Tantrums, Bruises And Bite Marks

What I am about to explain to you might come as a shock.  You would never have thought that these things were possible coming from my middle child.  Riya-Ray or “Wiya-Way” as she calls herself is such a loving individual, very perceptive of your current emotional state and always willing to do anything to make you feel better.  She will give you over flowing loves and cuddles, do anything you ask her to and just generally be the sweetest, funniest kid you will ever meet.

She is also very accident prone.  Not a day goes by without her hurting herself.  From falling off the bed, to banging her head on tables or just tripping over her own feet.  Every day is a little gauntlet for her.  Sometimes I put her to bed early just so that she can stop hurting herself.  At one point over the holidays I started to get worried about all the bruises that she had on her tummy because seriously who could hurt themselves THAT much?!  Fine bruises were always there.  And once I watched this movie about leukaemia and I pretty much freaked out a bit.  So we took her to have them checked out.  Unfortunately the only way that they could really check it out was to take blood…  You can imagine how that went down.  (The results were clear, there is absolutely nothing wrong with her bloods – praise the Lord!  It’s often worse than what the pictures are showing here…)

Thankfully she is game for almost anything, loves getting dirty and just has a real love for life.  Add to that her fearlessness in her speech – always giving an answer to questions asked, irrelevant of whether it makes sense or not – she really is a joy to be around.  Most of the time that is…

You see, there’s always been this other side to her that comes out when she is over tired or over stimulated or sometimes just because.  From an early age we would walk the house flat, with her screaming and twitching in our arms.  She would start screaming and then keep going until she couldn’t control it anymore and her whole head would literally twitch so badly her head could have fallen off.  It was scary to watch.  Sometimes, when it happened in the middle of the night, I got really scared.  Seth would take over and I could hear him praying so loudly over her screaming that it gave me cold chills.

Those days are mostly over.  Thank goodness.  But every now and then since Knox has joined the brood (and for a little while before), she will erupt like a volcano.  Ear piercing screams, snot, tears and the ever worrying head twitch.  It would generally start off after a really insignificant thing, for example on Christmas day Ga took her dummy away.  She.  Lost.  It.  Just that morning I had been telling Mia how the little episodes she had witnessed were actually nothing in comparison to her full blown freak out and so she obviously wanted to prove it.  She went full force into writhing around, kicking and screaming.  Totally and completely inconsolable.  Eventually we gave her the dummy (after she calmed down a bit) and we put on Baa (Shaun the Sheep – he apparently has calming powers that I don’t possess as a mother…)

I thought it was kind of over after this because she seemed to store up events and then have one big freak out – at this point we were making it weeks without an episode.  Unfortunately I was wrong.

Two days after the Christmas explosion we had had a lovely day chilling as a family at home.  Seth had bathed the girls while I got Knox dressed for bed.  Riya didn’t want him to dry her (because I must always do everything for her) and so he lightly tapped her on the bum, it was so light I don’t think it could even have shifted a mug.  I think the explosion may have made the walls shake.  She absolutely lost it.  In the beginning I ignored her as this had worked before.  Then I told her that I would only pick her up when she stopped screaming.  Eventually I was able to pick her up and we cuddled in my room for a bit, all the while she was screaming her lungs out.  This cycle went on for about 40 minutes…  At some point she must have dropped her dummy and then connected her teeth with my shoulder, and then she flipping bit me.  Like full on bit me!! (This pic is 2 days after the incident so it was already looking better than it originally did – and just look at her face!)

Needless to say I got such a fright that I put her down, shouted, smacked, shouted and smacked once more before leaving the room in tears.  I just couldn’t anymore.  I sat in the bathroom and left her to cry.  She spent about 20 minutes in my room by herself – when Seth went to check on her she had her body in crawling position, but with her face on the floor, pushing it around in circles.  Then she wrapped herself in the curtain, bit that too and banged the walls in frustration.  Can you say cray cray?!  After a long time she finally calmed down.  She saw what she did to me and gave me such big cuddles and kisses and lots of “Sorry Mommy”s.

During this time I ignored her but sat in the same room, I ignored her from a different room, I cuddled her, I tried to talk to her, I shouted, I smacked her and I cried myself.  NOTHING helped.  I am not even exaggerating in saying that the entire thing lasted an hour and a half even thought it felt like 3 hours.  Thank goodness it hasn’t happened again to that degree since then.  But I was thinking of filming it and asking for an expert opinion next time.  Not for her really, but more for me to know how to handle it in the most effective way.  Although that being said, it is already better than it was.  As soon as we can see the onslaught starting we just nip it in the bud, say no (or whatever appropriately fits the situation) and then change the topic.  This has been the most successful tact by far.

You suffer with the terrible two’s?