Double Hitter - 2 for tantrums

Not doing Not Me Monday today out of respect to MckMama and family. Feel better little Stellan!

Here in Loo-Loo Land:
Saturday was a double hitter as Maylene had a rage fit and an hour later Carter followed with a mega tantrum. Hello?!

We went to the zoo earlier in the day. That went relatively well. We gave Maylene a PRN med before hand. There is a cool new play area that opened up at the zoo and it has tons of sensory type play which was a huge help with our group.

I secretly grit my teeth and prepare to just bear the burden when it comes to an outing with this group, but ... Vivian has to be able to get out and do things and so does little Evan and I am sure in the big picture it benefits Carter and Maylene too to have the experiences. We prepare and have a "plan" for when it goes bad, in case it goes bad. The plan Saturday was that if any kid got into issues Dad would take that kid out to the van and let them tantrum out there while the rest of us pressed on. We made the plan known to all in advance and thankfully we did not have to enact the plan.

We were even able to go to dinner, Steak and Shake Saturday kids eat free - score one for the team! But once we arrived back home Maylene snapped when someone said something she did not like. I don't remember the details I was bathing Evan at the time. The rage fit was shorter and they seem to be shorter each time so maybe we are going back in the right direction?

Carter goes for an evaluation with the Psychiatrist on Thursday so it will be interesting to see what his direction is for us. Carter's anxiety level is way up these days so we are hopeful that we can get him (and us) some help.

Little Evan, sweet Evan is just head over heels about Thomas the Tank engine these days. And it would seem that if Carter decides to bust in on his train activity our baby wrestler is going to go WWF on him! I was shocked and amazed to see sweet Evan grab his brother by the head and flatten him in one swoop while yelling "that my Thomas!!!" Part of me wanted to just let him TCB because Carter was way out of line and did just take the train and not nicely either but the good parent portion of me knew I had to remind Evan about not hurting others and that we do have to share Thomas but no one is allowed to just take it away.

Carter had another mega tantrum on Sunday. He had not earned computer privilege because of his behavior the previous day and Vivian was on the computer and so Carter was attempting to be an annoying lurker. Not that I think it was his intent to be annoying just obsessive about the computer. He will literally take an activity and sit in front of the computer (which is not on) just to be near the computer, apparently? So when he fails to earn computer we know that we are making an impression on him regarding his behavior. We also know what we will likely be dealing with as fall out.

After the tantrum Sunday I asked Vivian if she wanted to go for a walk with Mom. We took our chihuahua Jasmine. It was really nice. It understandably creates tremendous stress in the home when you have kids that have these kind of issues going on. It seems the best thing for Vivian in terms of dealing with it is to get time to connect with Mom. A walk together was the perfect prescription.