Can we give up one of our children?

[pinkstargaze]

I don’t know where else to turn, this is about my 8 year old.
We have 3 Children the eldest and youngest are lovely but the middle child is making life so hard with her violence towards us.

She comes home from school and shouts and screams and hits me and her siblings, she calls me names, swears at me and won’t listen to a word I say just says shut up and covers her ears if I speak to her.
Her siblings are frightened of her, I’m frightened of her I know as soon as I say anything I will be hurt, she hits me in the back and it takes my breath away, she kicks me and tells me to kill myself, slams doors throws things, screams at the top of her voice by which time the other children are crying and I just can’t do this anymore.

I don’t want this for my other children who are so well behaved, we don’t swear or raise voices, we are just a nice family who all get along and respect each other apart from her, she makes everyone miserable, destroys our home and everyone’s belongings.
It is embarrassing, friends won’t have her around their children and even our own family don’t want her near her cousins because it always ends in tears.
I don’t want to live in a home where I’m scared to tell my child off because she’ll hit me, I don’t want to share my home with someone who laughs and points at me with delight when anything goes wrong, or revels in her siblings misfortune and I don’t want to be called names and be sworn at in my own home or have my things ruined by someone who doesn’t care about me or my things.
I don’t want this to be my life and I definitely don’t want it for her siblings.
I feel strongly that for sake of the family’s safety she needs to go into care but I don’t want to lose all my children.
Is it even a thing to put one child into foster care and not the others?

She is waiting to be assessed but the waiting time is long, the school doesn’t see this as she’s masking all day until she gets home but it’s every day.
I have a lovely family, a lovely husband and we have 2 other children who are lovely but she is making our lives hell and our home uncomfortable and I know I just don’t have what it takes to live with her, I am burnt out and feel so guilty to the other children.
Dh does his best when he’s home but we are all so worn down and miserable, we just can’t carry on like this.
It has broken us both and the others are suffering. I genuinely can’t do this but I so love being a mum to the others who I carry on for.

If your DC’s EHCP doesn’t provide any help, it is, quite frankly, rubbish (too many are) and needs improving. You can request an early review then appeal if necessary.

My son is PDA and he absolutely would not behave like this. PDA also cannot be masked at school like the OP described.

OP I think you need to put some serious boundaries in place and serious consequences. And expect that will give you a couple months of utter hell. Can your family take your other children for some of this time to keep them safe?

tell your difficult child you love them. Make sure you spend time with them and reward the good behaviour when you see some. But stand firm in your boundaries.

my kid isn’t malicious like the examples you gave but he did have a phase for lashing out when overwhelmed. It was the end of my relationship and as he couldn’t mask at school he has no school place. I banned all screens for violent behaviour. The violence increased then he started clearing trying to hold himself back. We have done SO MICH WORK on how to manage emotions better and to ask for help and get help instead of lash out and get a consequence. He is still incredibly hard work because he often can only identify he is not ok. But at that point I won’t punish him I step in to support. He still dominates the family and his siblings still get the dregs of my attention but the violence has reduced.

I would find the money for private assessment if possible. That won’t actually help you but with that you can then go to the school and get better support during school hours. If she’s holding it all in and exploding once home then she needs better support at school so she doesn’t explode at home. If you cannot afford that Call the CHAMS crisis number for every incident multiple times a week if that is what you are living with. If you tell them you want her in care you cannot cope and your other child are being harmed enough times they can help you. Refer yourself to social services. They won’t do anything to help you but you want it on record you are seeking help and asking for it so when you start banking all screens if she starts kicking off at school/someone outside the family thinks you must be being too harsh and the cause of the behaviour you have that evidence you are doing your best

can you get cctv?y son was 4 at his most violent and I used to set up the iPad to record the room he was in. Then watch it back and I realised there were patterns and I could somewhat meditate the triggers. Then I paid for private sensory OT who was amazing and life changing advice. My son for example got violent when he couldn’t cope with the noise or proximity of other children. Initially it looked like he was just being horrible but it did come from his inability to cope.

but saying those things is not nurodiverity. That’s pushing her boundaries because she knows you are scared. I fully believe this started due to some need she has not because you have been to lax a parent from the start. But at some point she worked out she can get more of what she wants by treating you that way. So you need to go through hell while she rails against new boundaries and learns actually to get what she wants she needs to treat you with respect and communicate to you she needs help instead. And I really stress try find a way to keep your other children safe while you do this. My boy has this self harm streak where he was violent to get punished or to get out of an outing he felt he couldn’t cope with when I didn’t react he targeted his siblings. I have seen this phenomenon described by other parents of violent and challenging children.

also read the book plan B. It’s very very good. You can’t just focus on stopping the violence and nasty speaking you need to focus on helping her find better alternatives. She’s not evil and doing this for spite she genuinely is in pain and needs you and doesn’t know what to do.

‘PDA cannot be masked at school like the OP described’

Wrong. it’s quite common for PDA kids to mask at school. That is why they are so uncontrollable at home. Their need for control is driven by anxiety.

@pinkstargaze

When your daughter becomes abusive, why isn't she immediately placed in her room until she's calmed down? Why do you tolerate the verbal and physical abuse?

We used to try this with our son but trying to put him in a room would end in a fight, and then he wouldn’t stay in it and not injure himself, I think many people comment when they haven’t lived this life or have little understanding of it- could you not think of anyway it would be difficult to force a child like this to do anything.

But as the parent I think you need to demonstrate that violent and/or abusive abusive behaviour doesn't result in you backing down. They need to know that they can't win by escalating.

But if you understand that the behaviour is the result of a nervous system disability (if she is PDA as she sounds) then you know that this approach can be really damaging for a child and make things worse. They often need a calm, safe adult to ‘co-regulate’.

The best thing for my DS is minimising the causes - so lots and lots of support at school through an EHCP etc - and then low demand at home, no clubs or groups, time to decompress on iPad, time outside following his interests, not much talking, lots of snacks, just ‘being’ with no expectation, no blaming or shaming for his meltdowns.

I would wonder where she is learning such abusive language.

Would you? You wouldn’t think she’s heard it at school, on the street, in restaurants, public transport etc.

She would refuse to go up to her room and if I tried to take her she’d struggle, kick and fight me off.

If by some measure I did get her to her room, she would follow me down again or if I were to hold the door shut, she would bang and kick on the door relentlessly for the duration and possibly damage the door and get worked up into such an emotional state that the entire room would be turned upside down and still the behaviour that would have got her there would continue.

It really doesn’t work.
Even as a 2 year old I’d put her on the naughty step which was just the bottom step of the stairs and she’d get straight back up. It’s scary when your child doesn’t listen especially when there’s danger like roads when you need to keep them safe, running down the road shouting for her to stop while she merrily ran and ran ignoring my desperate calls to stop, crossing roads without looking, I resorted to using a screw carabiner clip over the harness clip to keep her in the pushchair because once she learnt she could unclip her harness she would clime out and run off.

Also having other children who don’t behave like this, I can see why it’s easy to stop or not allow certain unwanted behaviour by simply saying don’t do that once and they don’t do it but I could say it once or 50 times but each time I repeat an instruction, she repeats NO. There is no way to force someone to do as you say when they are that determined not to.

You say why do I tolerate verbal abuse? How do you stop words from coming out of someone’s mouth? You can’t.

If I walk away from her, she will hit me, if I don’t respond to her when she’s abusive she will become angier and more abusive.

I really do wish posters without any direct experience of children with these struggles wouldn't offer advice. Can I ask if your daughter feels any remorse or is upset with herself after any episodes? Pete Brown, whose details I gave you, is great at understanding the whole family, and he charges what you can afford.

She does sometimes say she’s sorry.

"if I were to hold the door shut, she would bang and kick on the door relentlessly for the duration and possibly damage the door and get worked up into such an emotional state that the entire room would be turned upside down and still the behaviour that would have got her there would continue."

It would clearly end at some point because she'd be too exhausted to continue or simply give up. After a few days, she'd probably just go through the motions and then she'd hopefully get to the stage where she just accepts the confinement without too much fuss. You might even see her change her behaviour for the better.

I really think you should at least try to face down this aggression, rather than allowing her to terrorise your family and end up wanting to place her in care.

I think by 8 most people know what horrible names and swear words are, even if they know not to say them, they’d know those are unkind words you shouldn’t say because they hurt people’s feelings.
Which is precisely the reason she does it.

OP, I totally understand the difficulty with putting her in her room. My son is the same, he also kicks the door and has been known to trash the room. We only put him in his room for short amounts of time and might stop doing it again because I am not convinced it works (so many of the normal parenting strategies just don't work with him, and they do with DC2). Please get support from e.g. CAPA, who deal with child to parent aggressio. They have a weekly online drop in.

You have to find a way of keeping yourself safe from the physical abuse. Can you hold her firmly? Wrap her in a weighted blanket? When she is in full-on meltdown, just have one line you repeat to her (nothing else will be getting through to her). Can you sit with her in her room, or will she attack you rather than the room? Trashing the room is not great, but at the moment she is attacking you, and that is surely worse?

Do you have personal experience of this approach working?

This does work with my daughter if I can get her there ( she’s now 10 and I can no longer safely carry her up the stairs), but our situation is different in that her aggression is linked to meltdowns and she is always remorseful afterwards. In fact, often what she needs to calm down is to be left alone, but she isn’t yet at the stage that she can recognise this in the moment.
If I can’t safely leave her I stand behind her and kind of hug her to restrain her, and she will eventually calm, but this also isn’t ideal.

I see what you’re saying but she’s like this as soon as she gets up in the morning getting ready for school, then she’s like this as soon as she comes out the school gate until she goes to bed so at what point do I battle trying to get her up the stairs to her room?
and how exactly can you forcibly move someone up a stair case?
I couldn’t just take her by the hand and walk up as she’d pull away, she’s an 8 year old, she’s not a toddler you can just pick up.

@ThisOldThang you clearly haven’t raised a child with these behaviours.
My DD is the same, she has broken her door in from when we’ve tackled her into her room (to keep us safe). She harms herself and destroys the contents of her bedroom.

We could continue putting her in her room but children with these behavioural issues don’t by the third time think: “right, this isn’t getting me what I want, I won’t bother next time.”

The point is they have almost no control over these behaviours.
Like OP I also have an NT daughter who wouldn’t dream of even answering back to me. Typical strategies work with these children but no amount of “discipline” alters these outbursts- if anything they escalate them. The way to stop them is to get the DC into a daily environment they can cope with better and possibly medication/therapeutic help

Do have a partner/husband? Is he the dad? If so he needs to be physically stopping her from attacking you. She needs to be physically restrained/confined until she knows she can’t behave like this.

Op there will be a lot of people commenting who have no clue, pay them no mind.
You need to approach things differently from your other children and understand that your expectations may need to be different for your daughter. Often those extreme meltdowns are not because of what's happening in the moment but all of the things that have led up to that. I would really encourage you to take a step back from what you know about parenting and approach it as if it's new because in theory it is. Explore what actually works for ND kids especially girls.

When I look back, I really acted out as a kid and probably said some horrible things about hating my life or my parents but what was actually going on was that I could not handle or regulate my emotions. I could not verbalise that and didn't even have knowledge of it myself. Usually it was hurt I was feeling that was driving those behaviours.

My youngest son, who we think might be autistic, started playing up in the morning - refusing to get dressed to leave the house. We need to leave the house to take his brother to school and him to his childminder.

I forcibly dressed him. It wasn't pleasant. He's got very strong legs and was in full meltdown. I didn't like doing it and, given his distress, it did feel 'wrong'. We did, however, get out of the house on time.

It happened a second time shortly afterwards with the same outcome. Since then, he's refused to get dressed on a few occasions, but he no longer offers any resistance to actually getting dressed.

🤷

Maybe I was 'cruel', but I think the outcome justified his distress. We couldn't have our mornings controlled by him. How bad would things now be if he'd learned that a meltdown resulted in him getting his own way?

Before anybody questions the long-term impact, we have a great relationship and he definitely isn't scared of me.

There’s so much misunderstanding on this thread. those of us who have kids with similar traits that are linked to underlying disorders understand that these kids aren’t in need of putting in their place, they have an overriding need to control what they can. @sweetpeaorchestra and @Nn9011 have the right idea.
I had to go on a PDA specific ‘non violent restraint’ course to even manage any physical restraint in a way that feels ok. DS would resort to self harm if I did some of the things people are mentioning - which has happened when I was less informed.

OP; don’t feel the need to justify yourself. You all need help and I am certain that things can improve if you get it. Especially look at how things are expressed differently for girls. Xx

You need to refer yourself to social services. They won't take her into care. Putting a child who is already very clearly distressed into care is not going to fix things for her, adding that rejection and instability to her life would be awful. They should be able to provide parenting support to get you into a place where you can effectively manage her behaviour. As you can see, parenting her like you parent your other DC isn't working, she probably is ND and requires a different approach to parenting.

The OP has two other children who must feel very frightened, but all the OP’s time and effort has to be for the child with destructive behaviour. How on earth can the needs of all the children be met in this situation?