A tantrum to shock your pants right off

I have spent all night yesterday, and all day today transferring all of my blog posts over to Blogger manually. Xanga does not let you export, from what I understand, unless you purchase a premium account. I have no intentions of spending any money on something that I am moving away from. So, copy and paste it was. After 50 posts, I had to start entering captchas. AWFUL. I hate captchas with a passion. Glad that is over!

We are on day 6 of the Adderall/Intuniv combo, with no results so far. He still has many many meltdowns. Today was one of the worst I have seen in a long time. Every day, there is screaming, fighting between AJ and Sofia. Yelling at each other, and then AJ screeches and either hits things, or throws himself down, kicking the floor. Today, though, he threatened to kill himself. Let's start at the beginning.

I don't own a 'real' alarm clock. I use the alarm on my phone because I keep it next to me during the night, and I set 4 alarms just to make sure I do get up. When I went to sleep last night, it was fully charged. Anthony woke me up in a panic at 8:15 this morning. We slept through all the alarms. Well, he did. Apparently, my phone decided it was going to die in the middle of the night. Not only that, but Sofia woke with her alarm, but just turned it right off. When I asked her why, she said "You didn't tell me last night that I had to get up right when it went off. I didn't think I needed to." Reriously? You're 9 years old. You know you have school. If your alarm goes off, and you don't see me up, maybe you should get up and wake me up! Needless to say, the kids missed their buses. Since my car isn't safe for driving all over, I couldn't take them to school. I also assumed that Anthony took it to work since we've been told he can take it to work and back, and that's it.

AJ was cranky because he missed school today. He wanted to go and use his money to get ice cream. I asked him where he got this money from, since I sure as hell didn't give him any, and I know he didn't have any of his own from before. His voice got really low, he started to mumble, and the conversation went like this:
AJ: I found it
Me: What?
AJ: I found it.
Me: Oh, found it? <AJ nods> Where did you find it? <shoulder shrug> Hm?? Where did you find this dollar? Did you take it from my wallet? <shakes head> Dads wallet? <shakes head again> Then where did you find it?
AJ: At school.
Me: WHERE at school?
AJ: Ummmm <looks around> Well, ummmm <shifts side to side>
Me: You better tell me right now, and do NOT lie to me.
AJ: Morgan gave it to me.

I have no idea who Morgan is, and he can't tell me if Morgan is a boy or a girl. I know he likely took it from someone. And it makes me really upset that he did this. Someone didn't get to enjoy their ice cream today because 1) he took their money, and 2) because I overslept. Insert Tantrum #1 for the day.

Later on, he decided that Gianna couldn't touch ANY of his toys. When she did, he screamed at her. Gianna, being all of 16 months, is in the hitting phase. Since big brother yelled at her and snatched a toy from her, she decided to bop him on the head. Insert Tantrum #2 "SHE ALWAYS TAKES MY TOYS THEN HITS ME! IT'S NOT FAIR!!!" <cue tears> Melt down. Totally lost it. I sent him to his room to calm down. He slammed his door probably 5 times. Kicked the wall, threw toys, threw himself around.

Tantrum #3 was because I made him clean up his mess before he could come back downstairs. Took half an hour, but he finally cleaned it up.

And finally, the Crème de la crème. He was whining about something. I have no idea what it was, but it sort of sounded like "Why can't I .... " or "It's not fair ... " some sort of whine like that. I told him that I don't understand whining, so he needs to stop, and talk to me normally. That caused him to whine more, and stomp while whining. I HATE those tantrums!! Stomping, arm throwing, body lashing, whining tantrums. At that point, I said to him "I do NOT understand whining. So, since you're not going to stop, my answer is NO. Whatever you are asking, no." That's when he did it. He uttered those 6 words no parent ever wants to hear: "I REALLY WANT TO KILL MYSELF!"

Woah ... hold up. Did my 5 year old REALLY just say that?? He wants to what?? Now, I know my son. This was said to shock me, and to get attention. I calmly got up, walked away, opened the front door (Anthony was outside having a cigarette) and calmly informed him of what he said. I then shut the door, turned back to my son (who hadn't moved an inch since I got up), and told him "If you EVER say that again. EVER. I WILL call the cops, and they can take you to the hospital to be evaluated. I will NOT have you talk like that. Do you understand me??" He looked at me, shocked, and said "No you won't. I'm too little to be arrested." Umm, okay. Whatever. He likely won't say it again, unless he wants the attention. But at that point, I really will call. 

I don't think the Intuniv is helping. Maybe we need to give it a bit more. In the meantime, I'll just count down the days until his Mental Health Clinic appointment. I finally got that call yesterday. We go on the 31st. Seems like a lifetime away .... Let's just hope I can hold out until then.