Worried about?

[MissFenella]

Hi all. Dds have been with us over a year and we are adopting next year, we waited as DD1 is older.

We have had a few issues with DD1, particularly asking her sister to sexualy abuse her and I hope/think we have managed that pretty well. No further incidents, she knows it is wrong and has started to understand a little that she should not do it. She is thriving in all other areas but is not yet settled and fully attached.

Recently she has started a behaviour that I feel is linked to the previous one. She will grab a hand/s and get dad, me or sister to slap her on her head and face. We of course stop immediately and explain that play fighting can be fun but often ends in tears because someone may hit too hard and she will get hurt. Also that if she makes DD2 slap her she may do it when DD1 doesn't want to play and DD2 won't and cannot be expected to know the difference.

I am presuming this 'wanting to be abused' thing isn't unusual and we can only talk her out of it. But I would welcome views esp if I should be taking different action.

[Jinglejohnsjulie]

No advice sorry but just wanted to bump for you

[RudolphLovesoftplay]

That's really sad, poor wee girl. How old is she? Only asking for context, as different strategies for different age children.

[Italiangreyhound]

I have pmed you.

I wonder is this slapping a way of drawing attention to any situation the child had in life before? If so you may not want to ignore the behaviour totally because it may convey you do not care about the feelings behind the action. Maybe it may convey this although of course I know as a caring mum you do care a lot but kids do often misread signs. I adore my DD but she often accuses me of not caring because I do not do or notice a particular thing!

So I wonder if because she is older you might engage with her when she does it, privately and ask her why she does it. It may reveal that she wants to talk about something that really happened to her and she remembers, or it may be that she says something like 'it feels nice' and then I guess you just need to converse with her in a way that helps her work through it. It can easily escalate and be painful, as you already said.

Also I wonder if you can find other things that feel nice but are not harmful to her. In a totally minor way this was what was suggested to me for my DD sucking her thumb, that the action of sucking her thumb (she is an older than normal thumb suckers at 9) is hard to break (actually almost impossible) so it was suggested to me to do something nice. Like find something she can have in bed that feels nice, like a piece of velvet or other material or a very soft teddy and for her to stroke instead of suck her thumb.

I am NOT a psychologist so no idea about this but wonder if a harmless non-violent action can be found to replace that slapping that will have the same effect of giving her the attention she needs or whatever?

But to do this you need to know the effect she is trying to achieve is, so if she uses the slap to get attention, then a word or action that does that, or if she needs to talk about specific abuse or situations from the past then find one for that or if there is anger and it is her way of releasing it because that is how she learned anger was released then find some way to do this.

As I say I know so little which is why I am pming the background to my thoughts and posting on the tread a limited amount of stuff so anyone who is an expert or knows more than me can come on and disagree with me.

Just to clarify too we are approved to adapt but not yet matched and I am a birth parent.