During the holidays I received a call from a social worker begging me to take placement of a child that day. We had already agreed on taking this child after the holidays because of his acting out, and the severity of the tantrums he would throw. We had family visiting from out of town, and we didn’t want them to be subject to the extreme type of behaviors this particular child had been presenting.
I agreed to have the social worker drive him down to our home thinking that it should be ok. There is typically a honeymoon period in which each child that is placed will try to act their best and maintain a higher level of control. It did work out in this case; the child didn’t act out while the family was here, but the day after they left, all hell broke loose.
We were getting ready to take the children to youth group and this child decided that he was going to show us what a real temper tantrum looked like. Nancy proceeded to take the other children on to youth group, and I prepared myself to throw a temper tantrum right along with this young man. In order to throw a temper tantrum that is going to be effective, the adult throwing the temper tantrum has to be in complete control of their emotions. This is an opportunity to teach, and you cannot be effective if you become angry and out of control yourself.
The entire ordeal lasted about fifteen minutes, until the child exclaimed to me, “I don’t like being yelled at and talked to like that.” “Well”, I said,” If you don’t want to be talked to in this manner, then you need to talk to me, and everyone else, in this manner...” at which time my voice got very soft and low, “this is how people talk to one another.” At that point he balled up into a fetal position and I pulled him up into my arms and rocked him to sleep. When he was asleep I put him under his covers, tucked him in and left him alone until the following morning. If you’re going to rock a twelve year old, I recommend eating your Wheaties in the morning.
For this particular child, this was the first and last temper tantrum that he ever threw while he lived with us. He learned through that experience that he was not going to be the one in control. He had come to live in a parent run home, not a home run by the behaviors of a child.
When working with traumatized children, it’s not if they blowout and have their tantrums, it’s when. The caregiver cannot at any time believe that this isn’t going to happen. The caregiver needs to prepare himself or herself both mentally and physically in order for the child to heal and learn appropriate behaviors when these blowouts occur.
Part of the child’s healing will be that blowout. He should able to take all of that anger and pent up hostility and vent it out without fear of being removed from the home. The caregivers should be prepared and properly trained so that they are able to handle these situations and so the child is not automatically placed in a psych ward or removed from the home.
In the movie Forrest Gump, Lieutenant Dan climbed up into the crow’s nest aboard their shrimping boat and cried out in anger, ranting and raging, letting all his frustrations that had built up and manifested to a point of boiling over, come out. In his case he was in an environment where he could vent out without reprisal. In the case with a lot of our children in foster care, when they vent out like this, they find themselves in a lock down mental institution.
I had a young man just recently have a blowout and there was a venting of built up hurts and frustrations that flowed out. When it was all over I asked him how he felt. He told me that he felt so much better. Forrest Gump ended that scene by making the statement that he believed Lieutenant Dan had made peace not only with those that he thought had let him down, but also with himself. It is often the same with the children in our care. Our training in these situations could be the difference between a child losing placement, or them getting the chance to make a bit of peace with their circumstances.
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