Last night, N forgot to lock his bedroom door.  I mean, you really shouldn’t have to when you’re already in the house, but…  L took advantage of that opportunity, got into N’s room, took stuff, and even broke some of it.

When I returned the booty of stolen goods to N, his face just fell.  When he got back from putting his things away (and of course, locking the door), I asked him if he was angry.

Can you say “floodgates”?

Here’s a partial list of what he’s angry about:

• That we got THESE kids instead of easier ones
• That dad and I chose to adopt at all
• At L for being such a pill
• That his room isn’t safe
• There’s more garbage to take out
• That his toys get broken
• There’s nothing he can do to make L stop (he can’t fight back, because that doesn’t “teach” L anything)
• That his bathroom is a disgusting mess

Normally, I’d try to reason through these feelings, but not this time.  This time, I just heard him out.  Let him get all the words out of his system.  Let him know that I’m angry too.

And then we closed with some problem solving.  Part of the reason he doesn’t lock his room is because he has to hide the key somewhere L can’t get it – and that’s a pain.  So, he asked if he could get something with a keypad.  That had NEVER occurred to me, but its a brilliant idea (expensive, but brilliant).

Hopefully, N learned a little something about how to express his anger, and maybe a little about problem-solving.  But mostly, I hope he realized that he’s not alone.  That we’re right there with him.

I swear, if my neighbors can hear whats going on in our house sometimes, they must think I’m some sort of monster.  Case in point…

Last week, L had an hour long meltdown.  The kind that involves screaming, throwing, kicking – the works.  So there I am in the hallway, preventing him from coming out of his room, when he lobs what HE thinks is his ultimate weapon – “I GOTTA GO PEE BAD”.

We’ve learned the hard way that L uses this when he wants to find a way to get out of his room.  For a long time, we fell for it, and then he’d play around in the hallway, play around in the bathroom, oddly enough, not actually going to the bathroom.

Then we thought – okay, you can go to the bathroom when you calm down.  But how do you quantify that?  Its really the absence of behavior.  And he learned to calm down just enough to get us to open the door, then he’d play around in the hallway, play around in the bathroom, oddly enough, not actually going to the bathroom, eventually melting down again.

So back to the most recent meltdown. This time, I told him if he had to go to the bathroom, all he had to do was say “Mommy, I have to go to the bathroom.”

He couldn’t do it.  Oh, he could scream “I’VE GOT TO GO BAAAAAAAAAAD!!!”.  He could try to negotiate getting me to open the door first.  He could demand I do a “repeat after me”.  But he couldn’t simply say “Mommy, I have to go to the bathroom.”

I must have sounded like a monster to my neighbors.  I mean to them, if a kid’s gotta go, he’s gotta go, right?

Wrong.  It was just one more way for L to try and be in control.  For him to try and engage us in his anger.  To try and frustrate us to the point where we might respond in anger.

Not this time.  We weren’t going to let that happen.

Finally, after an hour of this, I heard a meek little voice “Mommy, I have to go to the bathroom.”  And so I opened the door, and off he went. I have to say, at that moment, I felt no victory.  I was just too exhausted to feel it.

But the next day, he was THIS  CLOSE to melting down because he wanted more Mac and Cheese, when out of the blue, I heard “Mommy, can I have some more Mac and Cheese?”.  And THEN I felt victorious.  That maybe, just maybe, L was choosing problem-solving over anger.

Maybe sometimes, in order to be the good guy, you have to be the monster first.

Oy.  Its 9am, and I’m exhausted.  Why?  Because our daughter, M, had another of her morning meltdowns.

I’ve said this before, but please don’t confuse a meltdown with your standard temper tantrum.  M woke up crying.  She drooled.  She screamed.  She refused to get dressed for school, and when we tried to put her clothes on her ourselves, she kicked them off.  This went on for a full hour.  I ended up taking her to school without her having had any breakfast, or brushing her teeth.

And she’s had 4 of these in the last 7 school days.

So here’s the question – do we push her to get ready (after all, my husband and I do have to go to work, and she does have to go to school), or do we let the meltdown run its course.  Thing is, I don’t know how long that course is!  Would she go on forever?  And does she need the reality check of being forced to get ready?

And another question – how do we force her to get ready?  Clearly, we can’t dress her when she’s like this.  I don’t want to spank her – and even if we did, I don’t think that would help.  Do we take toys away?  Do we give her a consequence when she gets home from school, or is that too far away from the time of the incident?

Do we do the reverse, and basically bribe her to get ready (with nickels, treats, toys, other rewards?).  Yes, its bribery, but is it more important to snap her out of the meltdown, or be “right”?  If we bribe her for getting ready, do we do the same with her brother?

I know, its our crazy season, so I should expect more of these, but still, there’s GOT to be a way to manage them better.

Today, out of the blue, M started spiraling into the angry zone.  This has been one of the hardest things for me to learn how to handle.  Her behavior is so completely irrational, so reason (my favorite tool) is not an option.  And when she gets like this, she’s not ABOUT to crawl into your lap for comfort.  So what’s a mom to do?

I’ve found the only thing that “works” (whatever THAT means) is to go into her room, lie on her bed (while she’s huddled under her comforter on the floor), be quiet, and wait to see what direction she’s going to take.  If there’s no move from her, then all I can do is tell her I love her, and leave.  It kills me, but that’s the only option.

But today, she was verbal.  She was able to start listing the things that were making her angry.  And I had to fight every instinct I had to try and make her feel better – all I could do was listen.

When she slowed down, I briefly mentioned things that had happened to me at her age that were similar.  Her response?  “So what?  What else?”.  She didn’t want to seem interested, but she was.

Nothing was resolved today.  I don’t know if any progress was made in her healing.  But for a few minutes, I was able to come into her anger, and show her I could survive it.  Maybe, if she can see that, she’ll learn that she can survive it to.