Hi! New here🙋‍♀️ My 5 year old son has very explosive, violent tantrums. It’s one of the main issues that led us to seek help. Since he started medication and therapy, they are less frequent, but still very common. I feel like we do all the things. His room has been established as a calming place with a bean bag chair, books, fidgets, and more. We validate his emotions. We practice calm down strategies. We pick our battles. Still, the tantrums persist. My husband and I try to remind each other about emotional disregulation and his delays. Still, it is immensely stressful and disheartening. I feel like we’re walking on eggshells around him and he can snap and it’ll ruin everyone’s day. How do you manage these situations? How do you handle your own emotions? If you have a child who’s gotten past this, please give me advice? We are feeling stuck and alone.
how do we defuse explosive tantrums? - CHADD's ADHD Pare...
how do we defuse explosive tantrums?
I think I know what spurrs them on. ADHD makes the mind very visual and attached to what it expects. When reality goes against expectation, it elicits a very emotional, stressful, adverse reaction to the situation. Other people can manage this more easily, but it's way more difficult for us because of just HOW attached we are to what we expect.
This is the premise of ODD and Rejection Sensitivity, and why we may take things incredibly personally and have a hard time seeing it otherwise. It's a very personal feeling, we tend to think it's our fault.
Ways to help this is to give him a clear idea of what to expect ahead of time both verbally and with action, but especially with action. Routine!Tell him about the day-plan before hand. Bending the rules once leads the the expectation that it will happen again, and a tantrum when it doesn't. Expect this pretty much every time routine breaks. Until he's older, that is.
Also set clear boundaries by example. Don't allow him to see that other siblings may have gotten a different treatment because of circumstance. I know it might sound like the opposite sometimes, but "fairness" is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT to the ADHD brain. As well as the understanding of WHY things happen other than they are "told so" by an authority figure.
STAY CONSISTENT. Don't break promises, and if you have to, makes sure he understands why and try to make it up to him.
Example:
Weekday bed time is at 8, but last night circumstances made it 8:30. He may have a tantrum expecting the same things this time.
Sister got a good test grade, so she was allowed to have an extra scoop of ice cream, whereas he may struggle with tests and/or may not have even had a test that day.
Think about the things he gets so worked up over, try to imagine how they can be fixed with routine. If he had a tantrum because he's not getting his way, does he have reason to expect that he might get it all? Has he gotten his way in the past? Had the behavior worked for him?
DO NOT REWARD OR PUNISH TANTRUMS! Don't give in to "5 more minutes." Apeasing leads to more of the behavior. DONT PUNUSH! Show him the behavior means and does nothing. Talk over him and reiterate rules, but don't quite scream at him. If he knows the behavior is upsetting to you, he could find ways to use it in the future. Don't treat him coldly once he's calmed down, or take away a privlage for acting out. He will take it extremely personally and question his trust in you and your regard for him, which will lead to walls that will be extremely hard to circumvent when trying to reason with him.
Consistency, routine, clear boundaries of what's his and what he's allowed to do/say/have, will help these tantrums considerably.
Well said!
Welcome to the group! Thanks for sharing our struggles. We have been there..
What worked for me is to figure out when it will happen and try to avoid it as much as possible. I know it sounds strange but it really helped us.
We were told medication should stop about 60% of behaviors and the rest need behavior modification and a change in parenting. If he is not there then speak to his doctor about getting the best medication for me. For us we needed 2 different types a stimulant and an non-stimulant.
As you get past the current struggles it will change ans become something else.
Do you have any examples of when he has these issues? Also demands may need to be less when medication has worn off.
Big hugs for your struggles..
I don't know. We struggle with the same at 7 years old (boy).
My best answer is if you're doing all that stuff, keep going, and be as patient as possible when you can because there will be days when no strategy works that well. But it's still an ideal to shoot for in terms of non reactivity.
We had one of those days yesterday where it was so overwhelming for all of us I couldn't believe it was only 9 am at one point!
Ross Green’s book “the explosive child” covers this topic extremely well. His “CPS” method helps walk you through handling these types of kids and situations. I recommend the unabridged version through audible. Have you and your partner listen to it. I think it was only 2.5 hours long. I have 3 boys (13,11,&9) with adhd and my youngest boy is the most explosive.
Also makes sense to closely work with your doctor on fine-tuning medications. In our case, stimulants exacerbated our son's behavior, and the initial nonstimulant doses and release types were suboptimal for him. With the doctors help we adjusted meds a number of times, finally reaching a combo that worked well for us.
Time has also helped a lot. He was very explosive from 4-6.5 or so but has improved enormously and while he still has plenty of tantrums they are substantially easier to manage. And parent training of course. I have also found Rick Lavoie's videos helpful though they are more focused on slightly older kids.
I have nothing to add as far as advice goes because others have already posted some excellent advice. All I can offer is solidarity as we’re in the same boat. I think it’s important to recognize you’re all doing your absolute best and you deserve to give yourself credit for that. Talking to a therapist that understands the struggles that parents of neurodivergent children face and carving out time for myself helps me cope. My son is 6 and has been having a very hard time with transitioning into summer break. There have been a noticeable uptick of his outbursts and tantrums so I understand how you feel and what you’re going through. Hang in there.
I've always given warnings when it's almost time to transition, but it still gets an emotional response sometimes. By that I mean I'll inform them there is 10 more minutes and then 5 minutes until we go from A activity to B activity.Sometimes you just have to wait it out though. Sometimes I hug my daughter through them and sometimes we just ignore her in her room until she's calm.
We have started trying to force the emotions out through physical activity lately. We have a path on our property and we will run it until they feel better. I run it with them. That's led to my emotional breakdown once. Lol
You can't walk on eggshells though. No one else in his life will and it does him no favors. School will start and if you don't handle this the school and his classmates will to his detriment.
What also worked for us back then was to " punish forward". To avoid all explosions I would not punish at the time. For example: I explain electronics off in 10 min. At 5 min warning ( I show no emotion) then tell him to stop, when he doesn't I explain if you don't stop now tomorrow there will be none.
When he does not stop I either turn off the wifi to stop it or take it away. Then I explain tomorrow there is none.
Then the next day I do not give him the device.
This worked so much better for many things.
I also try to replace one activity with another he perfers: give rubrics cube, chess game..
Hope this makes sense and helps.
You are not alone! Our son used to have huge outbursts, though not as frequent, at that age. Things got worse gradually until he was finally diagnosed at age 9.
Since your son is still young, I wonder if your doctor or therapist has mentioned nutritional or gut imbalances contributing to your son's symptoms? Children ages 6 and younger diagnosed with ADHD & ODD have a much higher rate of food sensitivities and allergies, which can cause or exacerbate their behavioral symptoms.
Here's some more information if you're interested:
Hi, our family can relate to some of that. You are not alone and yes, it's tiring.
In the short run we used to sort of tag team our child so one parent could always be sort of "fresh" to deal with it if you know what I mean. Cognitive behavior therapy that also included parent training helped us and the most important thing has been time.
As time has gone on - our child has grown. There are no more meltdowns and tantrums but there are occasional triggers.
Today fairness remains an important issue and I let him know that he won't always get to see or be a part of someone else's consequences so he can't know if something is "fair" or not. This reasoning seems to resonate with him at the moment.
When the tantrums were happening at home we had a safe space to take him to (fully child-proofed) and he stayed there until he could calm down to re-join us.
My best advice - hang in there.
I found a lot of help from Albiona Rakipi- She hosts a lot of webinars on zoom. If you are on social media she is listed at Theparentingreframe on instagram & tiktok. I believe she does 1:1 coaching as well. After taking her advice I noticed some major changes in my 4 year old in only a couple weeks.
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