Violent tempers in 5yo

[iRosie]

Our 5 yr old boy is flying into violent, uncontrollable rages at school directed at teachers.

He's normally a kind, thoughtful kid, who plays well with his mates (he's never been agressive with a child) so we're at our wits end and it's putting a lot of strain on the family.

We can't see patterns related to food, sleep or events.

Anyone have any experience they can share?

Is the best route a GP referral, and what normally happens next?

the school can do a referral too...are they not helping you with this? Once they get a referral they should put a plan into place to help him! Is he reception?

Despite him kicking teachers during his fits the school are very supportive.

They say they recognise he's a nice kid with a problem. They initially tried sticker charts...which was a lovely idea, they're a nice bunch of women, but it hasn't worked. Once his anger gets past a certain point (which can happen in under a minute) he's not rational.

We don't tend to have these problems at home - we stopped it with toy confiscation and isolating him in his room. They don't believe they have the appropriate facilities at school to do that. (I also suspect they prefer positive rather than negative responses). They also acknowledge they can't deal with a physical child so this can't go on for long. We've got a meeting to escalate.

I guess the biggest question is whether this is anger management, psychological, nutritional.... and whether the GP is the best route to investigate any/all of those causes. My concern would be that it escalate matters to a point you, as a parent, can't control.

(Sorry about the delay in responding, I haven't been able to check messages this week).

Hi
Ive had the same with my little boy who turned 6 this year, except his violece was aimed at me and his siblings.
Hes currently being seen by camhs for possible mental health problems.
When the parent support adviser told me she was making a refural my first instinct was google. I found out about food links and behaviour. After three evenings trawling the internet i decided to try a dairy free diet over the 6 week holidays so i could see if anything changed.
Thank god it did. He was getting slowly worse day by day and after cutting his dairy and going to soya and goats milk for two weeks he slowly came back to us as our little boy.
From my point of view it really is worth trying the diets for a few weeks and see what happens. My little lad isnt perfect and he is still getting tested but with his diet change and support from every everywhere we are getting slowly back on track.
I really do hope it works out for you, I know how scary it is watching your little lad getting violent and hearing about it :( XXX

My DS (6) has these rages that are often directed at me, and until recently have never spilled over into school. However this week they did and the school have finally seen what I deal with at home. At school he's usually a golden child! School is off now for 2 weeks, but the assistant head is going to chat with me when they get back about management of it. I'm considering asking for a referral - this has gone on a lot longer at home (years) than in school and I think this might just be it escalating. I keep coming up with Oppositional Defiance Disorder as it describes him perfectly, EXCEPT that he's usually great at school and achieves a lot. I'm not sure the label will help... but I'm at my wits end with what else to do or try.

Hope you get something sorted soon - it's emotionally draining worrying about them all the time.