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.

This sounds troubling.

I have to say that I did similar with my daughter when she was about two. I would cradle her on my arms until her distress stopped - we could do this ten times a day, every day for about six months. It was exhausting. It was part of a bigger picture of therapeutic parenting. Things got much better but she would still have the occasional spectacular outburst - on one occasion she got in such a state, she completely trashed her room in a few seconds and barricaded herself in (she was about 14 then).

I think the problem OP has is that she didnt start parenting her daughter in line with whst she really needed at a young age, and so the behaviours are set and she is of course quite big now.

It will imo take a lot of sensitive parenting to turn things round. I suspect that shutting her in her room now will do more harm than good.

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.

For some DC this would be the case. For others, it wouldn’t.

You need to call social work and say you can’t cope and that everyone in the home is at risk of harm and ask them to do an urgent family assessment

it might be that respite care or temporary foster care might be a short term solution

you definitely need help and support and social work are better placed for this than GP school

the other source you could try for advice is NSPCC

good luck it sounds really tough for you all @pinkstargaze

Contact your local social services and tell them what’s going on. They should help you.

Hi OP. On the days where she behaves this way, can you break down her daily routine and what happens when she gets home? Also what happens right before she lashes out physically and other family members way of handling it?

I have an adult daughter who can be physically aggressive and I had to adapt how I approached her and recognise the triggers and minimise as much as possible.

In those neurodevelopmental conditions, these medications can have paradoxical effects and actually make the behaviours worse.

I agree with others saying that the usual strategies just aren’t going to work here and it will take some time to find the ones that do. People who haven’t experienced this just don’t get it and they’re lucky!

Consequences and rewards for example are pointless with lots of kids. Clear, consistent boundaries are needed but that’s hard when you’re on your knees and experiencing violence.

I highly recommend NVR as an intervention and it’s parent led so she’s not actually required to buy into it for it to help.

Its so hard when school don’t see the behaviours but schools need to start understanding that presentation can be so different at home and it doesn’t mean parents are lying.

I agree that an early help self referral could be helpful in being able to access some of this support. Whether they offer NVR depends on your area but you can self fund if that’s possible for you.

Absolutely and it would have to be very extreme circumstances and risks for a psychiatrist to prescribe an anti-psychotic to a child of that age.

Plus you would need to have tried everything else first including parenting work and a full assessment of needs.

She needs an educational psychologist assessment and to get the ball rolling on an EHCP.

I’m sorry if I’m repeating something already suggested but if no one believes the behaviour you are dealing with can you set up hidden cameras to record her behaviour etc as evidence for your GP.
I do hope you find the support that you both need.

The OP is at the stage of wanting to place her daughter into care, so I think she should at least try it to see if her daughter is one of the children this would work for.

As troubling as the family living in fear of an 8 year old girl or her mother placing her into care?

It depends on the child. Some can cope with it become accustomed to dressing as part of a routine.

i learned the hard way that if you push kids with PDA to do stuff when young, they can become very aggressive.

This happened with my daughter who is now 24. We didn’t understand that insisting she did things when a toddler would damage her mental health for the long term.

you can always tell when it’s a nervous system difficulty because the child’s heart beat will thump and you can hear it - this happens with my 6 year old. They also cry actual tears.

My 24 year old is now at a point where she won’t tolerate people being near her or touching her.

I hope OP does record her, as it is really the only way to let others know what the family is going through.

You may think OP should try it, but it wouldn’t work for all. For some, it would make the situation worse. You cannot say ‘it would clearly end at some point’ with such certainty. You don’t know it will.

I can, because her daughter isn't a superhuman with unlimited endurance. She would become exhausted at some point. That's just human biology.

No, you can’t. When distressed some DC with additional needs can appear superhuman in their strength and energy, and can keep going long after the adults have exhausted their strength, energy and endurance.

There have been useful posts from many on not doing that. Hopefully the op is talking them on board.

I can’t see anything about this that says additions needs. She may only be 8 but sounds really sadistic. Hidden cameras do sound like a good idea as suggested

But that would take hours of screaming, maybe destroying things, self harm, and it would just start up again the next day. Neighbours would be calling the police...
It is an extremely high risk and doubtful strategy.

Every neuro divergent child is different and what works for one won't work for another.

Both my daughters have asd diagnoses. One was relatively easy behaviour wise - to get her out of a state we would play music, as there were songs that would immediately change her mood. Her sister on the other hand....

I don't think there is a single technique which is a magic solution for these children and parents. You have to firstly set a suitable daily environment, then watch like a hawk for rumblings of distress and intervene quickly with strategies, constantly de-escalating and allowing for repair, all while keeping calm yourself and everyone safe. It is not easy of course.

There seems to be a lot of excuses why basic discipline won't work, but based upon OP's replies it doesn't sound like it's actually been tried.

Before putting a child into care, I'd personally try everything - starting with basic discipline/enforced timeouts. The daughter is capable of behaving at school. Her home might be her 'safe place' but physically and verbally abusing her family clearly isn't acceptable. Boundaries, standards and expectations need to be enforced. If that means 3 hours of screaming and a trashed room, so what? Surely that's better than putting her into care?

Of course it has been tried - the other two siblings behaviour is fine.

You're not the OP and the OP has said that timeouts haven't been tried - she's too big to get up the stairs, if she did get her up the stairs she'd try to leave the room, she'd turn the room upside down, she might damage the door, etc.

I wouldn't be suggesting it, if the OP had said that it's been tried and failed.

You’re being obtuse. If you read the OP’s posts, she says that she tried time out when her dd was a toddler and it didn’t work then.

if you have two children who have no problems and one for whom nothing works then it’s reasonable to assume that traditional methods don’t work for that child.

Sounds very challenging. Could you ask someone to video her when she’s attacking you and tell her you will show the video to her teacher unless she stops this type of behaviour? She would probably hate her teachers to see this so it might work. If one of my children hit me when they were young, my DH would have carried them to their room and held the door shut until they calmed down. Does she get screen time withdrawn or any other privileges withdrawn as a result of her behaviour?