7yo boy overreacting, sometimes getting violent.

[DoomaYula]

X-posted in Childhood Years

One of my 7yos seems to be having a really hard time controlling his emotions. When he gets sad/mad/frustrated/etc he just FLIPS OUT. He starts screaming and yelling, kicking things (not people -- yet???), and just... flipping out.

I try to speak to him calmly, and let him know that I'll talk to him when he calms down, but I cannot get his attention. I'll tell him to go have some quiet time in his room, but he'll go there and start throwing things around or kicking his dresser. He will start kicking furniture at other's houses -- has happened once at my bff's house, and twice when we've gone to the chiro's office.

He does see a play therapist -- he's been seeing her on and off for several years. When we first moved here, he threw a chair at his preschool teacher and that's when we started him in therapy. At the time, I noticed a great improvement after only a few sessions, but now I do not notice much change. Also, of course, now he is bigger, stronger, and more adept than he was several years ago.

He also has some issues with food -- he often refuses lunch or dinner, and sneaks/hides food. We eat almost entirely organic, no HFCS, very little processed -- I make almost everything myself -- so I don't know what's going on. He is on the underweight side.

Any thoughts? I'm taking him to the doctor on Monday to talk about options, and to get his opinion about what to do/where to go from here.

[Fillyjonk]

I have no suggestions, I have this myself with my 7 year old.

He has a real temper, and I don't know how to help him handle it.

Like you we are homeschoolers, and like you we have younger kids also. I'm worried he will start hitting them.

We have issues with getting him to do ANY "sitting down" work, he will throw a tantrum as soon as he doesn't understand something (one example would be-we were doing algebra, using "x" as in 2x =4. He got very upset because, before he had even given me a chance to explain, he'd looked at the sheet and he didn't understand, to him an x was either a letter or a multiplication sign. It took most of a morning to calm him down. He wasn't asked to do the sheet on his own or anything, in fact it was just something I'd left lying around in my crib sheet papers, to remind me to try him out with simple algebra because I thought it might interest him)

My feeling is that there are a bunch of books out there about normal parenting (hello Naomi Aldort and Alfie Kohn), but they are almost no use at all when we are in crisis, and it feels like i am in crisis at least once a day atm. In fact they are worse than useless, as they seem to suggest that your child shouldn't NEED to tantrum in the first place, or that if you can just find the simple, loving, magic word, your child will snap out of it and fairies will sing you all to sleep.

[daisymommy]

(((HUGS))) We've been there and lived to tell about it

I will tell you about my DS#1--not that everything about him is the same as your DS, but maybe there might be parts that fit?

He was a colicky baby from the start, very high needs, emotional, high strung. We noticed as he grew older that he had sensory integration issues, and around the age of 5 he was diagnosed with ADHD as well (which I knew in my heart for years before that).

He is in the Feingold diet (nothing artificial in his diet, including dyes, flavors, sugars, or preservatives) because otherwise he goes totally bonkers, as well as showing signs of autism. Remove them, and he is much better. That said--there are salycilates and phenols that can be removed on this diet that cause other kids to act the same way (but they don't seem to bother my DS this way)--may be worth checking out for you, as well as wheat.

When my DS was in 5 yr. old pre-K, he was throwing chairs and tossing tables when he had too much going on sensory wise around him. We pulled him out and homeschooled him for the next 2 years.

At age 6-7 he did all the violent flipping out behavior that your DS is doing--all the same things. Scared me half to death! But it has all stopped, and he has really calmed down now. Now at age 8 he is on the opposite end of things, and gets very weepy and emotional when things bother him and don't go his way. I don't know that there is anything we specifically did to help the situation, but he seems to have somewhat matured beyond it, and is better able to get a handle on his emotions and reactions to things.

Some things we did, and books I read:
-Talking about feelings and identifying them when they were happening, and talking about possible choices as to how to handle them appropriately ("You are feeling angry right now--you can go yell into your pillow, or hit it, but you may not scream at people or hit them").

-Made sure he was getting a lot of physical exercise as an outlet.

-Tried to give him a calm sensory environment (very little TV turned down low, not a lot of bright lights on, no rough housing or running around in the house, no scents going on from any cleaners or candles).

-Made sure he ate every 2-3 hours, always something with protein.

-Made sure he was in bed from 7pm. to as close to 7am. as possible. There was a day when he stayed up waaay too late, and the next day he was so awful I nearly had to lock him in his room for everyone's safety! He was out of control.

Books:

"The Explosive Child"
http://www.amazon.com/Explosive-Chil.../dp/0060931027

"Raising Your Spirited Child"
http://www.amazon.com/Raising-Your-S...ref=pd_sim_b_9

"The Difficult Child"
http://www.amazon.com/Difficult-Chil...ref=pd_sim_b_7

I hope some of this helps! Even if it is just to know you are not alone, and that it hopefully will get better with time.

Edited to add:
I wanted to be honest here and admit that there was a point in all of this, when several close friends with well behaved children told me that I should spank him when he was acting this way, to rein him in. I felt like I had tried everything else no no avail, so I did spank him. Worse thing I ever did. It was like throwing gasoline onto a fire. I thought I had seen violent and out of control, but it was nothing in comparison to how he acted when I spanked him. Beside the fact that it has taken years to repair our relationship because he thought that I didn't love him anymore, and hated him (yes, he verbalized this to me )

[NellieKatz]

Our 7 y.o. DS is homeschooled; unschooled for most things but now & again we do "lessons" to keep the math & reading/writing on track. He is VERY intelligent and a perfectionist. As a consequence there was TONS of "acting out" whenever (a) I forced him to do any kind of mind-numbing drills or (b) when he didn't understand something. He desperately hated to feel stupid or not know the answer. Rather debilitating state of mind...thank heaven he's not in regular school. I discovered that he is the style of learner that likes to hold back, observed, figure out on his own & not dive in till he feels confident. (there are many learning styles). Once I realized this, I didn't fall into those pitfalls again! But one thing we did with handwriting practice, to slay the Perfectionist Demon in him, was have him purposely do a bunch of letters WRONG before starting the exercise. He has great fun doing that and it takes the stress out of it. The stress of possibly doing the letters wrong was what caused the acting out.

I mean, I could have just addressed the acting-out, like trying to suppress it, or punishing him, to "train" it out of him, but we don't approach parenting that way. He's a good kid; there had to be a reason for all of it. And there was. I wish I had time to write more.