The Latest Fit Was Very Bad

Sunny had a fit a week ago that lasted an hour and a half. It was pretty bad. My husband lost it about halfway through and started yelling at him to shut up.

I kept them separated, and eventually Sunny tired himself out and I was able to put him to sleep.

When he gets into this state, he can't be reasoned with. I've tried some things that worked before. Saying how he feels -- this doesn't help because he already knows how he feels (very angry). Asking him what he wants -- he doesn't know what he wants. He'll just repeat accusations. Mom and Dad are being idiot poopooheads and it's all their fault.

We can't ignore him. That just makes him angrier. We can't send him to his room. He won't stay there. We apply consequences like taking away toys and privileges. That makes him angrier as well. I'll ask him if he wants a hug, but even if wants to hug, it won't stop him being angry.

Tonight he had a fit that was shorter but even worse. My husband didn't lose it this time... I almost did, though. I was horribly upset because he started hitting me. He was escalating, and I felt helpless to stop it. First there was running up to me and pretending to kick me, then he threw a stuffed toy at my head, then he actually kicked me to see what I would do. I told him hitting was unacceptable and said he was going to get toys taken out of his room if he continued, I started taking toys out, he started punching me and running at me.

It all started when he wouldn't eat his vegetable. The usual consequence for that is that he doesn't get any extras or dessert or after-dinner mints. He seemed more upset than usual about that, and called us idiots. Guy gave him a long talk and asked him to look into his eyes. I thought that was bad idea -- I just wanted to give him a time out right then -- but I didn't say anything, I just went to clean up the kitchen.

Then it was my turn to make a mistake. I wanted to make sure he'd do his time out as soon as possible, so I told him he needed to start it. I should have waited for a cool-down first. That's when he started running up to me...

The worst part of this was, I had just found out earlier that my mother had a suspicious mammogram result. If there's one thing that reduces me to a quivering wreck it's thinking what would happen if her breast cancer came back. My father was the one who called and told me about the mammogram result. He gave me a meant-to-be-reassuring-but-actually-horrible-demoralizing speech: "you know, at our age the shadow of the big C is everywhere!" So I wasn't 100% in the game tonight anyway.

Sunny was in a cold rage. He wanted to hurt me. I didn't know know how to snap him out of it, so I just figured I needed to take out his toys and stand my ground.

He broke down crying a couple times and claimed I hit him. This is a pattern I've seen before. He throws himself around violently, bangs himself (never seriously) and then blames someone else and starts crying. I think it's his own way of trying to deescalate, of trying to bring himself out of the state of aggression. He knows it didn't really happen that way, and he never persists in that claim after he cools down.

Sunny snapped out of it a few minutes later, after he went downstairs to talk to Guy.

He apologized thoroughly. We decided that his toys were going to stay out of his room, and he could earn them back. Every week that went by without a big fit or calling us names, he can choose a drawer of toys to take back. Guy had another talk with Sunny about hitting. I gave him a big hug and told him this was the worst behavior I'd ever seen him do, but I still loved him and always would.

Sunny and I spent the last 30 minutes before bedtime doing a scissors-and-paper activity. We put him to bed with no problems.

Guy said he doesn't know if Sunny really loves us, but I told him I didn't have any doubt about that. Of course he loves us, but he hates us a little bit as well. Gaining us meant having other people taken away. He's going through a stage right now where he isn't interested in talking with his foster mom on the phone. That might be part of it. I told Guy I really understand how he feels. Sunny has so little control over his life... sometimes when we tell him he has to do things, it's like rolling a dice and one out of every hundred times we get the wrong number and the switch will flip and he remembers all the things he lost control of, and he tries to get it all back by lashing out.

Just because I understand it doesn't mean it doesn't hurt like hell. I was crying for a while tonight after Sunny went to bed.

Just because I understand it doesn't mean we'll be able to stop it in future. Maybe the neurofeedback will help. Maybe his medication needs to be raised slightly (this would be a last resort).

There's a big likelihood my mother's results are nothing to be worried about. I'll know soon. If they're not, as my dad reminded me, plan B has to swing into effect. My mother isn't quite old enough for Medicare, she's otherwise uninsurable because of prior breast cancer, but she's still covered under national Japanese healthcare. She'd have to go to Japan to be treated, and I'd go there as needed. I hate Tokyo and it always makes me miserable and depressed. I want to go visit Japan with Sunny as soon as we can get him a passport... but spending as little time in Tokyo as possible. I hate the U.S. healthcare system most of all.

I'm an optimist when it comes to Sunny. 99% of the time he's a fantastic kid. He has a lot of empathy and intelligence in order to learn how to regulate himself better. Our therapist thinks all he needs is time. We're going to her now more for us... last session she didn't even bother talking to Sunny. It's just helpful to go every few weeks and hear we're not totally wrong, and get a few useful tips in the process. For example, I told her about how I recently realized Sunny had a very hazy understanding of who was black or white, so we went over a lot of people he knew. His bio mom was white (not black as he originally guessed) and a lot of his friends he thought were white when they were really black. In terms of famous people, I reminded him Obama and MLK are black, Beethoven and Bach from his music class are white (turns out I could be wrong about Beethoven). She told me this was all pretty normal. She gave me a tip for when we go on the visit in March: if we decide to visit his mother's grave, Sunny should be given a useful task to do while he's there in order to feel more in control of the situation.

Typing all this stuff out has helped me feel better. I'm going to bed early now.