LuLu has been exhibiting some “interesting” behavioral changes over the last couple of weeks. I’ve been reading about “storms” or “rage attacks” that can apparently be a part of Tourette’s Plus (the co-morbidity of Tourettes/OCD/ADHD). And because of the nature of what I’m seeing in LuLu – I tend to believe we’re seeing such storms.

What I’m observing is a Jekyl & Hyde sort of scenario. Take, for example, her math lesson earlier in the week: We are subtracting multi-digit numbers with regrouping (that’s borrowing for us old folks). She has done this for some time now, and her logical brain “gets it”, so when she’s totally calm she does well. But especially problematic are the large numbers (like 10,000) where she has to keep moving from place to place, looking for that number to borrow. On this particular math task, many of her disabilities come into play. As best as I can figure what is happening is that she’s having real trouble with the multi-step process you have to go through to accomplish this type of subtraction. No surprise there, since following multi-step directions seems to be something she evaluates poorly on (and usually elevates her level of frustration when she’s asked to do it.)

So…in this lesson she was quickly frustrated and started to complain. It escalated quickly to what could only be called a storm or rage attack. The odd quality about these rage attacks is that in the middle of them there are lucid moments when she’s trying to stop the attack. It does look exactly like Jekyl talking to Hyde. “I’m sorry,” she’d say and attempt to self-calm. And then the next wave of anger would come upon her.

The other odd thing is that these storms aren’t triggered by anything I say or do. They’re not tantrums in that she’s not trying to get a response from me at all. Behaviorists often focus on two purposes for behavior – attention or avoidance. LuLu’s storms have neither purpose as a motivation. I think they just happen when her brain is overloaded with emotion. It’s obvious when she’s sitting in a separate room from me and doing her math and starts to rage, and then continues raging whether I intervene or not (in this Jekyl and Hyde kind of way) that it’s not about attention. Is it about avoidance? Nope. When I suggested that we not do the math work, or even that she take a break until she was able to regroup, that was met with cries of “but I must do this. It’s important that I learn this, etc.” Not someone trying to get out of a math assignment!


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