Harley was pacing and battling his hallucinations in the front yard and started to wander a little too far (remember he has no safety awareness for crossing the street...or even a parking lot--and we've had TWO of our cats run over by a car in the past two years!)...We encouraged him into the backyard....
He was being so quiet...Andrew went to check and found Harley had set up a "yogurt stand". We had spent $10 on yogurt (20 containers of yogurt!) and most of it was out on the patio table in the back yard with a nice sign Harley had made "Yogurt 1 cent".
(By the way, do you see the tip can he has sitting on the table? Had it been me taking the picture you would've gotten one with Harley, his sign and a picture of this old formula can with "tips" written on it!)
After Andrew took a picture he tried to convince Harley that he couldn't keep the yogurt out because it needed to be refrigerated. Harley became agressive and screaming and yelling at the top of his lungs! Neighbors were taking their kids inside (even though none of them can see into our backyard) as we took the yogurt in the house to be put into the refrigerator. Harley pulled a yogurt from Andrew's grasp and squeezed it so hard it popped.
Things continued to escalate until we finally had all the yogurt back into the refrigerator -- and then we LOCKED it!! Harley began punching himself in the head...pulling his ears "off"...scratching his body...gritting his teeth and screaming "You ruined me" "I cannot sell anything when you do that" "You ruined me!!" Over and over again for another 15-20 minutes.
We tried to talk him into selling bottled water out on the front lawn but that wasn't good enough. He wanted to sell yogurt in the back yard. We even explained that no one is going into the back yard, so he won't have any customers (this kid LOVES yard sales and thrift stores!)...We tried buying it from him but he said we're not allowed to be the customer.
Finally, about 35-40 minutes into this episode I explained to him he MUST have a dairy license (we have two police officers who live in the neighborhood). I explained that yogurt is made with milk and you have to have a license to sell things that have milk in them....
Amazingly enough that is what finally worked...
Funny enough he explained to his speech therapist and his behavior therapist that he can't sell yogurt without a milk license. Since neither of them were here when it happened they had NO CLUE what he was referring to.
Although it wasn't fun at the time we were dealing with the behaviors during this episode...it was funny...and I learned to include something about a license in future references....
1 comment:
That is an amazing post and you never know what will click and what will not click but you had to be very creative think up a milk license!
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