50) Post-Halloween post-mortem

Well, as I predicted, there would be fallout from Halloween.  Halloween itself was manageable.  I escorted Sasha as he went trick-or-treating in the neighborhood in his homemade Jelly Belly costume (if you can't beat 'em, be 'em).  He had a fun time showing off his costume and getting a moderate amount of candy. As planned, he ate a few pieces and then selected about a dozen pieces for safe keeping.  His dad removed the rest of it and hid it elsewhere in the house. His sister also trick-or-treated with her friends and brought home her candy.  Unlike Sasha, she didn't select her candy but kept the entire stash for sorting on another day.  We never got around to sorting her candy and ended up keeping the whole bag (60 pieces or so) locked in one of the kitchen cabinets.

Today his sister looked into her Halloween stash and was dismayed to find that it had greatly shrunk!  Only a few days ago, she had 60 pieces and tonight, there were only 5 or 6 pieces left!  We all thought it was their dad who ate the candy but it turns out it was someone else...

Cut to earlier today:

I was proud of Sasha this afternoon when he told me that he was feeling tempted by the candy that was brought in by kids at school to donate to a charity that collects candy for disadvantaged youth (yeah, soon to be even more disadvantaged by diabetes mellitus and rotting teeth!).  Sasha told me that a huge bowl of candy sat on the counter of the school office that beckoned to him and drove him to distraction whenever he was near or in the office.  He decided that he wanted to talk with his IEP case manager to move the candy out of sight so as not to continue to tempt him.  Fighting back tears, he told me that he did not want the candy there to tempt him and to possibly get him into trouble.    He told me that he felt really good about his honesty with himself and that he could admit he needed support to cope with the candy temptations.

Needless to say, I was glad to have him voluntarily bring up his struggle as it demonstrated his maturity and his awareness of his powerlessness over the candy temptation.  I have always been a huge proponent of the wise saying called the Serenity Prayer:  "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."  To me, having Sasha admit that he was powerless over the candy's lure gave him the permission to ask for help to have it removed from his line of sight.  

Bravo, Sasha.

Now, back to tonight to our discovery that his sister's candy was largely gone... after she told us that the candy was missing, we glibly blamed their dad (he is also a chocoholic!) and said that we would just ask him about it when he got home from work.  About 20 minutes after this conversation, Sasha approached me and told me he had something to tell me.  He then confessed that he had been eating her candy and had been able to sneak it because the cabinet lock was loose and allowed him to open the cabinet enough to fish the candy out of the bag.  Instead of feeling disappointed or angry at him, I felt only happiness that Sasha had confessed and admitted this on his own volition!!  I thanked him and praised him for telling the truth and gave him a big hug.  I asked him to apologize to his sister and he did.  I reassured her that we would replace her candy and keep it locked up in a more secure location for her. He was disappointed and angry with himself for sneaking the candy and said that he felt badly about the weight he was probably gaining from the excess sugar he ate. In contrast, I was practically elated and told him that I was proud of him for telling the truth!  Just 8 hours earlier, I had written a post to the Craniopharyngioma Facebook Group about my despondency in dealing with Sasha's chronic dishonesty that is directly related to his hyperphagia.

Despite the food sneaking, I am feeling grateful that Sasha was able to talk honestly with me and it gives me hope that we can rebuild our relationship that has been damaged by HO Monster. 

And maybe, just maybe, Sasha can keep coming forward with the hard and brave truth.