What is a rage?

When I had rages as a child (epileptic seizures). I would curse (words Mom didn’t even know I knew), fight my mother, and scream for hours. This started when I was an infant. I would scream for hours until I fell asleep, soaked with sweat and exhausted. I had a cousin who was the same way, they would put her in a cold shower to shock her out of it.

I finally out grew these with the onset of puberty. They were total blackouts for me. One of the last ones I had I remember “waking up” sitting on my mother’s lap (facing her) she was sitting on the closed toilet seat holding me. She pointed out my hand was bleeding. I have no idea how I’d gotten from sitting on the living room floor watching the Hulk (ironic, huh?!) to the bathroom. I still have the scar on my finger. From the blood we guess I’d hit it on the doorjam.


When we got our son at age 13 he was undiagnosed with bipolar, experiencing PTSD night terrors, and undiagnosed RAD. His rages were scary. He held everything in until something relatively small (like being told No), and he would explode like a volcano. He threw chairs (big upholstered chairs), put fists and objects through walls, yelled and cussed and would start swinging wildly if he felt you were getting in his face. He NEVER hit me or any of his younger siblings, but threw things without really caring if they hit me a couple of times, and certainly there was a lot of intimidation and verbal abuse. He is a big kid (5’9” and 200+lbs) so even though he wasn’t very coordinated his wild swinging was almost more than my husband could handle without hurting him.

Our daughter’s rages have changed over the years. They started like her brother’s, kicking holes in the walls, threatening to kill herself and run away, yelling that she hates me and wants to go home (to Nebraska), and physically attacking members of the family. When she’s in “fight, flight or freeze mode” she is acting in a purely instinctual way and will hit, kick, bite, spit… indiscriminately until she calms down enough for her brain to start “thinking” again. If she is able to hurt herself or whoever is trying to protect her - we have had to hold her until she calms down.

It's hard to see in these pictures, but here's an open mouth bite mark from one of these holds. It's hard to see, but the oval bruise wraps around my forearm. I've been trained how to do a physical restraint while I was a social worker and more recently as a foster parent. The foster parent training was a joke and unlikely to have helped us stay safe or keep our child safe. Even with the experience I still often get bruises like these, although Kitty has never gotten a single mark.

Now she has what we call “meltdowns.” Not true rages. She has some control over how far she goes. She still goes into fight, flight, or freeze mode easily, but the actual physical aggression has changed to mostly verbal threats, although she's not above kicking cabinets and biting me. We can usually reach her and calm her down fairly quickly, if not actually de-escalate her, before she “melts.”

Got a call this evening. Kitty goes to residential treatment tomorrow afternoon.

Kitty Meltdown - Restraint

Kitty hates the partial day hospitalization program (PDH). Did I mention that?! She certainly mentions it over and over and over...

Everything will be perfect if I just pull her from this program and let her go back to public school. She'll behave. She'll go to therapy. She'll never try to hurt me or herself again. She'll never cuss again. Just please... please... please... let her go back to her school where she has friends.

Tonight she wanted to go to the house of a neighbor girl who spends a lot of time over here with her sister. I've been telling the kids they can't go to this girl's house. Mostly because I don't trust Bear with the girl. Even though they've broken up, but also because I don't really feel comfortable having the kids out of my sight. Crazy I know, but even the healthy ones get into stuff I don't approve of at other's houses. Kitty especially though really doesn't need to be dealing with a lot of social issues.

Kitty did not take "no" well. She started yelling and cursing and slamming around the house. I thought she was going outside to run away so I went out front to intercept her and started to play with the other kids when I didn't see her. Bear came out very agitated because she was inside yelling and upset. I went back inside and found her locked in the bathroom.

She didn't answer when I knocked and I was a little concerned she'd find some way to hurt herself so I tried to unlock the door, but she held onto it. I told her I would take off the doorknob and she pulled the door open and threatened me with the shower rod (which wasn't in place because Bear broke the shower). She didn't hit me, but acted like she would. She cussed at me repeatedly. I kept trying to calm and de-escalate her, but would not give in on letting her visit the friend, going away, or pulling her out of the PDH.

She ran past me to her room, telling me to get away from her, but I told her she wasn't safe and I needed to stay near her. She ran into her room still holding the shower rod. She dropped it and opened her second story window (I presume to jump out). I reached out to hold her and she began punching and kicking me so we ended up in a restraint. *sigh* She tried to scratch and bite me, but for once calmed down fairly quickly. She remained in my arms with her back to me and we talked for quite awhile.

I explained over and over that I understand she's upset, and why she needed to be in the school, tried to give her some insights into her jealousy of Bob, and talked about her need for friends (and why the kids at this school may not have good social skills). She talked about all the cussing she hears, the hip hop music that's on the bus, the friend (boy) she made whose last day was today, how much she hates math...

I asked her to come down and help me make dinner. Bear was on the phone in the kitchen, and I foolishly reminded him that his chore was to clean the kitchen. Unfortunately Bear was still activiated and he went off on me about how big a mess everyone else left in room, especially Kitty (criticism upsets her more). He thought I shouldn't ask him to do chores when he did most of his chores, unlike the other kids (slam to Kitty again). Kitty immediately started asking to go outside and swing (calms her down), I wanted her near me till she was fully calm, but dinner had to be made and Bear showed no sign of letting up so I let her leave the room.

I'm getting tired of being fussed at by Bear. I've been lightening up on him, but he is not making it easy. I know, I know, teenage boys... Talked to the neighbor girl's mom. Bear, who'd been told he could not come to see her, skated by twice. We talked about why my kids don't come visit her daughters at their house. Her mom told me the girl came home with a hicky last week. Bear said it was the girl's fault?!

Why can't they stay sweet and innocent and only want Mommy kisses like little Ponito?!!!!

Long week!

Whoo boy! It has been such a long week. Bob finally finished her article with some help. I'll post a copy of it on here. It turned out pretty well I think. I had her read it out load to Kitty and Ponito.

Last night I reread one of the books Bob told me she'd "borrowed" from my bathroom. It was pretty explicit. Tonight at bedtime I sat her down to talk about it. She pretty much said that stuff was "yuck!," and refused to talk about it. She also says she skipped all the "yucky" parts. We talked a little more about puberty and boys, and I think she's honestly still pretty immature. Thank God! Still my baby is growing up! We measured her today and she's grown 3/4" That puts her at almost 5'8" - half an inch taller than me. *sigh*

Yesterday I got to experience something new! My baby, Ponito, had his first major public meltdown. One of the hardest things about adopting special needs kids is exposing the younger kids to their issues. Ponito has discovered some advantages to being the baby, but yesterday was in a cruddy mood and was not interested in one of the not so great parts - sitting in the middle seat. I drive a little Mazda Protege and the 3 older kids rotate who sits in the front seat, but Ponito always has to sit in the middle of the back seat. Bear is incapable of sitting with his knees less than 8 inches apart and his broad shoulders and long legs, combined with either of my not so petite girls (Kitty is 5'3 1/2 inches now - having grown almost an inch since her birthday in April) make things super cramped in the back seat.

Ponito started mouthing off about how he hates his life and he's going to kill himself (yes, he's heard my older kids say this many times - although finally not so often now). In our house, as he knows from recent experience, this means you have to stay within 5 feet of a parent - to keep you safe. Wish I could have gone home at this point, but Hubby was teaching scuba diving, and we had to go shopping or starve! The girls are hopefully going to be starting school so we needed to supplement their wardrobes (they'd outgrown last year's uniforms). Our next stop was Salvation Army.

It started out OK. Ponito was confined to the cart, but it had a small toy plane left in it that I generously said he could keep (I know the people who work there and they are pretty familiar with our financial situation and practically give us clothes and things). We'd been there awhile when he got bored and started playing in the clothes and wandering off. When I redirected him he started hitting the clothes. I figured it wouldn't hurt anything so I ignored it. Then a couple of items fell to the floor. I told him to put them on the hanger and he got mouthy and refused.



Normally Ponito is a big sweetie, unless he's hungry, sick or tired. I looked through all my pictures trying to find one of him where he wasn't looking sweet and happy. This was the closest I could get. We took dozens of these pictures that night. Afterwards we went to the Urgent Care center and found out he had a temp of 104 and Strep. ALL the other pictures that night he's smiling.
I didn't know it at the time, but he'd gotten up VERY early, had snacked a little too much so hadn't eaten lunch, and I found out the next day that he had a slight stomach bug! Still, he was running from me in the store and refusing to do what I told him. I abandoned my cart and sat on a couch in the middle of the store - trying to get him to calm down. He started cussing at me (real cuss words, not No No words). I tried to hold him and get him to calm down. I ended up doing a full restraint on him for almost 10 minutes. SO embarrassing. I finally carried him out to the car and sat with him fighting me and sobbing his heart out at the same time (I sat holding him trying to slow my heart rate back down - almost no air conditioning in the store and none in my car -in Texas!). Ponito is tiny compared to my other kids, but he's still almost 10 - and I'm 38 and out of shape.

After he FINALLY calmed down, we went on with our day o' fun! OK, we finished the shopping. Got home to find out Hubby had the same stomach bug and was miserable. Add that to him not sleeping because of the stress of our financial situation and he's a mess too.

So only Bear is not in the FAIR Club (actually Bob got out tonight) and I still have no idea what to give Kitty and Ponito for FAIR Club assignments. Kitty was disrespectful to Grandma and swore at me. Ponito went to a friend's house without telling anyone, and then pulled his fit in the store.

Any suggestions on writing or reading assignments?

Mary