Then that angry child went away

I’ve had a grumpy child, a whining child, and an annoying kid, but for the past month or so we’ve been free of the explosive anger of the kid I’ve called Katie Kaboom on a fairly regular basis.

Keep in mind that what I’d been experiencing was temper tantrums lasting 90 minutes every other day with kicking, screaming, and otherwise not particularly great times.

It wasn’t just that she was defiant against us, the teachers, the door, these tantrums kicked in and screwed up her chances of having fun even when there was nothing evidently bothering her.

You could always spot when Katie Kaboom was about to pop out. There was a look that combined distrust, disgust, and a little bit of sadness to create whatever scenario was needed to start kicking and screaming and generally just not having a pleasant time.

We tried a lot of what the behaviorist said, mostly the things that worked seemed to work for a day or two and then the anger would pop back out, the kicking and screaming would begin, and things would go right back into suckville, population suck.

At one point I was counting the hours of waketime vs discipline, punishment, fun, and really her quality of life was not something to be envied. No amount of punishments did anything other than depress the non-explosive kid. It was like this was another kid doing these tantrums and then my kid would pop out and well, sucked to be her at that point.

This I’m writing at one month of not seeing the tantrum. There’s something odd about that. A five year old having issues and hating everything is just like a practice in comparison to pretty much every other day for the past two years.

Near the height of this I was seriously about to the point of saying let’s just medicate this for a bit for everyone else’s sake. Her sister had learned to go to bed and sleep while shrieking 4yo kicked and screamed and generally made sure that everyone knew she was not having a good time.

Nothing we tried really worked. The anger was there with nothing to calm it. Sometimes I think that’s why she’s so enamored of the Hulk as a character.

I’d like to say there has been a definitive thing that happened. I don’t think the behaviorist solved anything, and I don’t think that we did too terribly much other than not make things worse, but yeah.

Hoping I’m not counting chickens before they’re hatched, but even angry and near that level I have seen little evidence of the rage beast that seemed to overtake my kid. Thinking back even when she was a baby we had the witching hour thing, and that was just about the same. Inconsolable and not paying any attention to the world or that things don’t suck.

Hoping month two finishes up sans Katie Kaboom.