Beth first displayed aggressive tendencies towards her baby brother. While she could not explain why she wanted to hurt her brother, she stated that she did want to end his life.

Beth and her younger brother were both adopted. When her adoptive parents were trying to understand what was going on and how to treat her, this complicated matters. It was hard to know what she had experienced in life prior to her adoption to see if something had caused this pattern of behavior.

In Child of Rage, Beth admitted to hurting her own pets. She told the interviewer that she would stick birds with pins in order to hurt them.

There were a few ways that Beth behaved in a way that were outside of social norms of appropriate ways to act in public. These acts were disturbing to her family and it caused problems within their household as well.

When the Tennent’s went to the adoption agency to get some more information about their daughter, the agency was unable to share much. They said that due to confidentiality laws, they could not divulge if anything had happened to Beth prior to her adoption.

It looked like Beth knew that she was in the wrong. After any of her acts, she would apologize to her family. Even during interviews for the Child of Rage documentary, she showed remorse for her actions and apologized. Despite all that, she couldn’t seem to stop.

When Beth’s mom noticed that some knives from their kitchen were missing, she grew concerned. Later, Beth was able to describe the missing knives in detail to her mother, showing that it was probably her who had taken them. Beth’s mother said that when describing these knives, the little girl smiled maliciously.

Beth made it clear that she had thought about harming her family. Her parents became so fearful that she would follow through on these statements that, although they did not want to, they decided that it was best that they lock her in her room at night to keep her from hurting the rest of her family.

After the knife incident, when the interviewer in the Child Of Rage documentary asked her what she intended to with the knives, she admitted what her parents had feared. She said she wanted to “End John and Mommy’s life with them. And Daddy.”

Much of the Child of Rage documentary shows Beth in conversation with her therapist, or in treatment with him. Her therapist’s name was Ken Magid, and he studied child psychology. In addition to therapy sessions with Magid, Beth also stayed at an inpatient center for children.

Reactive Attachment Disorder happens when a child is unable to form a bond with their caregivers. Children with this disorder are often not comforted or soothed by the caregivers in their life, and this normally only happens with children who have been severely neglected.

Through extensive therapy, Beth started revealing more about what her life had been like before adoption. It turns out that both Beth and her brother John had been victims of horrific abuse and neglect. Their mother passed shortly after John’s birth, which left their father alone to care for them. Tragically, alone with the children, their father was often neglectful and left John in his crib for long period of time, resulting in a misshapen head.

In these nightmares, Beth would dream about “a man who fell on top of her and hurt her with a part of him.” Hearing this is distressing for anyone, and it shows how deeply it had worked its way into Beth’s subconscious. When Beth’s parents heard about these nightmares, they knew that something was wrong. The nightmares were one of the catalysts for taking her to the therapist.

Another therapist that Beth worked with was named Connell Watkins. Watkins helped her with a type of therapy called attachment therapy, that required her to reshape her behavior by being restricted from everything unless she asked for permission first. This therapy was successful for Beth, but Watkins’ techniques have been harmful elsewhere.

While working with another young child, Watkins tried a “rebirthing” therapy. In this now discredited therapy, children are wrapped head to toe in flannel and helped to simulate birth. This practice resulted in the passing of one child, and Watkins went to prison as a result.

The former “Child of Rage” has made a compete recovery from her mental illness as a child. She now works as a nurse who helps children. With her second adoptive mother, Nancy Thomas, Beth works at Families By Design, an organization that works to help other children with mental illness.