That was Max yesterday or the other boy, I guess is more accurate. This other boy is like twice Max's size. Max claims that this boy was touching him all over (kind of like poking but not so hard). Instead of telling him to stop, he decided that he needed to chuck the kid several times under the chin. He made the kid cry. Horrible horrible... His teacher assigned him 100 lines 'I will not hit my friends.' He got 18 done at school and then needed to do the rest at home. What made the event all the more painful for the rest of us was that I had stated that if the kids were good, we would go get a cupcake after picking Max up from school. I really just wanted to go home but that wouldn't have been fair to Maggie. I was cringing on the inside at the thought of taking the kids to the bakery but it had to happen. Max, of course, made a scene and Maggie kindly offered up part of her treat. I thanked her for feeling generous but let her know that wasn't an option.
When we got home, Max took his stuff up to their room to write but was steadily getting angrier. He decided to take his anger out on Maggie's stuff. Luckily it was quick and I got up there before anything could really happen. He came downstairs. We were able to work out some compromise so he would write and we could get some food into him after a bit so that he could keep going and not melt down too bad.
We were able to get him up to 75 before breaking for dinner. After he finished and then wrote a note of apology.
I am not sure what happened today but at dinner, he just melted. I wish we could get away from the subject of anger but I have this feeling it will reoccur until we can work through some of it and figure out some better strategies for dealing with the anger and getting it to subside.
Once the other kids were in bed, we sat down with his journal. He started a list of what made him happy and then sad and then angry. I am hoping that if we can keep exploring his emotions that we can maybe take some wind out of his sails.
Hopefully we can keep working on this and I shall let you know how it goes.
It sounds like you have some really good strategies for helping Max. I really like the journaling and think I may start that with my girls. I didn't know kids still did lines for punishment! Hopefully Max will understand more effective ways of dealing with people who are bothering him, but atleast he isn't afraid of standing up for himself ( although not the most desirable soloution). You sound like you really understand him and are doing well helping him understand himself.
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