Destroying the House...

[kellygirl601]

How do you handle it when they destroy things. My daughter has broken things during rages. Once she kicked spindles out of then bannister-still broken, dented refrigerator. The latest -she called me at work crying because she somehow tore/pushed/whatever the door off it's hinges. I'm sure she's fine now and I've been sick since I came home Friday...

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[Thursday]

Hi Kellygirl,

It is distressing to have them destroying our homes. And I know what you mean, soon after one of these episodes my BPDSD would act is if all was fine and her Dad and I were left wondering what we should do, what could we do?

Hang in there, things will and do get better. I don't believe my SD has done anything like this for many years. This was at it's worst when she was a teenager- 14 to 18.

She broke windows, punched walls, mirrors and those hollow core doors found in a house's interior and ripped molding off of doorways. She broke a lot of dishes, vases, tools, hairdryers, curling irons and flat combs, computer screens and keyboards, a car window, jewelry, cell phones, chairs, a friends tooth... .and the list, sadly, goes on.

A few times we made her pay for the broken things, always made her clean up any messes she made, refused to replace the personal items she broke, gave her a much less socially acceptable cell phone. We lectured her about outcomes, grounded her, and in the case of the friend's tooth we wouldn't let her hang around with the kid anymore because he frequently "pushed her buttons" and she lost her cool with him.

We also explored other avenues she might want to explore to exhaust her anger, things like throwing rocks into the pond behind our house, hard-to-do cleaning like doing the floors with a toothbrush, running laps at the high school, and other more zen options such as meditating, soaking in the Jacuzzi tub and journaling or listening to soft music.

I think our best move with this behavior was talking to her about her rages, asking her questions about what she was feeling, what provoked her, what we could do to help her when she felt this way, how to get her to slow herself down before she acted. Getting her in touch with her feelings as regarded her rages was actually very helpful. She discussed this in therapy too. I think we had some success because she abused our dogs once and it made her feel so down on herself she was more open to the idea of working on this sort of behavior.

Later, she used drugs instead of working on the behaviors and she has gotten sober so I don't know if she has worked herself out of the raging or if we just don't see outcomes anymore because she doesn't live with us.

I think growing up a bit and time itself has helped. What I am seeing these days is that she is more level, at least for now.

Thursday

[qcarolr]

kelleygirl -- not sure if how I responded in past was very effective. I do realize that I was very reactive when DD27 was very young and my bipolar was not treated. It is one way to defuse intense, overwhelming emotion. Doing my best to hold each person in the household accountable is a good goal, not always very enforceble.

Since we have asked, or forced, DD27 out of our home a few times with her raging she works harder to manage that, though not always successful. We try to seperate from each other more quickly before it gets to this point.

Now to manage my gd8, who has 'learned' this behavior. I am trying some new strategies with her based on PACE from Dan Huges books, and Beyond Consequences from Heather Forbes books. It is similar to many of the tools here, but written for kids and adolescents. Both of them focus on early perceived trauma, neuro/physiological develoment patterns, and regulation based interventions instead of behavior focused interventions. These are working really well with gd8. Takin 'time-in' at safe distance instead of time-out, teaching self-soothing strategies when things are calmed down (for BOTH OF US), focus on taking care of my needs/regulating myself before I can help her get regulated. I can often intervene before the chair gets thrown on the floor or I get kicked in the shin. In the moment I focus on regulating emotion, then work on repairs needed in our r/s for the behaviors later.

Still putting all this parenting stuff together in my head. So grateful for this opportunity to have a 'do-over' with gd. THough I get weary and lose touch with these new skills.

qcr