Temper tantrums, anyone have experience

You may want to post this under the specials needs forum, as you'll probably get more traffic and feedback. Im sorry I don't have any advice to offer you first hand....good luck in your pursuit.

I would not call these "tantrums". I would call them "rages". The two are very different. A tantrum is usually because the child wants something and doesn't get it. A rage is out of pure fear. The child believes that something is threatening their life. A rage is pure primal.

It may be rage, I was just using the word her caseworker did. And she also said it was usually directed at the mother in the home, being mad at the mom, so it was important for the dad to be the disciplinarian.

And I thought this was the special needs forum? LOL Am I lost?

This sounds like it could be related to RAD. As far as how bad can a temper tantrum be..... We have a 3.5 year old that we just adopted and they scared us. We were told on these boards that they could very well be rages and see an attachment therapist. We did do that and he felt that they were just temper tantrums. We are continuing to see the therapist just in case and are working on some behavior modication exercises he is having us do. They seem to be working and the tantrums are on the decline in intensity and amount. But, man oh man. Both my husband and I were bruised, scratched, bitten, etc. She also hits herself in the face and scrapes her chin on the floor. For two months we would count our wounds as a sort of joke. We adopted out of a orphanage and called the director to come one day after a bad episode. She told us this was normal, all kids do it...... I can't imagine how scary something like this could be with an 8 year old, especially if only directed at the mother. Read some of the postings on the attachment boards, and do some research on RAD. Make sure you are ready for the behavior because from what I understand you typically don't see it for a few months (similar to the info from the case worker). Good luck with your decision.

I would not finalize this adoption until you fully know this childs complete history and have a therapist evaluation, and know what you are up against in the future. I have a friend in an awful situation..trying to set aside the adoption of a RAD child. Just make sure you KNOW what you are up against so that you can make an intellegent decision knowing all before. Good Luck

Well..... we finalized the adoption. We have seen an attachment therapist and he doesn't think she has an attachment disorder. We are watching her and check back in with him once a month just to make sure things are still progressing the way he wants to see everything progress. However, that doesn't mean she isn't suffering from PTSD, has an inability to let go of control, and I think might be hypervigilent in outside of home situations. Last week was strange because she would just break down in tears and ask you to hold her. She'd sit there for 30 minutes or more and just cry. There wasn't anything wrong physically with her. She didn't yell, scream or do anything that she normally does when she is upset at the answer. This week that is gone, but she is insisting on "helping us", she is asking to "hold onto mom", and I think we are making some progress connecting how "happy it makes her to help us" as to "how happy it makes us to help her". But it is constantly a struggle to keep her from trying to be the mom to her older brother. To some degree we see her efforts of attempting to make sure her brother can't do something, as a way to redirect her upsetness of not being able to do it herself - but man oh man, it typically always causes a fight. We still have the tempertantrums, but they are of a much less violent scale. At this point she isn't hitting biting, or pinching. We also see her hitting herself less and less during one of her upset moods. Although this morning she was trying to hold alot of blocks, they kept falling out of her hands, and she just lost it. Yelled, banged her head on the ground, hit herself, etc. At the end I asked her if all of that helped her pick up the blocks? She said no. We talked through what might have actually worked, we practiced what she thought might have worked, gave her a hug and went on. So it isn't gone by any stretch. I'm meeting with her preschool this afternoon (she attends very few hours a week) to discuss her inability to focus. This was seen by the county's special ed person assigned to her to help with her social interaction. We've never seen her inability to focus. She is very focused and we haven't ever worried about ADD, etc. However, when reading online about PTSD and hypervigilence I started to wonder if this is what the special ed person was seeing. So I've got some evaluation questions for the teachers so that they can provide me with some guidance whether there are only certain time she can't focus or if it is all the time. My guess is that it is when there are new people in the class she doesn't know and/or a change in the routine. For someone that doesn't have kids with a RAD diagnosis do you see this sort of thing? Is this the typical grieving or attachment process?

Can it be that an antidepressant alone might not be the right thing for her? I'm no doctor, I'm just asking. In some people, antidepressants alone are a problem. It depends on what a person has. Yet today some GPs kind of hand out antidepressants pretty easily. I'm not sure either, that it is a good idea to assume what motivates or causes the tantrums, even professionals, will often describe the behavior in their own terms, according to their own personal theories, instead of considering other possibilities. Sometimes they go to one idea too quick. It's VERY important to recognize that MOST neurological problems can be 'held' to some degree, at least for a while. Appearing to have SOME control over some behavior like this can't be taken as proof that it is entirely JUST behavioral. That's very, very important. Being able to 'hold' it doesn't really mean it is a choice or a purely emotional behavior. Most people can 'hold' tourettes, too! But oh dear when one has 'held' as long as one can that is it! It has to come out. We had a fellow living with us who had RLS and he could hold that, he had inner ear damage that led to rocking, and he could 'hold' that too - FOR A WHILE! He told me it was almost unbearable to hold it 'but I can....for a while!' Rages like that can have so many causes - anything from bipolar disorder to rage disorder to actual convulsions. Yes, it could even be convulsions. Some types involve very complicated behavior that looks completely like choice. Tell you a story. Years ago my friend was admitting at Boys Village and a family brought a kid tied up with ropes in the trunk of the car, he was that bad that they couldn't even drive and hold him down. Some little thing would happen and he would go off. It took six people to stretch the kid out and navigate him down the hall and admit him. My friend said it was unbelievable. And something just clicked in his mind. He called in a neuropsych who looked at the video tape of the kid for about 10 minutes. He had complex seizures. What was it that my friend saw, I asked. He said he wasn't sure, but it was a feeling, 'that kid was moving in too straight a line, just a straight line'. He would just destroy everything in his path, but it dawned on Jim that path was just too straight. When the kid would get tense, it would happen, so they kept thinking it was behavior and even choice, self directed behavior. That kid was headed for a long life at the state mental hospital, he wound up taking seizure medication and starting fifth grade after about 8 weeks. If it kind of looks like she's really trying to behave and is trying to hold it in, is it possible she actually has rage disorder? Or something else? I volunteered with a young teen who had had rage disorder and he acted just like that description. What happened was, when he got a little older, things got more clear, he got tourettes, and once he got on the right medicine he did quite well. Not saying this kid really has rage disorder or has or will have tourettes, that is for a psychiatrist to work out, I'm saying that often I think the key is thinking WAY out of the box and looking for a new type of solution. Instead of just accepting a theory and a given approach that doesn't seem to really be totally working. I've heard of all sorts of techniques - teaching kids to take a self imposed 'time out' when they start to feel a certain way(this avoids sensory overload, and is not punishment, they lie down in a dimly lit room and cover their ears and eyes for 10-30 min), holding the child til he relaxes (I've even seen my friends 4 yr old boy march up to her and say, 'Hold me, I'm about to blow!'...he was supposed to learn later to do his own time out). Some kids need both - coaching and medicines, a psychiatrist can help with the medications. But wouldn't it be cool if you were the one to sort this out and give this kid a whole new life?

Our two younger kids both tantrum. Each of them have tantrummed at times for 4 hours straight... just SCREAMING...that's the part that drives me bananas. The little one can be heard two houses over from us with the windows closed and our air on. She could not live in an apartment, that's for sure. The 6 year old will throw stuff and bang her head on the wall. She will also lash out at other children hitting or hurting them when those moods strike. It's best to put her in her room until she's through it. When she falls asleep it seems to be her re-set button. The 4 year old... I dunno yet. I've figured out how to pretty much manage the 6. The 4 year old is very, very defiant. We've had to give up a lot of plans, outings, eating out or the like as when a tantrum hits she throws her body around, she will not cooperate, and she SCREAMS like non other. The 4 year old even does it at Preschool.