[pachyderm]

Not sure where to put this:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/kevinwilson...eG1#.hapEQzxY6

When my older son Griff was 3 1/2 years old, he would not eat food without very strict parameters. For his third birthday, he’d received a singing birthday card, a vibrating hamster who sang “Kung Fu Fighting,” and he would have to play this card, over and over, while he ate. As soon as the song ended, and the weird, skittering vibration of the cardboard rodent died down, he would consider his food, look panicked, and play the song again. Sometimes, when I am eating, I can hear that song echoing around in my brain.

There were times when this was not enough. He would cry, sobbing, refusing to eat. My wife and I were still learning how to take care of a child. Our pediatrician told us that Griff was not eating enough; we felt judged in ways that only new parents can feel. We pleaded with Griff to eat. He refused. One evening, after nearly 20 minutes of steadily rising mania on all of our parts, I was overcome with a kind of buzzing numbness. My tics, head twists and whispered grunts, began to manifest. I looked at my son, who was beautiful, who was crying, who would not do the thing that was necessary for him to keep living. “I can’t,” he shouted. “I have bad thoughts.”

...

I thought about my son. I thought about my own childhood. From the ages of six to twelve, I could not eat dinner without reading Archie Comics. My parents would bring Double Digests of Archie to restaurants or to other people’s houses. If I did not read the comics, I had bad thoughts. I had a recurring, overwhelming thought that was completely ridiculous but prevented me from eating, made me nauseous.