You described my granddaughter. It took me a long time to learn that her problems were not going to be cured with spankings. She had sensory integration problems and chaotic classrooms with lots of noise or even flickering
florescent lighting drives her crazy. And once the impulsive response begins it easily escalates to the point where someone may get hurt. The doctors tried her on ritalin and it did make her want to crawl out of her skin.
We still do not understand what is going on. It is shocking how common this is.
It’s called sensory processing disorder . The worst thing that a doctor can do is put her on ritalin. I think that is what the padded room is for, to calm them down. The important thing for parents and teachers to remember is that the child is not misbehaving when he has a melt down. The child is just overwhelmed and yelling at the child or trying to discipline him will only make things worse.
The only reason that I learned about the disorder is because I was trying to help a friend of ours who was having a problem with her two year old. I told her that she needed to get better help than we have locally and found a clinic at Children’s hospital in Seattle that treated the symptoms that her son had.
Anyway, to make a long story a little shorter, this week, they found out that the child has a cyst on the brain stem that might be causing the behavior problems, but that remains to be seen. Tomorrow they have an appointment with neurologist about draining the cyst. It’s one of those situations that you don’t know which alternative is worse, the disorder or the cyst. Maybe the doctors will have some answers tomorrow.