I really feel bad about this morning (sorry long)

amother

Seagreen

Thu, Jul 20 2017, 4:52 am

I had the worst morning with my 8 year old son today.
I am not even sure if I am explaining this right as I am really upset right now.
He is really a very sweet boy. he does well at school and has many friends. His teachers like him. so do I. he is such a great kid unless he goes into this angry zone and its horrible.
his problem is only at home with the family.
He has over the last year gotten really difficult to deal with.
his place in the family is hard because he has lots of sisters and his brother is much older than him. I try to get his sisters to hang out with him but its hard. he hates it he has become very hard to deal with
He is angry at home a lot. He is always mad at something or someone. he is VERY sensitive to other people looking at him wrong touching him wrong saying the wrong thing. the possibility of someone laughing at him makes him freak out. something always sets him off.
so today he was angry because I asked him to tidy his room( 3 minutes max) as we were having a cleaning person today.
he flipped and said he does not want her in his room and started on with lots of chutzpa towards me and he started punching his sister. He was acting crazy. He refused to explain why he did not want her to clean it and refused to clean it himself. he would not calm down.
I seriously lost my mind. I yelled that you cant behave like this with so much disrespect and chutzpa with mommy and we do not allow anyone to hurt anyone here ever.
I said thats it! I ran to his room and threw all his stuff on my bed. including his blanket and pillows. and took his playmobile and put it outside the house. I actually said If you want to keep living here you need to behave yourself.I really said that I may look into an orphanage!!! I cant believe I said that :-(
I feel so bad about it. Who cares if the cleaning lady cleaned his room. How did this snowball into this horrible thing. I cant believe I said those things and acted like that.
I am going to buy him a huge ice cream for when he comes home and say I am sorry but I am at a loss on how to go forward.
I have the book the explosive child but it isnt working.

Chayalle

Thu, Jul 20 2017, 12:08 pm

It sounds like a situation snowballed - it's fine to tell him that his behavior toward you and his sisters is not okay, but the rest - displacing his possessions and threatening to remove him from the family unit is not okay. Sounds like you plan to apologize and make it up to him - good for you!

It sounds like you are really frustrated with how things have been going with your son lately, and this morning the dam burst. You really need support and skills to deal with your son on a regular basis, so that you don't build up toward something like this again.

I would suggest reaching out to someone whom you can talk to about issues with your son. It's possible that he would also benefit from some outside help to deal with whatever is leading him to behave this way. It sounds like he is not processing/expressing his feelings, leading to explosions. A few sessions with a therapist - either one specializing in verbal processing, or a play therapist who does similar - might be very helpful here.

amother

cornflower

Thu, Jul 20 2017, 12:50 pm

my son is just like that. You did not get upset only about today ...you are upset because this always happens. You lost it because he hurt his sister. My son just spent close to $100 of his own money planning a massive carnival. I cancelled it a few days before because he hit his sister. He is furious at me ..... he said he hit her 3 other times and I didn't cancel it - so why now? WHY NOW??? simply because sometimes these kids get so out of hand and if we don't do something drastic they will not learn. There is no simple solution with these kids ...just daven that Hashem should help them to control their anger and be emotionally stable and that we should be able to raise them properly.

amother

Powderblue

Thu, Jul 20 2017, 12:54 pm

The good news is, that kids are really good at forgiving! I think the best you can do is apologize and than you dont need to worry for his emotional stability later in life. Things happen. We are all not perfect and make mistakes. He will understand that even mummy is human and makes mistakes. And he can learn how to rectify correctly. Most importantly he will understand that you totally didnt mean it:)

amother

cornflower

Thu, Jul 20 2017, 1:10 pm

Chayalle wrote:

cornflower, how does the punishment fit the crime? Your son needs help to learn how to control his impulses, and not to hit...but I'm not sure how making him forfeit his carnival plans and lose his money is going to accomplish that...and I don't see how it's even fair.

because I specifically warned him that if he hurts his siblings I will not allow him to make his carnival. Although I tried to overlook it other times, this time I told him that the carnival is cancelled. Now he is asking me if he can make a sale in front of our house with the nosh he bought. I told him that if he behaves with derech eretz and does not hurt his siblings for a wk I will I will allow. A few times I saw he was about to go in to a rage ...I reminded him and he held himself back. I'm not sure if you have any idea about raising an impulsive, angry child. Parenting this type of child does not necessarily mean that you can take parenting rules and they will work. What should work for a regular child will not work for a child like that.

Chayalle

Thu, Jul 20 2017, 1:20 pm

amother wrote:

OK, this makes sense. I would complement him when he is about to go into a rage and controls himself, saying something like "I see you are working hard on yourself. I'm proud of you and rooting for you. I really want you to be able to make that sale".

I'm the parent of, for lack of better description, a child that is more sensitive, high strung, free-spirited, impulsive, etc...(also yummy, refreshing, hysterically funny, and incredibly bright...). I do think that regular parenting rules generally work, perhaps with certain revisions and tweaking....like all children, and perhaps more so - they need a rhyme and reason in their life. A random consequence that was not part of the program can really tick them off and disillusion them. Consistency is the name of the game....

amother

Bisque

Thu, Jul 20 2017, 8:24 pm

Something similar went down at my house this week between and my 8 yr old. I felt terrible and also wondered how it spiraled out of control. I noticed that I don't get into these scenarios with my younger kids because they are babies and I expect then to act this way. So from now on, when he starts having a tantrum etc.. I'll pretend he is three and take it from there. Maybe that will work for you too?

amother

Babypink

Thu, Jul 20 2017, 8:56 pm

So sorry op, I know the feeling of losing it when kids are little. In my case, I would yell and then feel so terrible, I didn't recognize myself.

What is important is for the child to know that what happened (the yelling at him) was not normal and not his fault. I didn't want my kids to think that yelling is an acceptable response to anything in life or that anyone deserves to be yelled at that way. So later, when I had calmed down, I told my child I'm so sorry for the way I yelled at you. I had a really bad headache and lost control and it's not your fault. It's mine, and I'm going to make sure I never yell like that again, even if I have a headache or anything else going on.

Don't bring up what he did wrong in the same conversation. That would be a different conversation so that he knows that your losing it was wrong regardless of the situation.

What helped me stop yelling was to pretend I was being filmed. I told myself imagine a camera was in the room, would you yell like this? Sounds crazy I know, but it helped.

amother

Apricot

Thu, Jul 20 2017, 9:21 pm

While it's normal to blow up sometimes (hey, the little buggers can reeeeeally push our buttons) what you said was very disturbing. You essentially told him that you actually might abandon him. That could really shake his trust in you. I'm not saying this to tell you you're bad and you've ruined your son (you know it was wrong and you're looking to do better- that makes you a good mom!), but rather so you should know that you're probably going to have to do a lot more than an ice cream to rectify this.

amother

Amethyst

Thu, Jul 20 2017, 11:57 pm

amother wrote:

I have a son who is now 10 and there is much sibling rivalry with his 7 year old sister and he does end up hitting her sometimes. However, need to understand the context. She can be very annoying to him, teasing, etc and that is his response. Of course he shouldn't be hitting his sister, but there are some very strong feelings behind it, that he has to be able to work through and I try to understand him, why he's doing it & can even be sympathetic even while not condoning the response and giving him consequences. I think kids needs to feel that we "get" them (this develops the relationship with the child) and only then, when have a good relationship, will they really want to work with us (as opposed to being "forced" into it by the consequence). I believe helping kids develop their middos is a work in progress (same as for anyone) and sometimes I think when we make it an "emergency", that we must change the behavior right now, we may win the battle, & lose the war.

Also, I think if you looked away a few times & only later enforced your stated consequence, from his point of view, it is confusing. I think kids in general test us like no one else can. If the carnival was something very important to him, I don't think I'd use it as a consequence (even with warnings), if it's likely he'd fail. In general, I don't think negative consequences unrelated to the actual offense work very well with "angry" kids.