Continued from here ... If you don’t know why your child is raging, take your best shot. If your child has been raging for weeks, months or years, and up until now you have interpreted it as drama, you might be shocked at how changing your approach to the tantrum (eventually) changes the outcome. Label the origin of the tantrum as anything you know about your child’s past that would make any child angry. For an internationally adopted... more

A few posts ago I addressed the issue of tantrums. My favorite term for it is meltdown. I think that word adequately describes what is occurring in most cases.

One reader wondered how to differentiate between anger or sadness induced meltdowns versus those perhaps motivated by a need for drama. Another part of the reader’s question focused on how to access feelings after the meltdown.

We have all seen children who are “spoiled”... more

I’ve struggled to get blogs written these past few days, as Dora is having a rough week. Reality has really set in. The novelty of being here is wearing off and the realization that she is really living in another family and not “just visiting” is hitting her quite hard. We had two long, hard sessions in the rocking chair today, with Dora dealing with her mad and sad in the safety of my arms. She asked to rock this morning before we did much of anything else. It was a harbinger of things to come.

A reader recently asked, “what form does the purging take?” The... more