We're on major melt down #3 in the past week after going for 5 months without any big ones.
This morning's rage was 2 hours long and we ended up threatening to call the police when he started threatening to break things and shoving me when I got between him and what he wanted to break.
I have got to learn not to do that and to just stand back when he gets enraged like that. If he breaks something or gets physical we just have to calmly call the cops - it's just so hard to choose to call the cops on your 13 yo son. Easy to say much harder to do.
Talked to the new therapist on the phone today. He told me point blank that we shouldn't be shy about calling the cops. And that we shouldn't be doing so much to help difficult child 2 get control of himself - that difficult child 2 had to learn to do it without our help. Said that difficult child 2 is relying very heavily on denial and ignoring during their therapy sessions - no surprises there.
So far the threat of calling the cops has derailed difficult child 2 enough to get him outside and cooling himself down but it really hoovers that he is having so much trouble controlling himself again.
Today after he had calmed down all he could say was that everything was "real stressful" right now and that's why he had blown up when asked to fold a basket of laundry.
We know he's feeling stressed by the transition back to school although so far he is holding it together at school and just falling apart at home. At school the teachers report that he generally appears happy, relaxed and doing fine. Yeah right.
When I pick him up he is almost always upset to the point of tears or clearly exhausted. Once last week he fell asleep in the car on the 10 minute ride home. Another day he took a 2 hour nap after he got home. He's sleeping at least 10 hours a night - voluntarily going to bed by 9 pm and sometimes by 8:30.
Thanks for listening. Hope we can help difficult child 2 find some other way to handle the stress real soon.
This morning's rage was 2 hours long and we ended up threatening to call the police when he started threatening to break things and shoving me when I got between him and what he wanted to break.
I have got to learn not to do that and to just stand back when he gets enraged like that. If he breaks something or gets physical we just have to calmly call the cops - it's just so hard to choose to call the cops on your 13 yo son. Easy to say much harder to do.
Talked to the new therapist on the phone today. He told me point blank that we shouldn't be shy about calling the cops. And that we shouldn't be doing so much to help difficult child 2 get control of himself - that difficult child 2 had to learn to do it without our help. Said that difficult child 2 is relying very heavily on denial and ignoring during their therapy sessions - no surprises there.
So far the threat of calling the cops has derailed difficult child 2 enough to get him outside and cooling himself down but it really hoovers that he is having so much trouble controlling himself again.
Today after he had calmed down all he could say was that everything was "real stressful" right now and that's why he had blown up when asked to fold a basket of laundry.
We know he's feeling stressed by the transition back to school although so far he is holding it together at school and just falling apart at home. At school the teachers report that he generally appears happy, relaxed and doing fine. Yeah right.
When I pick him up he is almost always upset to the point of tears or clearly exhausted. Once last week he fell asleep in the car on the 10 minute ride home. Another day he took a 2 hour nap after he got home. He's sleeping at least 10 hours a night - voluntarily going to bed by 9 pm and sometimes by 8:30.
Thanks for listening. Hope we can help difficult child 2 find some other way to handle the stress real soon.