Why So Serious?

Troy has this weird tic now where he pushes the sides of his lips back with two fingers while opening his mouth as wide as he can. He does it dozens of times a day without even realizing that he’s doing it. The effect is that he irritates the skin around his mouth with the dirt and oil from his fingers, giving himself red streaks that eventually become sores. He ends up looking like the Joker from Batman.

My wife and I have taken to getting onto him every time that we see him do it in an effort to get him to be more consciously aware and stop. But I almost feel like he does it more just to be defiant. We aren’t even sure why he does it or how it got started. When I ask Troy why he’s doing it, he just says that it’s comfortable. My wife is worried about him reshaping his jawline, which there may be something to that, because he has started drooling all of the time now. Which just makes him touch his face more often to wipe the spit off. The only success we’ve had is with putting cream on his face and telling him it’s medicine. He won’t touch it then, and even if he tried, he feels the cream and stops. But we can’t be with him all day reapplying cream to his face.