flag guy

So I've been noticing Jacob not washing his hand so much, which is great. But, it seems as if he has replaced that behavior with hugging. Well not just hugging, running up to grown men (thankfully it's men we know and not total strangers at least) and throwing himself at them, hugging them, and getting right in their faces. Most of them don't seem to mind, but obviously we need to work on this behavior. He even sometimes tries to kiss people on the mouth.
   It was a long weekend with him and Monday seemed to take forever. He had a Psych appt at Scottish Rite so I picked him up from school at 11:45 and he was seriously wound up. He pretty much stayed that way all the way through his appt and until we got back home. He was screeching, and running into all of the different offices, turning on and off their lights, talking loudly to the people or just about the people, he unrolled two big rolls of stickers to the floor, and kept picking up the receptionists bell and ringing it, even though I would take it and tell him to stop every time. My patience was wearing thin by the time we got home, but he turned on the TV and settled down for a while, thank goodness. Later that night, we ran to Kroger to get Ryan a poster board for his 100th day of school homework, so I decided to let them go ahead and pick their Valentines. I turn around and Jacob has reached up and taken two huge stuffed animals off of the top shelf and is throwing them on the floor. Then we went to Science Night at Luke and Ryan's school, and Jacob hugged and got in the face of every man we saw that we know. He even asked one dad if "he knew any gay people". Which leads me to the next problem, Jacob has a new obsession with "gay". He says it all the time, and talks about it, and asks questions about it.  I am really honest with my kids about being gay and what that means. I try to make it not a big deal, something normal that happens in the world. I think this teaches them to be accepting, understanding human beings, and that is important to me. But Jacob, having a knack for picking out the one vocabulary word that may be innappropriate or at least make people uncomfortable, has started an obsession with the word. I finally left Science Night with Jacob and let Brett stay back with Luke & Ryan to look through the telescope. We went home and did bath and bed. Red wine here I come!
      I told the Psychologist about the getting in people's personal space thing, and she talked with him about it. I knew she would, considering she is one of the hugging-kissing-bandit's victims. She wants us to start practicing Jacob asking people permission to hug them and waiting 5 seconds for an answer. She wants me to reward him in some way too, so I need to get a chart going I guess. I was at class last night, so maybe tonight we can try it. I told Kyle and since she is another of the HKbandit's victims, she can work on it with him too. We also talked about his meds, but since we have at least a week or two before we know what the anti-depressant will do, it's just a waiting game. The Zoloft is supposed to work with anxiety, but it may or may not work on the ADHD stuff, like impulsivity and inappropriateness. Brett said yesterday that we need to do something, I thought, he's already seeing a Psychologist and taking an anti-depressant at age 12. Pretty extreme measures to help him already in my opinion.
   On another note, he still has his hilarious sense of humor. Saying things to us like "nothing I can do about that, honey" or "sweetie" or "teenagers these days" or even "that just doesn't work for me, sweetie". Such a nut. When he is focused on the right things, he is just a hoot. We took the boys to play golf on Sunday, it was a beautiful day, and realized Jacob could be the "flag guy" which of course he loved. :-)