MY two year old son is having lots of issues with anger and lashing out. The frustrating thing is he has no apparent triggers or reasoning for his lash out behaviors. He has been kicked out of four daycares in a year due to continuous issues with biting, hitting, pushing, tackling. It is obvious he has these behaviors when overstimulated and/or under stimulated but finding a medium ground to prevent these issues has been a unfulfilled task by me and his daycare provider.
I'am so thankful to have found a current provider who sees we have an issue and is trying everything in her power to help us find ways of helping these behaviors or finding someone who can and not just treating him like he's a brat and doesn't want to deal with him like the other daycares in the past have. The biggest issue is the biting, it is always unprovoked and for no apparent reason, he isn't outwardly frustrated or stressed when he bites. He will just be playing nicely, having fun playing with the other kids and out of nowhere will tackle someone and bite them or just turn to them and bite or push them down. And the biting isn't a small nip its a bite down hard enough to leave a visible mark and bruising and he doesn't seem to understand how it hurts others.
I'm praying we can find an occupational therapist who can pinpoint triggers and help us find a way to make the aggressive behavior especially the biting to stop. I'm open to any suggestions anyone can throw my way to help my boy and give him the best, positive start in life as possible.
Aug 02, 2012 Rating
SPD and Anger by: Janice
Anger was the main cause for us to reach out for help. My understanding is that when my son becomes angry it is because he is getting to much stimulation and he wants it to stop, so the best technique he developed (before we knew what was going on) was to "push" people - the stimulant - away by saying bad words, being disrespectful, and psychically pushing or hitting. He still acts out when we are in stores when we have been there too long, but we try to do large muscle group exercises to sort of prep him for this stimulation (jumping jacks, cart wheels for example)which seems to toughen up his system. Our problem now is that when he starts to get angry he call us bad names. We are trying to talk about it after it happens and give him tools to advocate for himself when he starts to feel stressed/overstimulated. He said he would tell me when he needed a break (he does this at school and doesn't say bad words at school). The anger problem at school is if he is confronted with anger he doesn't respond in the same level of anger to other kids, but more aggressively. If you find out any other info I would love to see what you find is helpful. I think my son is very anxious as well, and they keep pushing me to medicate his anxiety.
I really appreciated reading that sensory processing deficits can be inconsistent; meaning, present one day and not the next. That is absolutely my experience