Several days ago I was asked about my other children, what were they doing while one child violently raged. How did they handle it emotionally? How to I protect the good kids?

My oldest daughter, my only birth child Sarah, pictured her with her son, started to respond in the comment section, but held back, feeling she might be perceived as flippant or insensitive, so she’d called me up with her opinion.

Basically she had wanted to respond simply, “we deal with it. It’s part of the adoption of older children, but it doesn’t mean we have to like it.”

Another older daughter told me it was harder now to take it, in that years ago when I only had 16 kids in our home, we didn’t see the rages that we see now. I attribute the current rages to a different type of children now in foster care, with the advent of crack cocaine and methamphetamines; the inhalant abusers…nearly makes one miss the days when marijuana was the drug of choice.

Can you believe I just said that?

I am rabidly against drugs, and alcohol for that matter. I’ve seen, since the 1960s, overdose deaths of acquaintances, read numerous reports, and watched, with dismay, as our society has careened into both prescription and street drug abuse.

My kids are very different now than the children I first adopted. Society is different now as well, our standards, of acceptable behavior, have fallen to a new low.

My older, grown children are appalled, at times, at the furious rages and property damage now inflicted upon our family, and I hear and read of so many other adoptive families facing the same scenario. It used to be that a baseball would come through a window, now it’s someone’s foot or fist. We’ve knocked holes in our walls accidentally over the years, now it happens via willful anger.

After my felonious son violated his probation and returned to the county jail, and the other violent one was sent to YDC, one of my long-suffering son-in-laws spent an entire day patching the holes in our large house. Fed up also, I announced I’d press criminal damage charges on anyone who again assaulted these poor walls as I’ve found it (pressing charges) beneficial in getting services for my children, since I hold them accountable. Not wanting to enable monstrous behavior either, I call a spade a spade around here.

Rages lately have been comprised of screaming and kicking the floor, walls have remained unscathed for several months. Literally the non-ragers step over the ragers and go about their business, ignoring the screams and their mother who is usually sitting on the floor with the rager waiting for the anger to subside. As Sarah had tried to relate, “This is to be expected as is the stealing, lying and bed-wetting that no one likes, but realizes it’s part of our life. This is our normal”

This attitude is from a birth child who moved over 38 times to share her mother with children who desperately needed one, but then made everyone pay. Thank you, Sarah, for being so incredibly big-hearted, I know it hasn’t been easy for you, but you’ve let everyone know how ultimately rewarding it’s been.