I’ve certainly been angry before but I’ve never raged. I didn’t even know that people raged until I’d lived with ragers. The phenomenon is shocking; it’s a full blown temper tantrum with kicking, screaming, punching and hitting for hours at a time.

My first rager was barely three years old. Non-verbal due to a mild case of cerebral palsy, very developmentally delayed, he’d get angry over any little thing and scream, bite, spit and slap for hours.
He was then the second youngest in our family, I believe I had 20 children then and we’d never seen the likes of this before. We’d take turns taking him outside where he couldn’t hurt anyone and we’d try and calm him down.

Ragers take a very long time to calm down. Later I’d adopted some children with more serious diagnoses such as bipolar and schizoaffective disorder and the rages were more severe.

Other children that joined our family had other conduct disorders; a current diagnosis that I see in the adoption world now is adjustment disorder. Well DUH. I’d have one too if I’d been moved from place to place all my life.

Very angry children arrive into calm middle class families that just innocently wanted to help a child and BAM here come the rages resulting in punched in walls, broken furniture, and other very innovative forms of destruction.

Thankfully not all older adopted children rage. Almost all of my first 19 children did not ever rage and maybe another eight out of the other 20 children are world class fit–throwers.

I’ve found that I need to curb my own anger and irritation at the ensuing destruction. Ignoring these behaviors helps to not fan the flames of their anger although I’ve witnessed some very impressive solitary raging with no audience to speak of.

I’ve also watched ragers learn, through therapy, that there are more acceptable ways in which to express that they are upset. It’s a long haul to get there though.

My ragers generally get better as they mature; those that don’t improve tend to deteriorate and their early adulthood without me to rein them in has been tenuous at best.

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