Rages-New Here-Long, sorry

[Guest guest]

Hello! I'm new here. We have a 9 year old son who was diagnosed with Sensory

Processing Disorder (Sensory Seeker) at the age of 5. He has had an IEP since

then. He was always considered Emotionally Behaviorally Disordered because SPD

isn't on IEP's yet. Anyway, this past year we had horrible problems at school

and home with him. He was being physically violent with me, his sister and the

staff at school. So, we followed someone's suggestion (dumb) and put him in an

" assessment center " (read mental hospital basically) for 10 days. It darn near

killed me! And it made things worse for my son. They had him in hold every day

there, usually more than once for rages. They also put him on Risperdal and we

swear at this point that that made the rages worse. He's now on Abilify and

doing somewhat better. When he was released from there the school didn't want

him back. So, we went on a waiting list for a " day treatment " center. He was

home with me for over a month waiting to be placed there. There was some

improvement at home at that time. But, when he got to the " day treatment " it

was back to the rages and being put in hold 3, 4, 5 and maybe even 6 times a

day. The police were called there twice for my son. Once when they were there

they cuffed him. They did manage to test him over this long period of time

(while he was home with me and when he was at " dt " ) and came up with an AS

diagnosis and his IEP will reflect that whenever they get that done (sigh). So,

after a long, LONG summer of anger management, once a week OT, horse therapy and

the med change we've gotten him back to his regular public rural elementary

school. They currently will only let our son attend for half days (the

principal is quite " gun shy " after last year). So, the other day my son asked

for a break (TWICE), bit himself, tried to hide in his desk and was using his

squeezy hand exercise thingy that we told him to squeeze when he was mad and the

teacher, aide and Special Ed teacher who were in the room decided that it was

work avoidance and refused to give him his break. The aide got hit in the face

when my son went into his rage. I'm not sure what else he was supposed to do

besides hire a sky writer or maybe make a neon sign from parts in his desk! The

school has admitted the mistake and said they will do better next time.

However, the principal also said that he will call the police next time. We do

have an advocate (and a good one too) and she is helping us through all this.

But, my question is, does anyone else deal with these rages? Are your kids

physically violent with adults? They make it sound like my kid is one of a kind

and I know that's not true because I've been reading books and there are lots of

other kids who do this sort of thing. I'm reading a book by Myles and Southwick

(and I can't remember the name right now and I loaned it out to the Special Ed

teacher because I figured she needed it much worse than me at this point), but

it's all about rages, meltdowns and tantrums in kids with AS. The school is

making us feel very alone on this and keep saying that they've never dealt with

a kids like ours before. They say he would be much easier to deal with if his

IQ wasn't around 120. There's so much more to this story (including puberty at

8 1/2 last year around the time all this started plus a whole bunch of family

stress then too), but I've written enough for now. Thanks!

Beth