[timdebj]

One of our children is having very bad tantrums. She has been with us for two months and the tantrums seem to go in waves. We will have a week when everything goes well and then another week when it is very difficult. She is very violent during these times and will tantrum for 1 to 2 hours. During this time she will hit, bite, spit, throw things and swear. We have tried taking privileges away but it that makes the tantrums worse.

She came from a FH that did not have a lot of limits so she is use to throwing a fit and getting her way. Has anyone had any experience with escalated tantrums and different tactics we can use? I can not take the black and blue marks and I am worried she is going to hurt herself.

[Lorraine123]

This sounds more like a rage than a tantrum. A rage is fear based. What is the age of the child? That makes a huge difference in what you do.

[hockeywoman]

Yep, rages. Looking for advice as well....

[timdebj]

She is seven years old.

[MilehighDad]

Yes, we've seen behavior like this, it is definitely hard to manage. I think the only answer is a long-term one, you have to work on her fear and lack of trust. We also were determined to stay with the kids through rages to make sure they stayed safe and to teach them to regulate their own emotions by staying calm with them and helping them regulate. However, in most placements it would be common to isolate the child and let them "wind down" alone. Often, the children have learned this is the only way they can calm down, but that also convinces them that they can only count on themselves. Counteracting that takes lots of time and lots of tantrums.

Different tactics work for different kids to help start mitigating tantrums. For some, it may work to just ignore them. For one of our girls, she just liked to yell at a monotone to stop anyone from talking to her when she got mad and could keep doing it for hours. What worked to stop that was to yell back with the same frequency and pitch. It made her so mad she went into a pure rage and gave up the yelling. Only took one time for my wife and one time for me to do it and she was done hasn't yelled that way since. With a truly terrified child, it may help to simply let them rage through one time. If they have always been stopped and held, it may be that they use the start of raging to get the caregiver to hold them and give them control back by force. This is complicated and doesn't always do any good and can be very expensive. If you've seen "The Martian Child", the "break it like you mean it" scene basically goes along those lines. I have helped clean up a house after a 4-year old was allowed to rage, and it was totally trashed. But, that little boy spent himself in destruction and then never needed to do it again. He still raged a bit, but he never started picking up things and destroying them again.

Anyway, I guess what I'm saying is that I don't believe there is any one perfect answer for it. You have to try to get inside their head and figure out what will either help them to stop feeling afraid and angry, or demonstrate to them that the tantrums simply don't do them any good, or both. The second approach is faster but doesn't really help their long term healing, it just helps you and your house to survive.

One thing I will almost guarantee, with a traumatized child you can't simply punish them out of raging. Punitive measures applied while they are raging will just continue the behavior and will likely make it worse. Once they come down and are subject to reason, you may be able to use loss of priveleges or other punishments to appy pressure not to rage again in the future. However, punishment is easily forgotten and will likely have only a minor effect on how angry they get.

Good luck!!!

[Lorraine123]

Wow. Milehigh hit it right on. You have to remember that it is fear-based. It isn't logical, its pure primal. He is right that you can't with hold privileges to stop rages. Only two things will stop them - teach the child to trust you, and find the triggers and avoid them in the first place. My daughter's loss of control of herself during her rages scared her. She felt better when I was close by and held her or even restrained her when necessary. It was important for her to know that I was in control of the situation even when she wasn't.

[parenting-over-40]

My agency requires each adoptive family to read:

1) Beyond Consequences - by Heather Forbes
2) The Connected Child - by Karyn Purvis

Both provide great insight. They both have websites for additional help as well. Feel free to PM me if you would like.

[timdebj]

Thank you so much for the insight - this is very helpful!

[parenting-over-40]

Just an FYI on the Beyond Consequences website you can sign up for "Daily Parenting Reflection". It's free. Every morning I read it before getting up my little one to start the day. I subscribed to these emails about a month ago and it does seem to help.

Today's Parenting Reflection:

Understanding creates safety; misunderstanding creates threat. Work to understand your child. Understand his fears and understand the connection of these fears to his behaviors. It will empower you to stay in a place of love during behavioral outbursts.

[ScrapMonkey]

Some kids that come to us with poor attachment skills cannot regulate their emotions on their own. Think of a tiny infant crying in a crib... what do you do? You pick it up, you offer comfort, you soothe, you check the diaper, the bottle, you offer a binky... In many ways, some of our kids are like a newborn baby who cannot soothe themselves, it's up to US to help them calm down and learn to regulate. We're the binky I currently have a 4 yo who has been with us almost 2 years... he is learning to calm himself, learning he has a CHOICE whether or not he wants to calm down. It's been a long, exhausting 2 years!!

[sunshinemomma]

We adopted our daughter when she was 6 turning 7 {from the system} along with the afore discussed brother. In the foster home she was the wild child always raging and out of control, destroying her room and belongings, trying to jump out of moving cars etc. When she came to us you could not correct her or tell her to do anything without setting off a rage. The rages would last hours. I started sitting with her and holding her during the rages. Not holding therapy just holding her like a baby in my lap but holding her arms and legs so she couldn't hit and kick me{although she could still head butt me and spit at me LOL}. The rages continued multiple times a week. It got so I couldn't hold her down as she was too big and too strong.

We started therapy with our fantastic attachment therapist who suggested I roll her in in a blanket with her head out of course and how to do it so she was safe. We did discuss it in therapy with dd about the holding and she said that she liked it better that I held her rather than like at the foster home where they would just leave her in her room to destroy it and her things.

I would hold her every single time and would just keep repeating to her over and over again how much I loved her and how she was safe with me and how I was not afraid of her pain. She would kick and scratch and claw and bang her head and try everything she could to hurt me. Her eyes would roll back in her head and she would scream like a wild animal in pain. She would alway scream terrible things at me, telling me how much I hated her {and my personal favorite} and I quote "You are the WORST OF ALL MY MOMMIES....AND I HAVE HAD LOTS!!!! Everytime I would just keep repeating my little mantra of how much I loved her and that she was OK that I was here and I loved her.

This is the important part for all you Moms out there with a young rager.............Finally at the end of every single rage there would be a turning point...just a little softening of the fight and she would climb up into my lap and cry. She would scream the pain out and cry and cling to me....she would cling so tight it was like she was trying to climb into my skin. I would hold her and sometimes I would cry too {even now at the memory} . It was in those moments that the bonding happened, that she started to trust me and connect and attach to me.

Daddy didn't get it at first and could only tell me "I don't know how you do it". But he supported me by getting dinner or taking over whatever it was that I was doing and bringing us cold glasses of water to drink. Bio son was about 10 and had never seen anything like it and soon learned to get busy elsewhere. Rad son was 8 and would stand outside her room and smirk until someone made him move off out of sight.

But the important thing is that I knew it was the very begining of attachment...I could just feel the way she clung to me at the end of each of those rages that she was clinging for dear life. Those rages were her way of getting the pain out and in some way handing it off to me.

We would talk after or later and I would sometimes remark that her feelings must have been really hurt or that birth Mom must have really hurt her heart and we would start to have long conversations of how everyone in her young little life had let her down. She started to be able to talk about her feelings instead of acting them out. The rages started getting less and less frequent and instead of 2,3,4 times a week one day we noticed that they were only every 3 - 4 weeks then 3 - 4 months and now the last time in over a year she raged was twice in the week her brother left.

She has become very attached to me and now in the last year she has really started to attach to Daddy. She even went so far as to ask our therapist for help in feeling safe and good with Daddy. She was terrified of him for the longest time. She knows that she didn't trust him because birth Dad hurt her. She knows that she was projecting those same behaviours onto Daddy. She now trusts and loves him and will even come to cuddle Daddy and let him initiate cuddling her.

She now communicates so well about her feelings and has worked really hard at healing. She knows that she wanted to heal and that it took hard work but she had the choice and SHE WANTED IT. She is now 11 and she for the most part has healed. We all know that there will still be hard days ahead and as she goes through different stages in life she will probably
go through things again but now she will go through it with the solid attachment of bond of her family and with a solid loving relationship with Mommy and Daddy.

[MilehighDad]

Sunshinemomma,
Thank you for sharing. We've been there, too and it is so hard during the rages and so rewarding when they start learning to trust.

[timdebj]

I just wanted to thank everyone for the great advice. The situation has definitely improved. Sunshinemama, I was not sure the holding and hugging would work but I tried it and it was incredible how hard she was holding on. I kept saying how much we love her and she is safe with us. I definitely don't think it is the end of the episodes but how we are viewing them has changed, which has improved the situation. Thanks again!

[naca]

I also have a rager and she is one that you cannot talk to once she has started or it just escalates. Depending on the situation she is sometimes put in her bed to get her "fits" (as she calls them) out and then comes out to cuddle , other times she sits with me while I hug her and try talking quietly and calmly. Sadly at this point most of her tantruming is done in her bed bc we do have 5 other children- 3 being younger than her- and for them to be safe I can't have her out with them yet can't leave them alone either. I do love all the great advice everyone has given! I hope something there helps you. Have you tried journaling for a few weeks to see if you can find triggers?

[sunshinemomma]

timdebj

Glad to be of help!

The mantra of repeating over and over how much I loved her and Mommy is here, Mommy is here was just as much for me as it was for her. Partly so I could stay calm and answer her wiht love instead of trying to say anything to reason with her 'cause that would have never worked....LOL. All reasonable talking was well after she had finished raging!!