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A 13 year old lashing out and being angry
Asked By: Anonymous Views: 1,606 times
My 13 yr old son is a great kid, but a lot of the times he lashes out for no apparent reason causing havoc, and it is disturbing. He has few friends at school, but he dont speak in class when asked to byt he teachers. His grades are failing, and I have done everything I can to help him but nothing is working. I had him in counceling, and in after school programs and counceling stopped because my son "acted like nothing is going on." He will be ok one minute then the next he is angry at the world. Not to mention if he dont get his way, he lashes out and back talks and is highly disrespectful. What can I do? I tried talking to him, one on one. And he gives no response.
There is an “apparent reason”. Not having friends in school and not talking in school (selective mutism) is significant of a major social challenge-handicap. Your child is not happy, but he will not admit this reality. The child with this profile sees the world going on around them while they are not participating. This causes anger and rage (at different levels of consciousness). What you are observing is his mis-placed aggression.. “Acting like nothing is going on” is a typical response as it is difficult for your son to “attach” (connect) to the issues. He is extremely oppositional to this process as it causes him discomfort and anxiety. Again; this is a very typical phenomenon. He is functioning at a “primitive” level. “Primitive” is defined as spending the least amount of energy possible to sustain baseline functioning. In order to achieve any therapeutic productivity it is imperative that you work with a therapist who knows how to integrate the parents into treatment in order to negotiate the avoidance-dependence dynamic. Obviously; if bi-polar is a component of the correct diagnosis, it is important to be on the right medicine and to have this closely supervised. Your son needs to learn to be able to “self-nurture” the characteristics that make him a “great kid”. This takes some work.
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