Dd shouted and hit me

You seem to be confusing your mental state with mine… my memory is perfectly clear regarding my children’s behaviour .

I never said my children were perfect. I said that they never raised a hand to me or were rude and abusive toward me. Big difference.

@Nestofwalnuts that is an awful way to handle a young child's emotions! So dismissive and lacking in empathy. Emotional blackmail, shaming and guilt tripping a small child for feeling angry about someone taking their new cup?

The message you would be giving is your feelings are wrong, I have no empathy for you, I don't care that you're upset, you must never be angry with someone who loves you, expressing your emotions is wrong.

So cold and chilling.

@Mariposistaaa

Children don't have to earn or deserve cuddles. Denying your child positive physical touch is deeply disturbing. They'll remember that for sure, and likely not in the way you want.

@Nestofwalnuts it's pretty unanimous that your approach is deeply disturbing. I was disturbed reading it.

It sounds extremely bullying, like your love is conditional and you're on the verge of taking it away.

A child in that situation isn't going to have some wonderful psychoanalytic breakthrough. They'll say whatever they have to to make that awful, relentless questioning stop.

You say your house is chill calm and happy but if that's how you treated your children it sounds fucking sinister.

I'd have taken away the new cup for a few days and made sure she knew why and when I returned it I'd remind her if she hits me again the cup goes in the bin.

@Nestofwalnuts I’m all for getting to the bottom of why a child is acting the way they are. I’ve never used the naughty step. I have a few times removed privileges, though it’s not my preferred way of parenting. But all of this can be done without shaming, guilt tripping, emotionally manipulating… all of which were present in your first paragraph. In fact your explanation (encouraging emotional intelligence) is really, really misaligned with the way you would supposedly talk with your child.

Take the phrase ‘how dare you’, which you used in your example. My Mum used it with me and it is the ONLY thing I actually recall really, really hating from her methods of discipline. There’s so much malice behind it. If you believe that children act up because they aren’t in tune with their emotions (agree) then saying ‘how dare you’ makes zero sense. It wasn’t that they dared do something unkind. It was that they hadn’t developed the tools to regulate themselves yet.

(PS It’s incredibly unusual for 5 year olds to be able to regulate themselves all the time. I work with that age group and haven’t yet met one who can. Indeed it’s unusual for older kids; the frontal cortex isn’t fully developed until the early 20s. Perhaps your DC were just highly unusually calm personalities or perhaps you’re misremembering but I am really struggling to believe that you only had to intervene once in their behaviour.)

I'm genuinely sorry people think it is sinister. I promise you I am not sinister. But I hate violence and bullying above all things and think it is our job as parents to get to the root of why a child is physically aggressive. I never punished my children by removing things from them or putting them on the naughty step - I find those things sinister and have witnessed people doing this time after time with children continuing to play up. But if you bother to connect with them and expain their actions really affect other people, and are patient but calm in insisting they get to the root of their own feelings, then it helps.

All I can say is - I am the only parent of an autistic person I know who never had meltdowns, he was so in tune with his needs and emotions. And neither of my two had teenage strops either. We were a very calm happy, gentle, chilled family that talked to each other. So I am sorry if it sounds sinister to be so firm and blunt with a young child, but in my experience that time consuming intervention is a one off and once they know why they are doing something they have power to control it themselves rather than repeat it and be punished for it.

Indulging in revenge fantasies against a child online ffs 😂😂😂😂

The mumsnet equivalent of some delusional middle aged bloke going on about what he'd do if someone threatened him or his family.

Far too much sinister stuff to unpack, but firstly you are massively guilt tripping your child. Not good.

Secondly, you are trying to verbally trip your child up and trying to humiliate them. Not good.

Thirdly, you are trying to debate with a 5 year old as you would with an adult - you do know that 5 year olds don't really get logic and are really bad at psychoanalysis? Not good.

Fourthly, your ego is huge and you're confusing and undermining your child in a really self aggrandising manner. Deeply disturbing to read.

@Nestofwalnuts

your opening paragraph is sinister

I'm going to suggest a slightly different approach to most posters. If she is having issues controlling her anger then she needs help to recognise her emotions and to stop herself before it escalates to violence. I'd suggest using zones of regulation with her.

When she hit, I would immediately turn off TV as you did, stay very calm and say "we do not hit each other in this family". If she is yelling at you etc I would leave the room. Don't react emotionally to what she is saying.

When she has calmed down I would talk through what happened and use zones of regulation to explain that she went into the red zone and lost control and talk through why losing control can lead us to do things we regret.

I wouldn't bother with giving longer term consequences. The immediate consequence is that you turned off the TV and your nice time together finished. She needs your support to help learn to control her anger, and making her feel bad about herself probably won't help.

When she has calmed down, I would mention it to her and say something like ' you seemed very angry when I accidentally used your cup - why was that?' It will be a good opportunity to have a chat with her . It maybe that something was triggered by you using her cup.
It will also be a good opportunity to remind her that we all make mistakes sometimes and that she will too sometimes and we have to learn to understand that these things happen and can't go hitting people in these situations as there will be consequences.

Words fail me. Just wow 😔 So shaming and being emotionally cruel is your advice then right? Not to mention manipulative that your child 'owes' you for the things you do for her which any parent/carer should do. Guessing you never possibly made a mistake as a five year old 🙄 And just to be clear absolutely this behaviour is not okay and children need clear firm boundaries for sure. But not like this.

@Alwaysalwayscold please read some parenting books. Parenting young children is about modelling good behaviour. Absolutely no decent parenting technique recommends modelling bad behaviour back to a child!

You will be hit as a parent while your child learns. I shudder to think why a 2 year old would need hitting back. That’s shocking.

This is far too much for a child that age to process and verbalise. This very bad, and quite chilling, advice.

OP you handled it well. It’s not acceptable and you’ve made that clear.

We just sent ours straight to their bedrooms for hitting. They’d cool off for a few minutes and then we’d go in and acknowledge their feelings but reaffirm that we don’t hit.

It seems to have worked for my two who are totally different personalities.

We are experiencing some really trying behaviour from our 5 year old too. I'm hoping it's an age thing - I know we aren't the only ones,

"I would be very cross without raising my voice. In a calm, controlled voice, get down to her level, look her in the eye and say: Mummy loves you, Mummy bought you that mug, made you that hot chocolate, helped you make brownies, read you that story.All day long, I was doing lovely things with you because I love you and you repay me by hitting me? How dare you be so rude and cruel to someone who shows you love?

And that is a real question, not a rhetorical one. Make her answer it. How dare she be so cruel and rude? What was going on? Help her process it. Stay firm: "I was being a tiger' 'No, that's an excuse.' 'Sorry mummy' 'Thank you for your apology but it doesn't answer my question. How dare you be so rude and cruel? Why do you think you have the right to hurt people who love you? I love you. Do I have the right to hurt you if I want to? How would you feel if I did?'"

You thick fucking psychopath 😂😂😂😂

We all think we know everything about parenting before we have kids. Hitting a child is NEVER acceptable. Hopefully you will learn that very soon.

Yes it's normal and she needs to learn that this is not acceptable behaviour. At age 5, consequences need to be immediate. I would send her to her room/naughty step and expect an apology for hitting mummy. Then draw a line under it and move on!

If you say so. I would never be dismissive of aggression my children. I would always challenge bad behaviour. They were the most chilled, kind teens - never rude or abusive, never mean to others. Teach them emotional intelligence. Ye sit shocks them the first (and only) time you need to do it. I've challenged school bullies like that too and it stops them.

I wonder why you find it disturbing.

@Alwaysalwayscold So how does that finish? You hit them back. But you’ve taught them it’s ok to hit back. So they hit you back. So you hit them back. So…

I honestly can’t think of a more inappropriate method of discipline than doing to your child exactly what you are teaching them NOT to do.

Also it’s thankfully illegal where I live.

WTAF? No. No. No. Wrong on every level and deeply disturbing to even just read.

This advice is so upsetting.