Added context: I am a 28f who learned in Jan I have PTSD from my childhood, severe Anxiety and BPD. I suspect I have autism and other things but my psychologist won't give me any other diagnosis until my PTSD is treated first and foremost. I was in therapy but things with therapy went sideways and I got hurt and haven't picked it back up due to emotional exhaustion, but plan to start back up when I've rested.
My son turned 6 in July and now suddenly he's been having these very angry outbursts when he is home and doesn't get his way. For example: We sometimes let him play on a learning leapfrog tablet or play Minecraft or a racing game for 30 min to an hour. When he's reached his limit, we typically tell him he's got 5 more minutes or till the end of the race and it's time to put the games away. This is when his meltdowns start. He'll tell us no and move away from us so we can't take the controller away to turn the game off. This is when we remind him that we talked about it before hand and we told him he'd only have x amount of time. When it comes time to take it he'll lose it. He'll go completely rigid and sorta scream, but it's in his throat and his mouth is closed, then start to threaten us. "if you don't give me the game I'm gonna x" sometimes it's 'not talk to you anymore' sometimes it's a threat to take something of ours, others it's a threat to hit us. When we try to reel him back in and calmly explain how things work he will run away and yell over us. This is when the toy throwing starts and he gets placed in his room for 5-10 minutes of time out/cool down time. We recently implemented a rule that any toy he throws at us we throw away, because I'm not going to let him have something if he is going to use it to hurt us, and we tell him this every time he throws a toy.
By this time he's trying to kick his door down. (He has a half door/dutch? Door because he did not like it when his full door was closed, but we still needed a way to keep him in his room for time outs. Plus he would sneak out in the middle of the night to get all the sweets out of the pantry. He made him self very sick one morning by eating all the chocolate and candy in our pantry after Halloween. He's done this multiple times. His sneaking out even got his sister hurt once.) Anyway, at this point he just gets this dead look in his eye while he's kicking his door with literally all the strength he has. When we try to talk him down he will try to spit at us and continue to throw things and kick his door. During this whole thing we make sure not to yell or scream at all, whether it's tapping out and one parent takes over or we walk away for a couple minutes to let things settle a bit. We try to explain everything that's going on and why it's happening. Some nights he is extremely receptive and we head this whole ordeal off very fast. Other nights it's an hour to two hour ordeal. (Worth mentioning: He was always difficult to settle down, even as a baby. He'd have bouts of serious crying for an hour or two, even when we did everything we could think of to sooth him and then he'd settle down.)
These outbursts aren't always with video games. Sometimes it's with bed time. Sometimes it's with dinner and he's mad about his choices for dinner. Sometimes it's because he doesn't want to come inside from playing outside. It's a wild card every time. At first I thought it was what we were allowing him to watch. Ben 10, Pokemon, digimon, power rangers, Miraculous lady bug, Teen titans go etc. Because he'd act like the characters or even grab his Nerf gun and pretend to shoot us. When I cut all those shows out and made it to where he can only watch shows like Bluey and Blippi, the outbursts went from almost every night, to two times a week and he stopped pretending to shoot us or act like the characters.
He's also suddenly potty training regressing. I thought maybe it was FOMO because it always happens when he's playing. Family thinks it may be because his 3 y/o sister is still potty training and is half in diapers half in training undies. We've sort of fixed it by reminding him every 45 min to an hour to go sit on the potty for 5 min, but he'll try to pretend he did and just stand in the bathroom for 5 min, if we are unable to stand there and make sure he does. I've asked him why he doesn't like going potty like a big boy and he just says he doesn't want to, he'd rather play. When we try to explain to him that what he's doing could get him very sick and others sick, he doesn't seem to care. He's more focused on everything else. The light, my jewelry, the t.v noise in the background, what the dog is doing, etc, or getting back to playing.
I've tried having "Decompression time" for him when he gets home from school. I tell him he can take a shower by himself or have some quiet alone time to draw or look through a book, but he doesn't always want to do it and trying to get him to causes a temper tantrum, so I try to let him do it when he feels he needs to. I've set up a Strike and Reward system like at school, but it doesn't seem to be sticking (maybe I need to revamp it). I try to compromise "Hey buddy, I know you want x, but you gotta do x in order to get it. Sound doable?" Sometimes it works great, others it doesn't. We never invalidate him as I was CONSTANTLY and still am by my parents (who we are very LC with). We constantly say "I understand you're frustrated and upset and you are allowed to be, but what you're not allowed to do is treat people like (insert whatever he's doing)" I constantly tell him how he can properly communicate and express himself. That if he's that angry he can scream into his pillow, punch ONLY his pillow or hit ONLY his bed with his pillow. But he can't do those things to people, his toys, the house or animals (he's never hurt an animal, it's just preemptive).
We did live with my parents for 3 years. I do worry if exposure to that toxic environment caused any kind of trauma, as his sister is literally the exact opposite of him and was in that environment much less compared to him. My dad has major anger issues, he constantly yelled/screamed at my kids for just being kids and would spank my son.
(I unfortunately spanked him too, as at that time I thought it was acceptable given my upbringing and because my father would say that if I didn't discipline him he'd grow up to be those kids in and out of jail. But I completely stopped the moment we moved out as it caused horrible emotional episodes, that I later learned was PTSD, for me and I felt absolutely wrong every time I did do it and I do NOT and will not forgive myself as a mother for ever doing it in the first place. It does not and WILL NOT happen ever again. It was never okay to happen in the first place, he didn't deserve that.)
Every time my dad would yell, I would immediately put myself between them and yell back at him to not speak to my kids like that, which would turn into a fight between the two of us. We were trying to start gentle parenting and he didn't like it. Because we lived in his house it was "His rules" so he was allowed to discipline how he saw fit. I was not okay with that and me fighting this ultimately lead to us getting kicked out and hotel hopping till we were approved for a loan to get our home. We couldn't afford to hotel hop any more and went back to pack while we waited for things to go through with the house. I made sure to keep my father away from my kids when they were acting up as best as possible the whole time. My dad used to spank the shit out of me when I was a kid. I thought it was normal. I thought I deserved it. It wasn't until the beginning of this year that I started realizing it wasn't, when I got all my diagnosis' and the month of therapy I did. My dad never believed in Mental Illness, but believes he is a high functioning Sociopath like Sherlock Holmes. I'm doing everything I can to stop the cycle I went through. My kids will not grow up like I did. But I have no basis to compare to. I had more expected of me than I am expecting of my son. I grew up much different than I'm trying to set up for him. Because of this I have no idea if this is normal child anger or if I need to take him to a therapist to fix the bit of damage I started to cause but stopped.
I know this is a lot of info to dump all at once and I'm sorry. I want to make sure I'm giving as much of the picture as I can so I can get the right info to do better. I don't want my kids to deal with what I'm going through now. I'm constantly trying to find ways of doing things better than my parents did with me. I know that I fucked up, but I promise I'm constantly trying to do better. I listen to gentle parents on TikTok and much of their advice has helped. I look things up for help/better knowledge, I ask other friends who gentle parent their kids and take their advice. I have a friend who went to school to be a social worker and she will give me tips too. I even try to remember how I felt at this age and apply it to how my son may feel so I can approach it better. But given that this may be psychological this is the only place for advice I could think of. Is this normal and I'm just traumatized or do I need to seek a therapist for him? What do I do to help him till he's seen? Please help me.
My son turned 6 in July and now suddenly he's been having these very angry outbursts when he is home and doesn't get his way. For example: We sometimes let him play on a learning leapfrog tablet or play Minecraft or a racing game for 30 min to an hour. When he's reached his limit, we typically tell him he's got 5 more minutes or till the end of the race and it's time to put the games away. This is when his meltdowns start. He'll tell us no and move away from us so we can't take the controller away to turn the game off. This is when we remind him that we talked about it before hand and we told him he'd only have x amount of time. When it comes time to take it he'll lose it. He'll go completely rigid and sorta scream, but it's in his throat and his mouth is closed, then start to threaten us. "if you don't give me the game I'm gonna x" sometimes it's 'not talk to you anymore' sometimes it's a threat to take something of ours, others it's a threat to hit us. When we try to reel him back in and calmly explain how things work he will run away and yell over us. This is when the toy throwing starts and he gets placed in his room for 5-10 minutes of time out/cool down time. We recently implemented a rule that any toy he throws at us we throw away, because I'm not going to let him have something if he is going to use it to hurt us, and we tell him this every time he throws a toy.
By this time he's trying to kick his door down. (He has a half door/dutch? Door because he did not like it when his full door was closed, but we still needed a way to keep him in his room for time outs. Plus he would sneak out in the middle of the night to get all the sweets out of the pantry. He made him self very sick one morning by eating all the chocolate and candy in our pantry after Halloween. He's done this multiple times. His sneaking out even got his sister hurt once.) Anyway, at this point he just gets this dead look in his eye while he's kicking his door with literally all the strength he has. When we try to talk him down he will try to spit at us and continue to throw things and kick his door. During this whole thing we make sure not to yell or scream at all, whether it's tapping out and one parent takes over or we walk away for a couple minutes to let things settle a bit. We try to explain everything that's going on and why it's happening. Some nights he is extremely receptive and we head this whole ordeal off very fast. Other nights it's an hour to two hour ordeal. (Worth mentioning: He was always difficult to settle down, even as a baby. He'd have bouts of serious crying for an hour or two, even when we did everything we could think of to sooth him and then he'd settle down.)
These outbursts aren't always with video games. Sometimes it's with bed time. Sometimes it's with dinner and he's mad about his choices for dinner. Sometimes it's because he doesn't want to come inside from playing outside. It's a wild card every time. At first I thought it was what we were allowing him to watch. Ben 10, Pokemon, digimon, power rangers, Miraculous lady bug, Teen titans go etc. Because he'd act like the characters or even grab his Nerf gun and pretend to shoot us. When I cut all those shows out and made it to where he can only watch shows like Bluey and Blippi, the outbursts went from almost every night, to two times a week and he stopped pretending to shoot us or act like the characters.
He's also suddenly potty training regressing. I thought maybe it was FOMO because it always happens when he's playing. Family thinks it may be because his 3 y/o sister is still potty training and is half in diapers half in training undies. We've sort of fixed it by reminding him every 45 min to an hour to go sit on the potty for 5 min, but he'll try to pretend he did and just stand in the bathroom for 5 min, if we are unable to stand there and make sure he does. I've asked him why he doesn't like going potty like a big boy and he just says he doesn't want to, he'd rather play. When we try to explain to him that what he's doing could get him very sick and others sick, he doesn't seem to care. He's more focused on everything else. The light, my jewelry, the t.v noise in the background, what the dog is doing, etc, or getting back to playing.
I've tried having "Decompression time" for him when he gets home from school. I tell him he can take a shower by himself or have some quiet alone time to draw or look through a book, but he doesn't always want to do it and trying to get him to causes a temper tantrum, so I try to let him do it when he feels he needs to. I've set up a Strike and Reward system like at school, but it doesn't seem to be sticking (maybe I need to revamp it). I try to compromise "Hey buddy, I know you want x, but you gotta do x in order to get it. Sound doable?" Sometimes it works great, others it doesn't. We never invalidate him as I was CONSTANTLY and still am by my parents (who we are very LC with). We constantly say "I understand you're frustrated and upset and you are allowed to be, but what you're not allowed to do is treat people like (insert whatever he's doing)" I constantly tell him how he can properly communicate and express himself. That if he's that angry he can scream into his pillow, punch ONLY his pillow or hit ONLY his bed with his pillow. But he can't do those things to people, his toys, the house or animals (he's never hurt an animal, it's just preemptive).
We did live with my parents for 3 years. I do worry if exposure to that toxic environment caused any kind of trauma, as his sister is literally the exact opposite of him and was in that environment much less compared to him. My dad has major anger issues, he constantly yelled/screamed at my kids for just being kids and would spank my son.
(I unfortunately spanked him too, as at that time I thought it was acceptable given my upbringing and because my father would say that if I didn't discipline him he'd grow up to be those kids in and out of jail. But I completely stopped the moment we moved out as it caused horrible emotional episodes, that I later learned was PTSD, for me and I felt absolutely wrong every time I did do it and I do NOT and will not forgive myself as a mother for ever doing it in the first place. It does not and WILL NOT happen ever again. It was never okay to happen in the first place, he didn't deserve that.)
Every time my dad would yell, I would immediately put myself between them and yell back at him to not speak to my kids like that, which would turn into a fight between the two of us. We were trying to start gentle parenting and he didn't like it. Because we lived in his house it was "His rules" so he was allowed to discipline how he saw fit. I was not okay with that and me fighting this ultimately lead to us getting kicked out and hotel hopping till we were approved for a loan to get our home. We couldn't afford to hotel hop any more and went back to pack while we waited for things to go through with the house. I made sure to keep my father away from my kids when they were acting up as best as possible the whole time. My dad used to spank the shit out of me when I was a kid. I thought it was normal. I thought I deserved it. It wasn't until the beginning of this year that I started realizing it wasn't, when I got all my diagnosis' and the month of therapy I did. My dad never believed in Mental Illness, but believes he is a high functioning Sociopath like Sherlock Holmes. I'm doing everything I can to stop the cycle I went through. My kids will not grow up like I did. But I have no basis to compare to. I had more expected of me than I am expecting of my son. I grew up much different than I'm trying to set up for him. Because of this I have no idea if this is normal child anger or if I need to take him to a therapist to fix the bit of damage I started to cause but stopped.
I know this is a lot of info to dump all at once and I'm sorry. I want to make sure I'm giving as much of the picture as I can so I can get the right info to do better. I don't want my kids to deal with what I'm going through now. I'm constantly trying to find ways of doing things better than my parents did with me. I know that I fucked up, but I promise I'm constantly trying to do better. I listen to gentle parents on TikTok and much of their advice has helped. I look things up for help/better knowledge, I ask other friends who gentle parent their kids and take their advice. I have a friend who went to school to be a social worker and she will give me tips too. I even try to remember how I felt at this age and apply it to how my son may feel so I can approach it better. But given that this may be psychological this is the only place for advice I could think of. Is this normal and I'm just traumatized or do I need to seek a therapist for him? What do I do to help him till he's seen? Please help me.
