Our weekend

Jason sent this update to Tom, Hyrum's therapist, down at the state hospital in an email. I thought maybe our families and friends might be interested in how the weekend was too.

"Hyrum's yellow behavior on Saturday stemmed from an argument between he and his brother over the Nintendo. Hyrum recently has wanted to play the Nintendo alone and we told him that he needed to share with his brother. He got upset about this and stomped up to his room. It took him nearly 1/2 hour to calm down.

On Sunday, he started acting up just before church. He had been out front playing and when we told him it was time to come in and get ready for church he said that he was too tired to do so. He eventually got into church clothes and went to church, although he was a bit hyper during church, it was not terrible. After church we went to Wendy's parents for dinner (right in the neighborhood) and he was very non-compliant there. After this Wendy took him to my brother's house (also in the neighborhood) to play for about 1/2 an hour with his cousins. When the time came to leave he threw a fit and jumped up on top of the car and made it very hard for Wendy to get him in the car. Wendy then took him back to her Mom's for Grandma to take him back to Provo. When he found out that was where he was going he grabbed Wendy by the neck from the back seat of the car. Wendy had to send Porter in to Grandma's to get some help getting him off of her and into Grandma's car (I was still at the church counting the receipts.) Wendy said at this point it became one of the worst fits she has seen him throw, getting him into Grandma's car to head back to the unit.

So, in summary, Friday and Saturday were not too bad but from about 11:00 Sunday he was very difficult. It could have been Halloween, but whatever it was he was very wound up and difficult."

This is what I added to Jason's email.

"I just wanted to add one thing to the story. We had homemade chili and bread at my mom's house. Hyrum chose not to eat more than 3 bites of chili and no bread. This was his decision in spite of being warned that this was dinner. We briefly stopped at home between grandma's house and aunt Rachel's. At home he wanted me to prepare him more food because he was hungry. It wasn't just him, his brother said the same thing. I told them that dinner was at grandmas and that if they wanted a snack, they could have anything in the kitchen that they could make themselves. Hyrum got some cold cereal and porter made himself a ham sandwich.

Aunt Rachel was just getting ready for a dinner party and Hyrum was trying to get food from her too. I told him that we had already had dinner and that it was time for us to leave. (I had previously given a 5 minute warning) Aunt Rachel said that her kids had the same rule about eating dinner.

He was enraged when he ran up the car and sat on top. He pulled off his wristband and threw it along with his shoes. (speaking with all the body language he could of how angry he was) His brother was too scared to get into the car with an upset Hyrum on top. I told him that this was damaging property (dents in our car) and that this was level 2 behavior. (he responded by trying to tell me that there were no dents - trying to distract me from the real issue - his behavior) He was reluctant to get into the car and after instructing him to do so multiple times, I told him that my patience was at an end and that it was time to go back to Provo. (I'm not sure that he heard me through the tantrum because he was surprised when I pulled up to my parents house for grandma to take him back to Provo.)

Grabbing my neck was more a terror-hug thing. He was crying and saying how scared he was and that he just wanted to talk to me. Regardless, it took my father physically putting him in the car; me threatening that if he wasn't safe on the car ride, he wouldn't be allowed to come back next week-end to get him to go.

We're left with a sense of failure and questions about what we could have done differently. Also, we have a traumatized Porter who wouldn't leave my side the rest of the night, is having nightmares and coming into sleep with mom and dad almost every night.

The neighborhood kids frequently report being scared of Hyrum. I think that it's because he violates their personal space and gets right up in their face and yells. He's loud and unpredictable. He thinks that it's funny and laughs but it's not making him popular with the kids. They are often reluctant to play with Porter if Hyrum is home. "

We meet with a Neuropsycologist on Wednesday about some responses she's had from Hyrum on some very specific therapies. We're hoping that she can nail down some of the diagnosis. I think that she is thinking Autism but we've been down that road before. I wish they had some concrete way to diagnose Autism or a mental illness. I'm a numbers kind of gal and like black and white. Too bad that the world of mental illness is all about shades of gray.