Both I and my wife separately had business outside yesterday morning before Anthony wanted to get out of bed, and I anticipated that he would get up on his own and our younger son would have him go to the bathroom before I got back.  When I came back about 10am--my wife got back about the same time--Anthony was still lying in bed.  We never know if it is OK to nudge him out of bed if he acts like he doesn't want to get up, although of course we do on weekdays to get him up for school.

Well, it turned out yesterday that it wasn't a good idea to get him up, as he was upset and gave us enough indication of malicious intent that we decided on a major change of plans, with my wife going in my place with our younger son to the second of four soccer tryouts on consecutive weekends.  For some reason, all four of these tryouts are at least close to an hour away--the one last week was two hours away--despite ourselves living in the central metropolitan area of the state.  The tryouts themselves are scheduled for three hours, so yesterday's tryout involved a good five hours away from home, which was time that my wife had planned for several other things she needed to get done.  Ultimately, although Anthony did not go off on me while my wife and younger son were out, I suspect he would have if my wife had remained here by herself instead of me, as he had "that look" for some time before his mood changed.

Late in the evening, though, we had another incident right before bed time, and this really makes me wonder what I can do with him.  He wasn't able to go to the bathroom right when he wanted to, so he got upset.  When he did go to the bathroom, he was not contented by that and instead chose to scream and try to bang his head as he did so.  He also attempted to engage me by scratching or hitting me, which of course I didn't permit, and that infuriated him more.  I finally got him up and tried to wash his hands without allowing him to come after me, but because I was holding on to his hands, he of course was close enough to come after me with his head.  I kept trying to pacify him without retaliating, but realized that wasn't working.  Each attempt from Anthony increased in viciousness to the point that he nearly bit one of my extended fingers.  Prior to last night, he hadn't tried to bite me in a few years because he knows the reaction it can get from me.

What I have seen from Anthony, which is highly counterintuitive to me--not to mention seeming like abusive parenting--is that he will not stop coming after me until I do something violent back to him.  I can sometimes defuse the situation without retaliating by locking him in his room for a while, but it takes time to get him to calm down, and that is after he does his best to break everything in his room.  In this case, it was late and everyone was trying to go to sleep, so I grabbed him by the head and slammed it four times into the counter.  That sounds far worse than it really was, because his resistance makes the force only about half of what it would be otherwise.  But he calmed right down.  Actually, I wanted to see if he was calm, so I tried then talking to him reasonably, and he still tried to put my hands up to his head to hit him, which I didn't want to do.  I took him to his bed, and he started screaming again, so I used his own fist to hit his head several times.  After that, he was completely calm and didn't make another sound.  And I continue to feel guilty and be quite baffled by that.