Moms of post surgery kids - I need your input!

[francine]

Maia cannot sit still! She has so much pent up energy and so much anger this time. It's hard to get her to just rest. Something hit me yesterday - (I was taking a bath and thinking) - that it takes her so much energy to move her arm on a daily basis, so now that she can't move it at all, all that energy is just exploding! Have any of you experienced this sort of frustration / anger / explosive behavior?

I bought her Sockem Boppers the other day - do you remember those? they are the blow up punching (like) gloves. Figured we could have a go at it in a positive way, because she has been hitting/kicking/biting me, which is so totally out of the norm for her. How would you deal with this kind of behavior? I'm new at this and it's shocking. Any ideas for me? By the way - normally we would be going outside and playing at the playground but it is FREEZING here! and if you went out, it would only be for a short time, which we are doing.

By the way - we are way past the sparkle story now. She knows the whole deal -figured with her current state of mind that she needed to know more facts and I explained the specifics of her surgery (at her own level) and this morning she explained it back to me and told me that that's the reason why her arm cannot move until February.

Thanks in advance for your advice!
-francine

[Bridget]

I laughed when I read your post because we just went through this with Ian's surgery this summer. Here's what seemed to work for him: vocalizing. He sang almost constantly, very loudly at times! I had to reluctantly hush him sometimes like in the grocery store, as if the cast/splint weren't attracting enough attention here he was bellowing out songs. But, it really seemed to help him let out all that pent up energy...try playing fun music (Nora's Room is a great cd, try that) and encouraging Maia to sing sing sing!

Good luck,
Bridget