explosive/inflexible children – part 2

I’ve been meaning to recap our events after our visit to the psychologist with our daughter.  Things went very well.  Great therapist, great with kids – she even has 4 young adult children of her own.  Our daughter really warmed up to her, which we were worried about.  We need to make a few more appointments with her, but she suggested a few things that we are now honing in on.  One thing she said was: 

 Children do well if they can -  meaning that some skills may not yet be developed in order for certain children to fall in line with society’s idea of good behavior.  Skills such as cognitive and emotional developmental skills.

Also, she suggested a book call Parenting with Love & Logic.  We purchased it and are now listening to it on CD.  It gives a lot of great parenting tips.  But, we are also doing a little reading on our own from a book called The Explosive Child by Ross W. Greene.  This book is more in line as to what we need to be reading right now, to understand what point our little girl is at in her development.  Basically, we’re learning that some kids are delayed developmentally in certain areas and some of those missing developmental skills can be frustration tolerance and coginitive flexibility skills.  These are not things that can be taught by sticker charts or any kind of extrinsic rewards systems or even time-outs.  This books suggests explosive/inflexible children know they are not supposed to scream, rant and say horrible things or hit their siblings, but often times when they are exploding – they can’t control it.  Often times our daughter will come down from a meltdown and not even realize what she was so angry about.  This is typical of children with this type of developmental delay.

We are learning.  But how do you explain to someone, like a soccer coach or a Sunday school teacher that may be in the room when your 6.5 year old is having a meltdown and they look at you as though they are thinking “wow, what a spoiled rotten child”.  How do you explain that you are doing the absolute best as a parent and your other child falls more in line with society’s expectations of children’s emotions at certain stages of their life?  How does that explain the emotional immaturity of your 6.5 year olds skills?  I haven’t met another child like my daughter even though I know they are out there.  I even discovered that there’s a support group not far from where we live for parents of explosive/inflexible kids.  I guess I need to try and have thicker skin and not worry about other parents and what they may be thinking.

My main worry is that eventually if we can’t get this under control that she may have a really hard time keeping friends in the future.  She is very social and makes friends easily now, but she is still young.  I have hope that things will get better.  I need to have hope, otherwise what else is there?

She had a much better week last week.  We were able to keep a really good bedtime schedule for the kids and it’s amazing how much that can help/hinder the meltdowns.

Also, we’ve learned from the Love and Logic books not to “hover” so much and let the kids work out their own little sibling battles.  We do keep an eye open in case things escalate too much, but my little guy has been better about sticking up for himself.  The last few days that we have backed off, both my husband and I were more calm and the kids seemed to be more calm too.  weird.

explosive/inflexible children?

So, I’m not only dealing with my own issues of ADD, anxiety, depression and a possible learning disability, but now my husband and I have finally made a decision to have our oldest child evaluated for Explosive/Inflexible behavior.  We have an appointment with a psychologist next week.  This has been going on since she was about 1.5 years old and we always figured she’d grow out of it.  You know, the terrible twos and threes?  We kept saying, “by the time she’s 4 it will get better”.  Then when she turned four we started saying “well, by the time she’s 5 it will get better”.  She is now 6.5 and things have not gotten better.

On a daily basis we almost feel as though we walk on eggshells trying to avoid power struggles, her very low frustration tolerance, and her emotional meltdowns, but nonetheless they are still happening.  She and her little brother fight constantly and it’s often physical.  I am constantly aware that we need to be very close by when they are together.  We are very hands-on parents and restrict TV watching, feed our children whole grain foods, fruits and veggies, read with them daily… just trying to do all the right things.  She gets herself so emotionally revved-up that her immune system isn’t as strong as most average kids – getting colds and many ear infections over the last few years.  She just plain wears herself out with all of the emotional outbursts, angry rants and inflexibility if things don’t go her way.  And trust me, we do say “no”  to our kids – quite often actually.  

I am not a meek or mild person.  I consider myself low maintenance when it comes to life and I’m very down to earth so I do not see our family life as anything “average” if there even IS an “average” or typical family life.  These emotional ups and downs from hour to hour or minute to minute leave us all tense and stressed and what bothers me the most is how it’s affecting our other child – our little guy who is only 3.  He’s starting to do this nervous little thing when you hold him where he grabs a hold of your shirt between his thumb and pointer finger and rolls it back and forth.  Sometimes if he’s not being held, he’ll do it to his own shirt.  Needless to say, it all adds to my daily anxiety issues too.

The beautiful side of this child is her sweetness and amazing creativity – she’s an adorable little girl too and smart as a whip.  She is equally sweet as she is angry and it often feels as though it’s one or the other – no middle-of-the-road.  Oftentimes after an emotional meltdown if I talk with her after the “storm” has passed, she won’t even remember what she was raging about.  I always thought that was strange.

I want her to succeed in life, and by no means do I mean making lots of money.  My idea of succeeding for her and for the rest of us is having meaningful relationships with others and having friends that treat her well and being able to reach out to others if she is in need.  I can only imagine that things MAY NOT get better – and I’m thinking ahead to puberty and it really scares me to think that this may get worse.

I stumbled upon this website the other night while we were researching Explosive/Inflexible children and it has some really great information if anyone needs it.  The Foundation for Children with Behavioral Challenges.  

There is a tool that is also explained on this site called CPS (Collaborative Problem Solving) that you can use with explosive/inflexible children.  I need to read up more about it, but I will do anything it takes to bring more peace and harmony to our little family.  Nobody should have to live like this.