaging through his drawer to get to them.  I'm not exactly sure what to make of that.  They are all different in design and don't feature the school's logo prominently.  The colors are all the same, but he does have other shirts with the same color.  So, does he understand the writing on them?  Does he, unbeknownst to us, enjoy watching the football games with us?  I have no idea.  

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Another clothing issue has surfaced recently: I discovered Anthony is taking off his socks and putting them back in his drawer rather than in the laundry.  Surely enough, when I checked his drawer, it was apparent that none of them were clean.  

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I also wrote recently that Anthony had ripped off a toilet seat in one of his rages, so I replaced it with another.  I was actually happy to do that, because the previous one had not been the same color as the toilet itself, and always looked out of place.  Well, I attached a new seat that nicely matched the toilet, but I came home the other day and found it cracked.  That of course is due to Anthony yet again, being upset and bouncing up and down on it.  It's uncomfortable for all involved--including Anthony--but it still works.  I guess we will bear with it until he damages it further and renders it unusable.  

Anthony has hit his bedroom door enough that the upper hinge pulled out.  I tried a couple of times to just re-tighten the screws, but it became clear that would not be sufficient.  So, I unscrewed the hinge and have filled the holes with wood filler.  I have done this before on another door in the house--that was also due to Anthony being angry--and know I have to wait a while before I re-attach the hinge to the door frame, so I haven't done that yet with Anthony's door.  However, Anthony for some reason will not go to sleep without his door being at least mostly closed, so I had to lift up his door last night to try to place it in a manner that it did not appear to be "open".

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I wrote previously in an at-wits'-end manner about Anthony being possessed.  As time goes on, I actually think there is something to that--not that he is "possessed" by another entity, of course, but it is almost as though he might have dissociative identity disorder (which I understand is now what used to be called "multiple personality disorder").  When he gets upset, he can get a look on his face that is distinctly unlike any other.  When he does get that look, he is solely and rather fiercely intent on hurting those around him.  Nothing can dissuade him from that purpose.  I have tried talking to him in such instances to see if I can "reason" with him--which I am aware might be a ludicrous idea from the start--but there is no stopping his single-minded focus until either a certain amount of time has passed or someone has broken that focus by causing him considerable discomfort. 

I certainly wish I understood more about him.  When dealing with Anthony, it is all too often like being in a parallel dimension where the rules that work in the world I am accustomed to don't apply.  I am constantly left wondering if I am doing things the right way with regard to him. 

This week's happenings:

Anthony *always* takes the bed covers off in the summer, so I thought I would save myself some trouble by not putting them on him one night this week (with the intent to check him before I went to bed). When I looked later, he had put the covers on himself.

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My wife was in the bedroom with the door closed.  When she opened the door, she was surprised to see Anthony standing there. She then went to the kitchen, and saw a container of ice cream on the counter. She asked our other children about it, but they denied any knowledge of it.  My wife surmised that Anthony had taken it out of the freezer and wanted her to dish some up for him.

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I started working on making a screen for one of the windows in our house.  This is tedious work, at least for me. I didn't get very far, but I did have a couple of sides cut with the joining segments fitted in, and then I left it for the next day.  When I came home from work, I saw that Anthony had disassembled what I had done. On top of that, he took all the frame components out of their long plastic bag, and arranged them very nicely on the counter.

Anthony ate our homemade guacamole one night this week.  We left him alone for a few minutes, and voilà--it was gone.  It was enough for all five of us for our Mexican dinner.

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I think I ought to be afforded a moral exemption for smacking Anthony when he takes the laces out of his sneakers.  I took him with me to his younger brother's soccer practice, and when we arrived and I was about to let him out of the car, I saw him as he was just pulling the laces out of the last eyelets.  Don't know why I didn't notice it earlier--but I guess I wouldn't when I'm trying to pay attention to driving?

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Anthony was literally hopping mad yesterday morning. I heard him being upset on his bed, so I asked him if he wanted to go to the bathroom.  He didn't get up, so I went to the bathroom instead.  He resumed screaming, so I told him to come into the bathroom, where he jumped up and down as he yelled.  I told him to sit on the floor, and then he banged his head into the floor, the walls, the cabinets, and the bathtub skirt.  That is now officially beyond repair, by the way.  I have been meaning to try to piece it together and cement it, but I will just have to look for something else to replace it that is hopefully inexpensive.

He did finally go to the bathroom.  I still don't know if that was the issue, though.

I suppose this gets old for people who read this blog regularly.  My wife called me today late in my workday to tell me she had the police at our house to prevent Anthony from further attacking her, and asked if I could come home a little early (which I did).  I came home to find my wife with an ice pack on the back of her head--where Anthony had inflicted the most pain among several head butts--and another on her lower leg where Anthony had bitten her after she tried to subdue him by getting him on the floor and sitting on him.  Her knee is also quite painful because Anthony hit it with his head a few times.  Needless to say, she won't be trying to pin him down any more; he is now simply far too strong for her.

Among the household damage: a large hole in the drywall that we thought was well-reinforced by a piece of wood we had put behind a patch for a previous hole; and a toilet seat ripped off.  I was rather impressed with that one.  Amazingly, our dining table set is unscathed--or, nothing is noticeable since it is low-quality to begin with--after he kicked a chair into the table and sent the table itself flying.  

In this case, we probably know the cause of his rage, as benign as it sounds: he needs to go to the bathroom.  He did not have a bowel movement yesterday.  I in fact have learned to avoid taking him outside with me in the evening if he hasn't had a bowel movement during the day, but we didn't have any issues of that sort yesterday; he just didn't go.

I have noticed that Anthony sometimes seems to display more awareness than at other times.  It could be my imagination, of course.  But I mostly see it when he is angry.  That doesn't mean I always see it when he is angry; just that, when I do see it, it is usually at those times.

So I was trying at times this week to talk to Anthony as a normal person--asking him how he felt, explaining things, et cetera.  My wife figuratively raised her eyebrows when I did, but I pressed on.

Well, when I took him out in the car with me to go to a home improvement store--and part of the problem might be that I had him sit in the front with me rather than relegating him to the back where, even if he gets upset, he usually hits parts of the car rather than those in front of him--I realized I again had an opportunity to try to engage him.  This turned out to be one of the worst judgmental errors I have committed with him.

I asked him how he was doing.  I asked him what he thought about the sheep we saw out the window.  It was my mistake to point in the direction of the sheep.  Anthony thinks that our pointing to something means that he has to touch or pick up something in that direction.  So I told him that, no, I did not need him to adjust the air vents, but that began to agitate him.

I then noticed that he had multiple mosquito bites from our previous evening watching the local symphony at an outdoor venue.  Where most of us can resist the urge to scratch very much, Anthony of course will exacerbate the problem, so he had (and still has) large red blotches all over his arms and feet--he was wearing flip-flops because he had removed the shoestrings from his sneakers, and I didn't have time to re-lace them before we went out.  So I started pointing to and touching his arms to ask about his mosquito bites.  This made him even more agitated, and he started trying to poke, pinch, and hit my hand with his head.

If the weather were cooler, I would have left him in the car while I went into the store, but the mid-90's we are experiencing made that an impossibility.  So, I took him into the store and hoped for the best.

I went to the service counter to return some items I had bought.  Anthony was still attempting to dig his nails into my arms and otherwise engage me.  I did what I could to keep him calm while the store clerk processed my refund, but it wasn't a simple process and Anthony got further upset, lowering his head to try to hit my elbow.  As I again tried to keep him quiet without putting him into a headlock, he backed up and yelled at the top of his voice.  Naturally, everyone within hearing range looked over to see what the commotion was.  I smiled weakly and apologized to the clerk.  She sympathetically said something along the lines of, "No, it's all right," and did what she could to hurry the transaction through.

We finished there and walked through the store to complete my business there.  While Anthony continued for a while to try to hit or otherwise hurt me, I was able to divert or engage him sufficiently to prevent another outburst.

Ultimately, this is sad to me--and not because of this experience, embarrassing though it was.  What grieves me is acting on the occasional flash of seeming cognition from him--allowing for a moment my hopes to grow--and being swiftly brought back to earth to remember precisely what it is that we have in Anthony.  I'm not sure how many more attempts I will make in the future, regardless of what indications I might believe I see.

I wrote a few weeks ago that I was happy that Anthony had learned to blow his nose.  Now I sorely wish he never had.  In that same post, I dismissed his angry sniffing as comical; now I know that when he sniffs angrily, what follows will be him blowing the contents of his nose on whatever is within a few feet of him, often including me.  But if I promptly give him an Otter Pop, I might be able to quickly change his mood and save myself multiple cleanups.

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And now, for something completely different: My wife recently laid out some clothes for Anthony to wear, and he instead came out of his room wearing something altogether different.  We of course are happy to let him choose his clothes within reason, and we have since tried to leave it more up to him.  But my wife had to laugh the other day when Anthony came out of his room wearing a long sleeve shirt that was so tight on him that he could not move his arms!  Even if our weather weren't currently in the mid-90's rendering long sleeves unsuitable, one would think Anthony might have the wherewithal to make a different choice if it were so difficult to put on.  I guess we will have to rummage through his drawers to remove selections that won't work.

Update to the Otter Pops post.  I went out to soccer practice with our younger son.  When I came home, I found that my wife had already given Anthony a bath, and I asked why.  She had taken our daughter out briefly so she could go to a local play, figured Anthony would be all right for less than 10 minutes, and left him home.  When she came home, Anthony had pulled a new box of Otter Pops, yet unfrozen, out of the freezer, cut open several of them, and gotten the contents all over himself and the counter (and my laptop!).  So, we either watch Anthony at all times, or get a chain lock for the refrigerator/freezer.

Anthony loves Otter Pops®.  And that would be fine, but never before has his motivation to eat something been sufficient to go after it himself.  He also loves oranges, for instance, but he has never opened the refrigerator to take any out.  But not only does he open the freezer--thankfully, he closes it afterward--and take Otter Pops out, but he grabs scissors and cuts the top of the plastic package so he can get at it.

I could applaud Anthony for his ingenuity, but he doesn't stop at one.  Nor will he stop at three.  The other day, when no one was paying particular attention to him (each of us being occupied with something else or being out of the house), he helped himself to eight of them.

He is also learning to operate the DVD remote on his own.  Until recently, he only knew how to open the player and insert a DVD, so he was stuck if there were no autoplay feature.  Not any more.  He has figured out how to start the movie with the remote. 

So the question for me is, can we teach him more?  I don't know.  But I could certainly use help mowing the lawn.

(The following is from my wife's personal blog directed to extended family and close friends.  I have edited out our other children's names as is my normal practice for my blog, which is open to anybody.  I also have not included my wife's dual translation into Japanese--I'm guessing anyone reading this blog reads English just fine!)



The school Anthony goes to has an annual schoolwide musical in Spring. They started it last year and performed "The Lion King". I was a little skeptical, but went to see it anyway by myself. It's just emotionally overwhelming to watch those special needs kids performing because I'm often not sure if they are aware of what they are doing.

This year's production was "The Little Mermaid", and the performance was last week.  Our younger son is currently "off track" from year-round school, so I took him with me this time. Before we arrived, he asked me if the show was going to be good, and I told him that it would be cute and sad at the same time. When the show started, he whispered to me that it was indeed cute and sad.  Most of the students who played the main characters used an iPad or some other speech device for their lines since they were physically unable to speak. About half of the cast were on their wheelchairs and the teachers/therapists pushed them around the stage. Again, it's just so heartbreaking to see all of those kids. Not that I'm pitying them. Watching them makes me think about their families, and that touches me so deeply. It's really hard for me to hold back my tears. I saw one dad who was filming the performance wiping away tears as well.

I was waiting for Anthony's class's appearance, and getting ready to film it. When they came out to the stage, we didn't see Anthony. Then, I felt a tap on my shoulder and saw the principal, and she handed me a note. It said, "Anthony is having a hard time so he stayed in his classroom."  It didn't surprise me because all of his classmates were wearing costumes and makeup. Anthony doesn't do well with those, so I suspected that he probably got upset and tried to remove them. Our younger son looked very disappointed, and I was too. Still, it was OK. I'm used to this kind of disappointment, so I tried to stay calm. I felt bad that our younger son had to experience this. I was glad though that I didn't invite anyone else (like our daughter, my husband, or my mother-in-law) to the program.

After the show was over, we went to see him in his classroom. He wasn't there, and I was told that he was in a different room with Jeff (a great teacher who handles Anthony extremely well). One of his teacher aides, Dan, who is in charge of Anthony daily, walked with me and told me what had happened. Anthony was fine this morning for the dress rehearsal, performed very well in costume and makeup, but when they were going down to the stage this afternoon, he took off his costume, and didn't want to put it back on. He went wild and shoved Dan in the face. Dan said that he found out later Anthony needed to go to the bathroom because he wet his pants after that incident.

When I saw him with Jeff, Anthony was sitting on a big beanbag. His eyes were so red from crying, and he seemed still on the edge. I sat next to him, and started talking to him while stroking his hair, saying "Anthony, how are you? I heard you did really well at the performance this morning...", then I just couldn't stop crying. I don't usually cry so easily, so I'm not sure why I was so emotional. When it comes to Anthony, I'm always blocking the emotions because it is easier that way. I know that might not be the best way to handle it, but otherwise, its just too painful. Anyway, I think watching the musical shook me emotionally, so I was more vulnerable than usual. It took me a while to stop crying, and I was grateful that the teacher didn't react to it at all. Maybe they are used to seeing the parents becoming emotional.

Anthony wanted to come home with me because he didn't want to let go of my hand. I drove our smaller car to the school, so I couldn't take him home with me. It is too dangerous to drive with him sitting next to me while he is still upset. The teachers told me that it would be fine to leave him and they would handle him. Dan said, "If he's going to blow up, it's better here than anywhere else, especially in your car." I left quickly without saying good-bye to him so that he wouldn't get upset. I felt so bad because he obviously really wanted to come home with me. I felt like a selfish, uncaring mom. Later when I got home, I received a phone call from his teacher and she told me that Anthony left school by bus and was in a great mood. She also said that the school filmed the morning dress rehearsal so they would try to give me the copy of it. That's so nice of them. Everyone at his school cares about each student and his/her family. I'm so grateful for that.

Anthony came home smiling as though nothing had happened. It is quite impossible to know what he is thinking, but I hope he knew that I was there for him and  I love him as much as I love our daughter and younger son.

Here is the picture of Anthony on Vehicle Day at his school a few days ago. His teacher took this picture and sent it home for me. He looks very happy, and that makes me so happy as well.

We are getting into allergy season again, but we have a happy development: Anthony has learned, after a fashion, to blow his nose.  I don't know if his teachers have tried working with him on this; I have tried multiple times in the past to no avail.  It could actually have something to do with a show of displeasure that he has recently added to his repertoire, though, wherein he sniffs up angrily at me.  It's comical, but somehow Anthony thinks it is menacing.  Anyway, perhaps he has learned to do the reverse as well, so that I can actually hold a tissue to his nose and tell him to blow, and he usually does it reasonably well. 

On a related note, yesterday I was outside doing yard work when my 14-year-old daughter came out and said hopefully, "Dad, Anthony has a runny nose. . . ."  I asked her if she could wipe it for me, to which she responded, "Um, OK".  Maybe this will be the first step to getting her to do unpleasant work around the house.  Next up: cleaning our rabbit's litter box.

I think I've figured it out: We must hire an exorcist; Anthony is possessed. 

He doesn't get upset as often as he did when I posted in February, perhaps because we have given up (to a great extent) trying to stretch him with instructions on washing his hands, et cetera.  But when he does get upset, there is essentially no course for resolution until he calms down on his own after 20-30 minutes.  If he breaks things, we just have to live with it.  Gratefully, he has not gone after the mirror in the bathroom, but we have several other items like tables and countertops, as I mentioned previously, that could certainly eventually give way. 

He is no longer afraid to come after me any more, either, which is a big concern--not because I can't defend myself, but because the level of retaliation required to subdue him is now at the stage where it would be considered physical abuse.   If I had, for instance, an unknown attacker come after me, I could feasibly resolve the situation by leaving him with serious injuries to vital areas, and a court would accept that as reasonable self-defense.  Clearly, if I send Anthony to school with bruises and possibly broken bones, there is a very real possibility that I would end up in jail.  So ours is a no-win situation.  We try to cordon him off in his room or somewhere else where he can't attack us, and live with whatever he decides to destroy. 

A bathtub skirt. After some searching, I believe that is what it is called. And to think I may never have learned the name of the panel on the side of the bathtub if it hadn't been for Anthony. I wrote in my last post that he has been targeting it for some time with his tantrums, and now he has finally broken a major chunk of it completely off. The upside to this is that I finally got to see how the tub looked underneath. The downside, of course, is that now I have to figure out the best way to repair it.

The Big Bad Wolf has a kindred spirit in Anthony. Both are equally adept at destroying building materials of less hardness than brick. For Anthony, though, there is none of this namby-pamby huffing and puffing. No sir, his weapons of choice are his head, elbow, and occasionally knee or foot.

Ironically for us, part of our problem is a desire to work more with Anthony. My wife was recently told by those working with Anthony at his school of his ability to communicate through pictures. This concept is by no means new to us; we have tried more than once to help Anthony in this way. But we thought we should try again, and also try to do more with him to help him to grow. My wife bought him more puzzles--he had torn up most he had--and some cheap earphones to listen to music, which he has unfortunately already broken. She is also trying to let him choose what to wear in the morning instead of grabbing something and giving it to him.

As a humorous aside, my first recent attempt involved our dinner of Mexican food with tortillas, rice, chicken, guacamole, chips, et cetera. We were nearing the end of the meal, and had Anthony choose on the sheet of pictures between "all done" and "more". He chose "more", so we gave him more chips since we were out of tortillas. After he was done with that, he still seemed interested in eating, so we showed him the sheet again and asked if he was "all done" or if he wanted "more". He surprised us by picking a picture that said "different". I didn't get it immediately, but my wife laughed and realized he wanted more food, but not the tortilla chips. That meant I had to give him some of my remaining dinner with tortillas on my plate. We jokingly said perhaps we needed to ensure certain choices were not on the list to prevent him from taking my food.

But many of our attempts to engage him aren't so benign. For instance, at any time I try to get him to wash his hands the way it needs to be done--wetting his hands, putting soap on them, rubbing them together before putting them back in the water--he is liable to go into a rage for up to twenty minutes. I keep wondering how many blows from his head the thin wood table in his room can take, and the same goes for countertops in the bathroom. The panel on the bathtub has already started to break and come away from the tub, and new holes in the drywall are produced in one shot instead of after multiple attempts. These episodes can easily happen two or three times a day.

At this point, we want to keep trying to work with him to do what we can to help him grow, just as we do for our other two children. But we may be forced to accept less than that if it means we continue to go on this way.

We went recently to a concert by the local symphony and opera. They do this annually for families with special-needs children, recognizing the difficulty these families have of attending such events otherwise.

This was the first time, for a number of reasons, that we have been able to go. We're glad we did. I don't know if Anthony enjoyed it, but we were moved at the sight of other individuals with special needs clearly enjoying themselves and expressing it in a way that would normally not be acceptable in such a venue.

The picture above is of our daughter, Anthony, my wife, and our younger son apparently urging us to live long and prosper. As with so many other pictures we take, we try to use the one in which Anthony is both looking at the camera and smiling--a rare combination.