Sunday, May 30, 2010
Not Physical Again, pleasssse
Physical again!?! And over cake...yesterday morning(before her vyvanse had kicked in) Kenz wanted a second piece of her sister's b-day cake and I told her no. I had the cake out and she decided that she would just force her way over my arms and get another piece anyway. Blocking it and holding her back-I was bound and determined to not let her have another one-there was hardly any left and Tori had only had 1/2 of a piece of the whole cake at her party. She deserved some too. Anyway, this caused Kenzie to fight me physically by scratching and pinching me. I think she even hit me. Well, I did not handle it very well. I backhanded her and it hit her in the face. I wasn't aiming for her face. I was just trying to get her away from me. In essence I was defending myself. But I was furious! Todd got involved and got her to her room rather calmly if you can even call what she was calm. My point being is that he did a good job to remove her. We told her that when she gets physical all bets are off. We won't be doing the nurtured heart approach. We will be protecting the family and removing her from the situation. Not sure if this is the right answer and really not sure what you do with a 13 year old who becomes physical like that! It is not a pretty situation no matter how you look at it. The sad thing is that she was doing so well. We have not had one of those episodes in a long time. I felt like we were getting somewhere with the nurtured heart approach. Hopefully, we are not sliding backwards again.
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The physical rages just suck. Ava is usually one to go this route with most of her rages. We used to lock ourselves into a room but as she gets older, we worry about her damaging the doors. We then tried holding her down until she could calm down but when her 1 year old brother and 3 year old sister are around this is very scary for them and not something we want them to witness! We finally found 'the garage'. It sounds horrible, I realize but it's the best place for her to be to keep everyone in the house, including her, safe. We have a larger, thicker, metal based door from our laundry room into our garage so she cannot damage the door, nor does she care to bang on it because it hurts! We hear her screaming and yelling and abusive language much less as we can close the other door to the laundry room that enters the rest of the house. She also knows if she's going to scream as if someone has just ripped her arm off that one of the neighbors may be very concerned and call the police. We've told Ava this and also told her that if it does happen because she's not able to control her voice, then she'll be the one to explain to the police what exactly was going on. It has worked WONDERS! Getting her out there isn't always easy but she doesn't take long to calm down to prove she's ready to come back in. It also does wonders for me, knowing there is somewhere that we can hold her where she's safe, we're all safe and she can calm down. I feel so much more in control even during those times when she's so completely OUT of control. I realize living in AZ, the garage is probably not an option for you but maybe there's another room with a strong door you could lock? Just a thought!
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