Reasoning, Such As It Can Be

 In this horribly troubling article an 11 year old foster child earns felony charges for killing a puppy because her foster mother wouldn't take her somewhere.

I can perfectly visualize that happening, as my family has been held emotionally hostage for many, many years by such extremely illogical and violently dangerous behaviors.

However, all too often, the threats of murder involved my children, not puppies, living here.

I worked and worked, sought help, resources and information, documented behaviors, stressed, cried and prayed until finally the mental health workers plus our very awesome Department of Juvenile Justice helped tremendously (based on assault charges and violated sanctions) by court-ordering mental health treatment.

I think about this often.  Now that my family just lives with common misbehavior issues, common to us, but would drive regular parents to drink possibly, but now at least we feel safe.

As a human being I remain completely and dumbly stumped as to how to best help children who seemingly have no conscience and are driven strictly by their inner murderous rages.  Most regular human beings cannot fathom this even being possible at young ages, but I've lived to tell about it.

Reading this other article, as I often do in my many attempts at trying to understand human behavior, I read the words: Bennett was exhibiting “concerning sexualized/perpetrating behaviors” and had profound emotional disturbances, according to court records.  

At the age of 14, Bennett had conducti disorder, mood disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, and attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder and was diagnosed as bipolar, according to court records.

Other convictions on Bennett’s adult record include violence to a police officer, disorderly conduct, resisting police, possession of narcotics, another violence against a police officer, malicious mischief, probation violations, and testing positive for synthetic marijuana, according to the order of detention.

 

Children with conduct disorder, CD, are those children who show persistent and serious patterns of misbehavior. Not only may they indulge in frequent temper tantrums like ODD children, but they may violate the rights of others (stealing, vandalism, and aggression). These children are actively aggressive towards people (fighting with siblings and peers, sexually aggressive) and/or animals (engage in animal torture), commit vandalism, lie and steal from persons outside the home, and seriously violate society's moral codes.

'Conduct disorder' can encompass a startling range of anti-social behaviors and should be a red flag to prospective adoptive parents.

I am so disturbed, so rattled, so severely traumatized by the extremely negative behaviors that I've witnessed here over the last decade, that again my heart is slamming within my chest cavity, my hands are shaking as I pound the keyboard because I have endured, or observed, very similar behaviors.

Even worse has been the way my family, and I, have sometimes been treated by professionals along the lines of, "Have you tried a sticker chart?" mentality.

I wanna scream, "Have you ever tried fearing for the lives of your children?"  Have you ever endured severe violet rages?  Have you ever tried to stop someone from killing another human being?  Are the windows in your house broken out or are your walls kicked in?"

"What triggered this?" we'd be asked -we who rarely saw it coming, and thus were unable to deflect it, it just happened.  Again and again.  When it happened in school settings the teachers would be bewildered, telling me exactly what had transpired as they struggled to figure it all out, hoping I wouldn't blame them, which I never did.  Duh.

 

Last night I sat in the back of Vacation Bible School as the wonderfully wise and patient Miss Lisa was explaining to her elementary school age audience how words hurt people, using balloons as an example, helium ones that represented each ugly word, thus weighing and entangling the victim, showing how the victim carries this negativity around with them. With each example, she attached another balloon to her human model there on stage, the very sweet and impossibly cute friend of Chuy's, Davidson.

When she brought out scissors to carefully cut each string, I'd flinched in advance, thinking she was gonna stab each balloon.

What is wrong

with me?  Miss Lisa'd never do that.  My view upon society is now very skewed, another reason why I prefer to stay home most of the time. The balloons hanging from my limbs are many and varied, weighted and painful. I'm working on shedding myself of them through therapy and prayer, through working and processing.

"That's not your kid up there," Chuck chuckled when I cringed, knowing my justified fears and scary experiences.

I dearly hope and pray that my two good looking teenagers who are in residential will overcome everything, that there'll be no more attacks upon any other human beings, that they'll respond to the therapeutic environment, that the external controls there will be exactly what they needed, that the lack of family expectations of empathy and sharing have been removed and will therefore result in success for them.

But, right or wrong on my part, successful or not on their part, that my other dozen children are now safe speaks volumes to me.  Nobody here verbally expresses their relief, except upon various occasions when they mention something like, "Man, can you imagine if we'd done this back then," indicating the response we'd have received from The One Who Must Control

Everything who'd rage and attack when the wind changed direction.

"Punish them," she'd scream when I corrected her behavior.  Well, they hadn't done anything except stare wide-eyed, yet she'd insist I consequence them.  Another what the heck moment that'd end in her cutting up someone's clothes, daring me to do something about it, which would only make her feel entitled to punch someone in the face.  BTDT.

Children with ODD show extreme levels of argumentativeness, disobedience, stubbornness, negativity, and provocation of others. While such behavior can be true of most children at some point of their lives, this diagnosis is warranted only for the few children (3-4%) whose symptoms persist over months or years, occur across many situations, and result in pronounced impairment in their functioning in home, school, and peer settings. These children's anger is usually directed at authority figures. 

These children are more willing to lose a privilege than to lose a battle, so discipline by withholding privileges often has no effect on their behavior. It is the oppositional struggle which becomes the reality in this child's mind, and this struggle, unlike the typical lower level defiance seen in many children, basically takes over the child's life and relationships with others. For example, while "temper tantrums" are common among children, frequent and very prolonged temper tantrums (3-4 hours) often characterize children with ODD.

I have a 15 year old with mongo severe ODD, yet he cried the other day in my arms, death was the discussion at the time, he was missing Grandpa, thinking 'bout how Grandpa had spoken encouragement into all my sons personally and individually the afternoon before he lapsed into unconsciousness.  My sons had each had a proper goodbye, yet their own loss issues were compounded once again - death equally the ultimate abandonment.

"Grandpa didn't wanna leave us," my son wailed and cried in my arms, wiping his nose on my shirt.

We sat and talked for an hour, he ended up feeling better, I complimented him on properly expressing his sadness rather than his former pattern of hitting his emotional twin, provoking a fist fight in which they'd both happily release their negative emotions.

"Dudes, you can't do that in the real world," I'd always explain after some larger son would help me pull them apart.

Children who are diagnosed with CD and who have a higher IQ are easier to treat, but are more imaginative and creative in acting out and evading detection. 

This 15 year old is quite intelligent and sometimes will allow new information, such as proper behavior techniques, to sink into his skull, sometimes even later rewording what he has learned, pleasing me with his slow progress.

Of course he will then put a wet watermelon rind on his head to get a laugh or burp lovingly into my ear as I'm washing dishes, trying to startle me and eradicate any progress he might have made, limp sabotage attempts upon his own progress, but I do have high hopes that he'll someday improve greatly.  I've watched some 12 years of baby steps in him that has given me hope.

WHAT CAUSES ODD and CD?

More research needs to be done into the causes of both ODD and CD. However, a genetic vulnerability, especially combined with environmental "triggers" (family histories of disruptive behavior disorder, antisocial personality disorder, mood disorders, or substance abuse; permissive, neglectful, harsh or inconsistent parenting; and poverty) seem to be causes for some children. With CD, studies have also shown that both identical twins are more likely to have conduct disorder than fraternal twins. Adoption studies have shown that the risk increases when both adoptive and biological parents have conduct disorder (antisocial personality disorder in adults).

Lastly, studies have indicated that impairment in frontal lobe and low serotonin levels may also be factors in causing CD.

And Miss Marianne - look who got rewarded for cleaning his room.  Thank you so much.

Please excuse the paragraph flaws - blogger wasn't cooperating and I gotta get outside after I try and figure how to factor $243 dentist bills into this month's budget, plus the learned need yesterday of some wisdom teeth extractions.  That's the kind of challenge I relish.