to think my 9yo should have learned to control his tantrums by now?

[picobama]

I probably am BU. Because he obviously can't control himself and that's not his fault. I guess it just hits me occasionally that he's not so little anymore and the tantrums still haven't stopped.

He's screaming next to me right now. I asked him not to climb on top of a plastic box because it was going to break, and he lost it. He said I was lying, that he never climbed on the box. He's spitting all over the floor in his anger. I have not reacted, apart from telling him to sit there until he calmed down, and the longer he screamed, the longer he would sit. He's now screaming that his foot is itching, and I think he's forgotten what made him angry in the first place.

Does anyone else have an older child who can't control anger and how do you handle him/her?

We had the same trouble with our son but found that the counting to ten approach and controlled deep breathing helped enormously. We also spoke to his teacher who agreed that if he felt that he was getting angry he could ask to leave the classroom for a few minutes while he calmed down. Basically he get frustrated and the frustration would just build until he exploded. He's eleven now and he's fine. I think it was just a case of finding the right strategies while he learned to cope with his feelings and emotions.

Sounds good if he's fine by age 11! I do notice him breathing when he's angry - reminds me of a snake hissing....today he was saying "I curse you, I curse you" as he hissed. Too much Harry Potter maybe.

How is the atmosphere towards him in the house in general?

I just want to reassure you that you're not necessarilly doing anything wrong, please don't beat yourself up too much. I was quite similar to your DS as a child, and still had tantrums at age 9. I don't think it was my parents' fault, they were good enough parents, very loving and affectionate, firm when they needed to be, but at the end of the day, it was just the way I was, very sensitive and prone to anger when I didn't get what I wanted.
I'm perfectly fine now, even laid back I would say, so just because your DS is like this now doesn't mean he will always be.
Good luck though, I guess it must be hard to live with!

The Harry Potter comment was just a joke - I was trying to be light-hearted about him "cursing" me.

I definitely pick my fights. The box would have broken. As it was it tipped over and landed on D1's foot.

I don't know if the moving is the reason he's angry but there's not much we can do about that now except keep talking.

I find that he often determines the atmosphere in the house - he can suddenly flip and change everything. We are used to that now - we don't have any expectations of how he will be at any given time.

Thanks catus, we do worry about how he will be when he's older. He seems to be intelligent but often chooses to opt out in school if he's not interested. I feel we have very little influence!

And maybe talk to him about it - not just after he has had a tantrum so everything is raw - but at another time. In the car or on a walk so you are not looking at each other (supposed to help in emotional discussions). Ask him how he feels just before he sets off - what would help him move away from going down the tantrum path.

Also I know I get kickback from my DD (6 years) if I start being too controlling over her - if I pull her up on everything (which if I am grumpy I can do) and in essence remove all control from her then she will then fight back with some kind of tantrum too. So maybe as dittany says take a big breath before you pull him up on something - let him have more control - pick your fights? And work with him to try and work some newer boundaries that give him more control . Or tweak how you approach pulling him up on stuff so he feels like he has more control?

Where is he age wise - youngest? Middle? Oldest? If youngest are you trying to baby him still? If oldest are you expecting too much sense from him? Not judgemental questions there BTW just wondering if it is affecting stuff?

Yes, I do. He's also 9. He's on the spectrum and this is one of the main ways it manifests itself.

" he always maintains that we are in the wrong and he in innocent."

Also similar. DS can rewrite history so completely you begin to doubt yourself. He is also very good at school but i know he feels just as frustrated but waits till he gets home to let it out.

Sounds very familiar Orm. I guess you just have to keep going, every day.

We seem to be having a bad day today. Everything is setting him off.

Fingerfingers what you say makes sense. I am always trying to balance picking my battles with not letting him control the whole family.

He is in the middle. I will remember the not looking at each other next time we talk. He doesn't like listening - he is always trying to get his say and can't wait for me to finish first. I feel like everythin happens when HE decides, never because of anything I say or do. Our dds learned to use the potty/ride a bike/read/swim when we took the initiative to provide the opportunity to learn, but DS only did it when he decided to. Literally one day he demanded his nappy/stabilisers/armbands off and that was that, before then he would not even try.

fishfingers I mean! Sorry.

I am not sure that tantrums happening only at home do discount a general health problem or do necessarily point towards poor parenting as the cause.

Dd has genuine mental health problems- under CAHMS, on medication, off school for a long time due to extreme anxiety. Over the years this has manifested itself in various ways from violent tantrums (up to the age of 10) to hyperventilating and self-harm. At no time has she displayed any of this behaviour outside the family; what the outside world gets to see is a beautifully behaved, mature and considerate teenager. The CAHMS team seem to think this is part of the problem: that she does not dare to express her frustrations to other people, so she bottles them up.

My db had violent tantrums, almost certainly as a result of post-adoption trauma, but he was always beautifully behaved at school. My parents had no difficulties with setting firm boundaries: he was their fourth child and none of the rest of us had his problems; no doubt because none of the rest of us had been exposed to the kind of stress he had.

Not for a moment suggesting that your ds has problems on this scale, OP, just that whatever problems he does have are not necessarily caused by you.

" that she does not dare to express her frustrations to other people, so she bottles them up." Precisely cory. I have raised 3 (usually) polite considerate children, even DS2's default state is polite and considerate. He would chew his own arm off before he's show such anger and frustration to anyone else because that isn't the way he was brought up. If the poor kid couldn't let off steam at home where he is safe and secure, where can he?

If I have a bad day at work I don't cry and rant at my colleagues or kick the photocopier. I wait till i get home and have a good old cry and rant at DH. That's normal.

pico - if it's any comfort at all, DS has improved in the last year or so. We still get the rages and tears but not so often and I can get through to him now. It is possible to get him to calm himself down quite quickly.

Still stubborn as a mule and bloody argumentative though...

Well, each child is different and in the ideal world children would not tantrum at 9, but lots of children do, and it is not always somebody's fault - some are just like that, some are struggling or reacting to events in their lives, and some have underlying problems. DD is diagnosed with ADHD, 8 almost 9 and can't always control her emotions, has huge tantrums and gets angry very quickly. She also gets over it very quickly again though, and genuinely feels sorry about it, as opposed to my 7 YO DS who never has tantrums but can sulk for ages instead! With DD, I have always seen this as something she can't fully help and needs some support and understanding to teach her to cope with.

I found one book that helped was 'The Explosive Child' - it gives you ways of coping with situations that reduce the number of tantrums... lots of it is common sense and some of it a bit pedantic and it doesn't always allow for the frustration that parents can feel, but it does have some useful stuff in it and could be worth a look at:
www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=the+explosive+child&tag=googhydr-21&index=stripbooks&hvadid=7669876453&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=576183745203449167&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&ref=pd_sl_7l1ufi8rwb_b

Hope this helps! Good luck.

just to add - DD's tantrums rarely happen outside the house - most people think I have a reasonably well-behaved if slightly manic and hyperactive child.. She makes a huge effort to 'be good' at school, and, as ormi says, has to vent somewhere she feels people love her unconditionally.

My nine year old ds has/had really bad tantrums all his life.

We moved a lot, every 2 years, which he did not cope with well.some kids don't.

I have found that if he kicks off, And it is unreasonable, I send him to his room. Once he has calmed down, we then have a chat.

I found he needs to feel I listen to him. Also, a really big thing was to tell him it is completely OK to feel angry or frustrated, that it is normal to have these feelings, but that acting out and screaming is not o.k.

So listening, and not making him feel bad for feelings he has seem to h ave done the trick, amazingly. He felt panicky about his anger before, thinking it was wrong to feel angry. And of course it isn't.

DD1 was just like your DS OP until she went to secondary school. Once she was more independent she changed completely and is now a lovely teenager.

My 10 yrold (mild autism) is having horrid tantrums at the moment and I think hormones are at work because he doesn't usually need deodrant but has body odour after a tantrum.
He is very well behaved at school and wouldn't dream of raging/carrying on there.
It's all about control or anxiety with him. So it could be about him not getting to do exactly what he wants or it could be about a sudden change. Sometimes we don't know what on earth's started it-then it's usually a change of routine at school that we don't find out about until later.

I empathise with your sense of the whole household turning on his moods. I also have tried to be a model parent, but shouting has come into it in the past!

I am just going for repeating very very calmly that everything is ok and nobody is cross. Eventually he calms down and often as not does what he's been asked to do or loses interest in what had upset him.
I also keep repeating 'Go on your trampoline' because that works very well if I can catch it before it becomes a full blown tantrum-distraction isn't just for toddlers!

It's difficult if I have to get his siblings out of the way, but I've realised it's easier to get them out a room than it is a tantrumming ds1!

I hold onto the thought that I doubt he'll be doing this at 20 because he can hold it in at school. Hopefully, like with a lot of his behaviours, it will get to a point where I think it can't possibly get any worse, and then 2 weeks later I'll realise he's calmed down a bit and life has been a bit nicer.

Also, other children of this age do this, not just children with special needs, I can think of 2 close friends whose 10 yr old boys ahve had a recent tantrumming phase-good parents with clear boundaries better parents than me..

Good luck

Oh pico I identify with a lot of your experiences. My DS is 7 so a bit younger but I'm still exhausted by the tantrums and emotional turmoil we go through most days. When he gets upset, it can be overwhelming and a real struggle to return to a calm state. He is clumsy and uncordinated, has a lot of motor problems, seriously lacks impulse control and is inattentive/constantly daydreaming - the problem being that these things often lead to more upset when he forgets something/trips over/breaks something etc.

We try to be like you, stay calm, keep talking, ask him about his feelings/needs and listen to him, help him find solutions to things. When he's not in a state, he is very helpful and kind, wants to be good, very creative and articulate - but like you I do get exasperated by the frequent meltdowns, and yes I have shouted sometimes. I also have another, much younger DC who is completely different - very clued-up, in control and at ease with situations - and although she's still a toddler and does have tantrums, it's way less stressful. Having her has made me realise dealing with DS really is exhausting in a way that other parents don't always realise.

We have our GP and school very much on side and the wheels are in progress to see if there he has any particular condition which we may find out in the next couple of years. Tbh when I have looked things up, I've found he ticks all the boxes for lots of things - dyslexia, ADHD, dyspraxia. Not ASD so much as he's very empathetic and thinks a lot about people's feelings, but we have ASD in the extended family so I sometimes wonder. It might be worth a chat to your GP is they are sympathetic.

I really just want to say I know how this feels and I don't think you sound like a bad parent at all. You sound as if you're really trying, but you're only human and dealing with this can do your head in - especially when you're busy with all the millions of things involved in everyday life with DC.

pico I too have a 9 year old who is prone to tantrums. At school, he is fine, although seems to be struggling a bit in some 'tricky' situations at playtime (usually when he perceives that others are cheating - it bothers him when rules are not followed). He has also blown up with his childminder - he ran off when she told him off for not stopping swinging on the gate. Last weekend, he got unbelievably upset when I challenged him for having pinched his younger brother, and proceeded to scratch hard at his arms so that he still has marks there now .

I'm reading this thread with interest as I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to help DS. I do try to be consistent, but my own frustrations mean that I don't always succeed. Generally I find DS responds best when there are rules put in place (more recently he will help to shape these e.g. suggesting which days he can play electronic games and which he can't - interestingly he was far more strict on himself than we would have been!). I also try to give him notice when he's going to have to stop doing something he's enjoying, rather than telling him to stop immediately. But sometimes it's just not possible. And sometimes he just goes mad for no obvious reason. He has always tended to disappear when he's angry, and we usually leave him for a while to calm down, but even so he can flare back up when we do try to talk to him. It's a tricky balance to strike.

Picobama

Are you me?!

I have almost the identical problem with my DS, also 9, and he is beautifully behaved everywhere except at home! (Or occasionally at my mum's, but we lived there for a year, and he slots straight in as a younger brother/son more than a nephew/grandson)

I was tearing my hair out (literally) with his behaviour a few weeks ago, and I admit I think it was because we weren't being consistant. I notice that you have more problems at weekends/holidays ... snap! I'm sat there thinking - why are you so badly behaved?! You go out and play for x hours of the day, you don't have homework to do, you choose when you get up, you go to bed a tad later than normal, but otherwise you have no great demands on your time! Stop being such a sod!

After a lot of tears and talking with my mum (I was an absolute brat between the years of 8 and 18, and I still fly off the handle when very PMTish) and DH, we've implemented a time-out procedure, and also we're knuckling down on his daily jobs which he earns pocket money with. (We let this slip during the holidays)

I know it doesn't help that we are a 4 member family (soon to be 5) squashed into a 2 bed house, but at the end of the day, that's how it has worked out.

We have tried to establish that his bedroom is just that - his bedroom. Yes his sister (20mo) sleeps there, but none of her toys/clothes are kept in there, so apart from the cot and her wash basket, the room is soley his.

If he backchats/flips out/behaves inappropriately, he gets one warning. If he doesn't calm himself down/moderate his behaviour then he is asked to move to his bedroom and left to shout/scream/beat up the pillows as he sees fit.

We use one phrase and stick to it - "Please go to your room and reconsider your response"

This is starting to see rewards now, in that he's starting to moderate his behaviour after the warning. He also has made a 'calm-down space' for himself on his top bunk - pillows, favourite books and toys (he came up with that on his own) so once he has started to calm down, he can help himself further IYSWIM.

The only time it didn't work for me was last week, when DD was down for a nap in the bedroom, so he ended up having a full-blown melt-down in the front room. Not a lot I could do about it except quietly stop him from destroying the games console/TV etc.

The trigger? I asked him to handwrite a piece of homework, and I didn't have any lined paper for him to do his homework on, plus my printer had run out of ink so I couldn't print any guidelines for him to use under plain paper.

Once he had calmed down, and was talking rationally, we discussed the situation, how his behaviour had made me give him the warning/time-out (this caused him to escalate), and thus I 'switched off' (this enraged him further)

We discussed the problem, how he should have spoken to me/asked me for help, and then I showed him how he could solve the problem with minimum input from me.

We are far from a permanent behaviour change but all I can do is be consistant!

DD2 is a total control freak at home and an angel at school.

She's an appalling looser and very likely to fly into a rage if the world doesn't revolve around her.

I think it's about finding a sense of security, somehow she feels loved and safe if she gets her own way. Conversely she feels very uncomfortable if she's criticised or laughed at.
Gets idiotically worried if DH and I fight.

The utter opposite of chilled big sis.

Drives me mad because she's really clever and has lots of friends and brilliant social skills, absolutely nothing in her life to get in a tizzy about.

DD1 is dyslexic, finds friendships hard and gets all kinds of shit off kids at school, smiles and gets on with life.

I'm afraid I can offer no advice.
Except refusing to get involved and sending DD2 to her room when she's vile and lots of hugs and talking when she's nice.

Also don't sweat the small stuff, when letting her feel in control really doesn't matter DD1 and I just shrug and let her choose.

She's now 11 and is definitely better than she was at 9. I think being left at home for the odd half hour, going cycling or to the shop by herself helps. She likes freedom, but she likes the security parents and big sister provides too.

I expect she'll spend the next 8+ years finding the balance. She needs to discover the true self-confidence that DD1 was born with.

I don't know how you foster that in your DS, but I think a lot of anger comes from not having the confidence to accept the things you can't control.