Blue, I'm glad you came to the conclusions you did. I think some people (much depending on location) are taught the way to teach a child is to punish them and punishment becomes the one tool. People here had to rethink end 70s when physical punishing a child became illegal. Some people thought kids would behave worse than before, but the opposite was actually true. Parents had to be more creative and I think that was a good thing. They had to really try different things to see what worked instead of bad behavior = slap/spank.

I know when I acted out as a child, I had both anger and fear in me. It's easy to just see the anger part. I wish my parents would have understood how deeply afraid I was.

Sure kids are different from adults, but you are so right when you say these kids have been through more. I don't believe these kids throw tantrums, I think they have what in adult terms would be called a panic attack or whatever else names there are for adult meltdowns. And sometimes kids who cannot control their behavior or moods feel so much like a failure that they start to control what they can and what they can do is set off their parents. I think this can be the way of saying "at least I have SOME control over my life".

I know I could have been punished to death and not stopping having panic attacks, because for me that is what I had I think, even if it came out more edgy. Of course then my parents tried to raise someone with traits of autism and they didn't know it, they did their best and I don't blame them for not understanding me or even understanding I was my own person. They had their own issues.