Crisis Management

Last week we had a crisis. A water leaking emersion tank crisis which meant the carpet in oldest's bedroom was wet, as was the base of his bed and to dry it all out he couldn't sleep in there. A sigh of relief when we remember that youngest now has a bunk bed so we cleared the toys, set up his pillow and duvet and prayed that they would sleep ok in the same room whilst we got on with finding and fixing the leak whilst everything else dried out.

It seemed to ok. Half an hour between bed times meant that youngest was asleep and none of oldest's antics woke her (getting out of bed, collecting toys etc) but they mornings were fun as they took it in turn to wake each other.

Then came the real crisis. He had to go back into his own bedroom.
We moved the bed back. he helped me put all his books and clothes away. I made a fuss of making his bed with clean sheets and making sure all his toys were where he wanted them to bed. Then, half an hour after youngest went to bed, we declared bed time and the bad mood turned from grumpy to full blown despair. He did not want to go back into his room and sleep on his own. The screaming tantrum lasted nearly 45 minutes and took both of us taking it in turns trying to calm him down. he did not want to sleep on his own, he did not want us to turn the hall light off (something we do because otherwise he gets up, pushes his door full open and plays using this light), he did not want us to pull his door to (again something we do the noise from us doesn't disturb him - we never close the door fully).  I am not proud to say that eventually we threatened him with the removal of privileges before he would finally calm down enough to listen to us and be calmed down. 


Once again , this weekend, we started out well only for a complete meltdown over a spoon with the resulting tantrum including a room trashing session. I love my son dearly but his anger, often directed towards myself or his sister, is so destructive and we struggle to know how to manage it.


We do have a request for some support via the Adoption Support Fund but these things take time, time that I don't want to wait for because I want to help him now.