Justin’s attitude (and thus my temper) have both improved dramatically over the last couple days. I finally talked to his teachers and told them to start letting him go to the special needs bathroom instead of making him go into the regular boys washroom — he’s way too anxious to use a restroom where no adults are allowed, and which probably isn’t in the most pristine state. So he’s been holding it until he gets home at lunch, which obviously isn’t ideal, and he had a bit of an accident this week that made him really upset. So anyway, now that he’s allowed to go into the other bathroom, where he’s all by himself, he’s been doing much better. Whew.

We also took some advice from his behavior consultant and wrote out a cheat sheet for him that he can look at whenever he’s playing video games — it basically says “When I start to get anxious while playing a game, here are some things I can do” and then it lists taking a deep breath, trying again, playing a different game or turning it off. None of this is news to him, as we have explained it over and over again, but we’ve never actually written it out for him before, and the consultant reminded us that he processes language much better when he can read it as opposed to when he hears it. It seems to be working, thank the gods.