My Quirky Boy

As Fin grows, so too does his intensity. With everything. Friday’s are always difficult, the culmination of a week’s pent up anxiety, frustration, and over all angst is released. He spends all day with a sitter (no school Friday’s for the little kids in my town) and a gaggle of boys. His competitive edge is sharp by the end of the day, as is his frustration about having to do what everyone else is doing, rather than the activity of his choice. I partially think it is in some way good for him, as it is a real situation that we can try to coach from a self advocacy perspective. He will never go against the grain with the group.

Last night he was especially fragile, and viciously aggressive all at the same time. Last week it was an evening of him fluctuating between screaming and crying, and then not 5 seconds later laughing uncontrollably at nothing at all. Every night getting in jammies is apparently a race between Fin and his sister. He is really the only one who competes, yet every time they are changing he will ask,

“Did she beat me?? Who won??”

It is all about who “won”. When we were preparing for bed, Little G picked up his jammie bottoms and was holding them up. Fin runs, tries to grab them, and when she would not give in, he tackled her. I then commanded he go to his room and sit on his bed until I was ready to address it with him. This leads to the Titanic of all melt downs. I was sitting on the floor changing Little G and Fin proceeded to completely, and totally lose it. Screaming, yelling, crying, and spiting.

“SHE CAN’T BEAT ME!”

He started to get of his bed, and I told him no way. He was to stay there until I was ready to deal with him, and he was calm. This sent him to place of total loss of control. As I walked away from him he followed, trying to get to his jammies, pushing me out of the way. I reach out my arm in an effort to not allow him past, and again tell him to get back on his bed. Hubby at this point intervenes, Fin is in fight, or flight mode. There is saliva streaming down his face as he is just repeatedly screaming an incoherent statement of defiance. Normally he will stay in one place and just rage, and when he is done we move on. Last night he would not, and was kicking, hitting, punching anything in hubby’s direction he could make contact with. Fin becomes enveloped in a bubble of rage where nothing can get through, and all we can do is ride it out.

For the first time Hubby has to physically restrain Fin until his rage level become controllable by Fin. It was a challenge for my 200 lb, six foot husband to hold onto an 35 pound toddler who is melting down. I do wonder what we are going to do when he is 10. I am so tired of people making comments to us when we go out, or to a function, and people tell us, “He seems FINE!”, as we wanders alone in a corner as a group of young children play across the room. Constantly I feel like I am some how trying to justify to them that he is “FINE”, but being “FINE” also means he is not like every one else. Sometimes I wish that people would just stop telling me how “ok” everything is, because those that do have no idea. I am not sorry, regretful, angry, or disappointed in any way with how things are with Fin. But some days are just hard, really hard. When people come to me and tell me how “great” he is, I wonder how well they would do with the episodes of rage if it happened in their house.