DD is 7.
As a baby she had bad silent reflux due to milk protein intolerance and is still intolerant to raw milk.
She does also get sick/have reflux if she eats some foods.
However, she is also a little bit spirited.
Very competitive.
Quite impulsive.
Gets really, really furious and just cannot calm down even though she is aware there will be consequences if she e.g. hits her sister (a frequent occurrence).
Very emotional but also tactile and loving.
She has good reading age. Very good maths. Writing is ok if a bit scrawly.
Teacher has commented that she occasionally puts her hands over her ears.
She is very avoidant of being spoken to over conflict at school, even if it was her that was the victim- clams up and refuses to speak. Absolutely refuses. (It makes me worry if anything ever happened to her she would not speak)
Teacher also says she is hyperfocused to the point she does not notice other things going on about her.
and that "she has no centre" i.e. struggles to sit up straight during story time.
She often does things she has been told not to e.g. touching things/fiddling, but almost seems surprised she has done it.
The thing that prompted me to ask was another thread that mentioned sense of smell- she has an extremely acute sense of smell. She cannot sit near people eating food she dislikes. She also picks up e.g. the smell of certain plants or animals long before they are visible.
Is a very picky eater, is thin and will go hungry rather than eat something she does not like (even if she ate it yesterday). Fills up quickly even when hungry. But will gulp down large quantities of liquid- sometimes huge quantities.
she is also funny, helpful, lively and when she is not furious, quite kind and generous. And she does apologise later if she was very wrong.
She chews her clothes.
she whistles or makes repetitive noises if she is e.g. in an unfamiliar place and just cannot seem to stop it. Not anything really loud or overt. Just quiet whistling or hemming.
She is also agile and good at all sorts of sports, cycling, football, running etc. She is not clumsy at these things despite being quite clumsy generally especially when tired.
mostly she is fine. It is just that the teacher has gone out of her way to mention these things despite dd performing well at school.
And also she is sometimes a bit "hard work" compared to other kids. Especially noticeable when we are out with other kids. She is delightful on her own.
Does this ring bells? If so, is there anything that will help her (and or me- sometimes as an lp I struggle to be patient)? Or is this just normal competitive kid?
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Do these "symptoms" sound like anything
minkGrundy · 26/04/2015 19:25
I was worried she has some kind of sensory issue mostly.
Her food/smell issues could just be because of the reflux but I wondered if it was something else.
Highly strung is probably the best description on her wilder days. But I am never sure if she needs firmer boundaries or something else. I wouldn't she she is really difficult just on the more difficult end of the range of typical 7 year old behaviour some days if that makes sense.
Obviously, I am not very tolerant of her hitting her sister (who is a whole other kettle of massive drama llama/stubborn/fantacist 
but generally not as rough).
When she does get too far up the pole to climb down I do just give her a cuddle until she calms down though as sometimes she really does seem to get so wound up she is distressed and unable to get herself under control. She will do the sniff the strawberries and blow the candles if prompted and if you do it with her.
Also I wonder if she will just grow out of it and e.g. start eating normally or if it requires intervention. Things like chewing clothes seems to go in phases so I assume she will grow out of that.
Hi mink
I don't know but my DS is high energy loud, and i am fairly sure hyperactive/impulsive. I have tried various things but am now at the stage where I am seeking medical opinion, and if you are concerned, maybe you should too
He is very loving and funny; but here are the issues
Hitting his sister, well anything to get a response (started time outs for this, but he now gets wilder in the warning phase and the whole time out is a struggle)
Sensitive to noise, will cover ears but speaks loudly ALL THE TIME
Creates chaos if given the chance but will also sometimes play nicely
Very strong willed but also sensitive to change
When we were at home over Easter for nearly the whole break, he was fine, whereas back at nursery (he is four), contact with his dad again, and I have wild child. He just does not cope well with it, that is to say he is by all accounts fine when he is there but it is like it takes all his effort and he goes to pieces when he is home.
Not sure how any of this is relevant, really, just sympathising with the range of symptoms and not sure if it is anything or nothing, but it being hard work
Thanks romey and for you too.
Think mine also finds school/ after school club an effort. As soon as we are on the way home she starts hitting her sister. But I think a lot of kids find that with school/nursery especially at the start of new terms. As if they cannot hold it in any longer.
She refused her school dinner again today- put the whole lot in the bin, untasted
(the school phoned to tell me).
I think most of the things she does are no big deal tbh when I checked the sensitive child thing it was more like me as a child than her. but i think we need to work on the smell/food thing because she is so thin. Possibly a lot of the other behaviour is just being hungry.
The weird thing is although she will not eat a lot of things that are food, she often eats things that are not: glue, paint from the walls (because it is delicious like glue 
, paper, plastic, coins.
It took till she was about 6 to get her to stop constantly putting everything and anything into her mouth.
The other day I bought a slice of fruit cake which I did not like but which she ate loads of- because it tasted 'like glue'.
Oh. I didn't realise eating non food stuff was that unusual. (Pretty sure I quite liked glue too
)
Thankfully she mostly eats relatively inert things. Pritstick, paper, erasers etc. The paint she ate was emulsion because it "tasted like glue". So it did not have lead in it but might contain fungicide so I put a stop to that. She also stopped putting money on her mouth after she swallowed a 5p.
I thought it was mostly a need to chew thing. She is always chewing those rubber wristband things they get or paper. And the clothes thing i thought might be related to her teeth coming through.
But I better get it looked into. She has already seen dietician when she was wee because of milk protein thing but not for a while.
She could well have all sorts of deficiencies due to poor diet although I am hoping the eggs, cereal and soy milk provide some nutrition.
The last few days she has actually been making an effort to try things. So far she hasn't eaten any of them but she has tasted them and written down a list of things she might be prepared to try.
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Hmmm. Just stumbled across this thread in active and was very surprised because my 7 year old Dd is very similar in some ways.
She also - chews holes in her clothes and will chew plastic toys, sylvanian animals, wires, etc.
- is a picky eater but is improving with this. She is small for her age but not skinny.
- puts her hands over her ears at loud noises (hates any sort of alarm with a passion, even if it's not actually that loud - more of a panic thing) and anything that involves confrontation/peril/someone getting into trouble in a story or tv programme.
- She is an excellent reader. Is in top group for maths but she does have to work at it.
- She is very imaginative and emotional. She was getting into extreme rages where she was beyond all reason and control even though she is usually exceptionally well-behaved, especially at school. This was mainly due to absolute extreme exhaustion as she was not falling asleep until midnight some nights. She had a lot of trouble shutting down at night since yr1 (now in yr3). I asked the school to help and she did Draw and Talk which helped, along with some other factors. She also finds night time very scary.
- She is friendly but only has one close friend at school. She finds the other children annoying, distracting and the teacher says she prefers to work alone, preferably physically removed from them.
I have assumed that she is a 'Sensitive Child' as mentioned upthread and did get a book out of the library about them but didn't find it too helpful. I tried the list of new foods with rewards for trying and had some good results.
The chewing thing - I asked my friend who's a gp about this as I recently had to take her to a drop-in clinic at the weekend as she had bitten her nail badly and her whole finger was infected. The on-duty locum told me (in front of her) that I needed to spend more time with her and listen to her more!
I am currently a sahm and bend over backwards trying to 'listen' to her. My friend the gp was also shocked and said it was very normal to chew nails and objects, even at 7 and older.Sorry, this is an epically long post and maybe not that helpful but I hope you do feel you can make some progress with the areas that are worrying you.
suke sounds like we have the same child!!
I thought chewing was pretty normal but I asked around other parents. Not so much apparently.
On the plus side, mine sleeps ok. And thankfully has stopped chewing her fingers. I pay them for their fingernails when I cut them. Several of their dad's family also chew their toes
boak
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