Raising Tommy Tornado

By Heide AW Kaminski

On the outside, it is twirling, raging, destroying everything in its path. He sounds like a roaring train with a loud whistle announcing it arrival, and squealing tires endlessly rattling on.

On the inside, is the eye of the storm -- peacefulness, calmness, serenity, beauty of nature.

Living with Tommy is like constantly being under a tornado watch. You can look at a gorgeous sky and turn around only to be hit by golf-sized hail pellets.

I recently read an article about raising spirited children. Nine traits were given to the reader. The author pointed out that statistically 10-15 percent of all children have enough of these traits to be considered "challenging."

My son displays all of them.

I call him Tommy Tornado, or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. His teenaged sisters call him "a little monster."

From the time I was about four-months-pregnant with him until the present, I have not had a peaceful day. When I began feeling movements, I was immediately convinced that he had either been a soccer player in a previous life -- or that he had ADHD.

A recent, very frustrating experience with Tot-soccder eliminated the first assumption. As far as the ADHD, well, he was diagnosed with it all right! The only night he has ever slept through the night, was his very first one on this physical plane. Like an idiot, instead of seizing the moment and getting rest myself, I spent the entire first night staring at him with ga-ga eyes.

As I am writing this, he is peacefully lying on his cot beside me (naptime at the daycare where I work). He is showering me with kisses on my arm. Just a few minutes agon, he was in time-out.

If a stranger had walked in at the time, he/she would have thought we must have been severely abusing the poor child. He made his disgust over being punished for unacceptable behavior loudly known. He screamed, kicke, threw things, stomped his feet. He had an overkill tantrum.

We go through this several times a day -- every day. Tommy is a highly-spirited child. Intelligent, loving, creative, entertaining, and funny one minute -- but a raging bundle of explosives the next.

I have developed some coping methods. I try to remove him from potentially over-stimulating environments. This is difficult to do, while I am at work. I give in too. Whatelse can I do in a public place, when I know darn well that he will not give up? So he now pushes the grocery cart, even though he is only about two feet tall (even the top of his head does not reach up to the handle), rather than battling with him over sitting down, and not climbing back-and-forth.

I let him sit up on the couch until he zonks out, because he laughs at bedtime routines. For a while, I tried laying down with him. Usually, I fell asleep before he did. When I'm exhausted from reading twenty-some books to him, he will read all twenty-some books back to me. When I lay down with him, I generally wake up around 1 AM and sneak out of his bed. And even though he appears to be sound asleep, he will wake up within minutes and follow me to whereever I am.

Ignoring him is impossible. He will outdo me every time. For example, when I tried to "let him cry it out"in order to get him to sleep on his own, he spend two nights crying for three hours straight. Then he stopped. Not because he realized I wasn't coming, but because I caved in.

Promising rewards for good behavior or threatening withdrawal of privileges for unacceptable behavior does not impress him. I took his four-wheeler, his racecars, and his cartoons away to get him to use the toilet for his bowel movements. He calmly discussed it with me, shrugged his shoulders, and went into the corner to do his business in his pants again.

Sometimes Tommy has three or four tantrums a day. When Tommy's tornadoes go into overdrive, he will scream, and kick, and throw things. Sometimes he will destroy his room. When that happens, I have learned to bite my tongue. I let the tornado rage. Eventually, he will calmly exit his room, smile at me, and then gladly return to his room with me to help with the cleanup.

It can wear me out. Watching cartoons can be a relief for me, as well, as for Tommy. I hate to admit it, but I do use the TV as a babysitter occasionally.

Of course, he likes to change the channels with the remote control. If he loses the cartoon channel and cannot retrieve it, all hell breaks loose again. I try to remind him to do what Steve on Blues Clues recommends: "Stop, breathe, and think!"

Tommy does not like to play with toys very much, except his racecars. He can spend hours lining them up in a very accurate caravan, and then change their positions in the line. He also loves to play memory cards with me, and he quickly discoved the art of cheating.

He is constantly asking me, "What's that noise?" even if it's just something ver subtle. I am convinced that he wakes up when I leave his side because he cannot hear me breathing anymore. Besides his sensitivity to sound, he also changes his clothes upteen times a day. Any little spot, even if it's just water, bothers him. So, it is really surprising that he hates baths. Dirt on his body (or INSIDE his pants) does not bother him one bit.

To keep him busy, he has a little table in the living room stocked with plenty of paper, including construction paper, crayons, markers, scissors, and glue. When he is in the right mood, he loves to be creative, and I don't dare to disrupt him. But he can easily become upset by a dried out marker, or if he doesn't like the way the cutting turned out. Then it can easily turn into tornado time again.

He can already crudely print his name and draws people with big heads, eyes, nose, and mouth (he does label them angry, happy, or sad). He puts hair on top and adds stick arms and lets, and dots for hands and feet. That is pretty advanced for his age.

Sadly, however, a lot of his beautiful creations he destroys after I have expressed excitement over them. He takes a dark marker and wildly scribbles over the entire project.

I think I am handling him pretty well, despite some glitches with my patience. However, I have not figured out how to stop his outbursts before the spill over. Whenever I think I've found something that works, he proves me wrong again.

Wait a minute! I think I have to go. The tornado-warning siren is sounding off . . .