Three year old behaviour issues

[MischiefManager]

I have made contact with adoption support about this and am waiting to hear back but wondered what others thoughts were.

I adopted DD at 11 months. She was very demanding and angry from the beginning, understandably so. This has steadily got worse until I am now questioning whether there is more to her behaviour. Firstly I should say she is the most wonderful little girl, she is lively and funny and can be really kind and affectionate. She has a great curiosity about the world. However the following are concerns I have;
-She hurts other children and animals frequently and often with no apparent reason or warning.
-She is incredibly impulsive and often appears unable to do the right thing even with all the support and encouragement in the word, this often leads to the above.
-Her frustration tolerance is exceptionally low and she will blow up at the drop of a hat. She is also completely unwilling to try things that she finds tricky 95% of the time.
-She is very overbearing with other children, constantly touching, getting too close and trying to help them to the point that they often avoid her 😔

• she shouts aggressively and pulls angry faces all the time at family and other children this ask leads t her upsetting other children

-she is a whirlwind in the house moving from one lot of mischief to the next. I have to keep a gate on her door or she’s up after I’ve put her to bed emptying the shampoo bottles or flooding the bathroom! -it can be very hard to get her attention if she is fixed on doing something, getting her to make eye contact in these circumstances is almost impossible.

• there are very few consequences that make any difference. Removing toys doesn’t bother her at all, time in and she’ll say a heart felt sorry before going back to the exact same thing. Calming time in her room is the same. Praise, stickers, treats mean nothing.
• she will make something at home or nursery and be so proud of what she’s made only to rip it up or throw it to the dogs moments later. She also often throws her toys to the puppy who she knows will chew them and is never upset when they are broken.

Some of her traits seem very adhd but without the hyperactivity as such. She can sit and watch a few tv programs or part of a film quietly (thank goodness 🤣). I know she’s three and three year olds are challenging but I work with children and I see her behaviour is extreme. She is a little better at nursery when she goes but it is a very free nursery with little structure so less likely to show some of the issues. There have been several unprovoked incidents of her hurting children there though. I’d really like to support her with this before she starts school. My biggest worry is that she won’t have friends 😔😔

We have books about feelings and feelings dolls. I try to practice mindfulness activities with her but she tends not to engage, I try to give her as much 121 as I can but none of it seems to have made much difference so far.

Has anybody experienced similar that has any advice or suggestions...other than a wine subscription 🤣

I think that the ideas for activities in the pp are excellent but I think that long walks as I suggested – ie continuous walking and covering of distance - have potentially a more dramatic significant positive physiological impact plus the regular 3 hours of undivided attention for the dc, walking without other distractions, is really good for relationship building and attachment, and getting to know your dc. For example, when my ds was 3 years we did 2 or 3 long walks a week for a number of months, it became the cornerstone of the therapeutic work we did, at the outset he had zero spatial awareness zero impulse control zero danger awareness and zero appreciation of the speed and distances of other objects or vehicles around him, and over a number of months it all normalised. This is just an idea, though I have been told by a psychologist (fellow sports mum) that this sort of work by parents can make all the difference.

I’d be really focusing on building your relationship with her, make that the absolute focus of your interventions rather than behaviour management I differ slightly here as I think in fact both are necessary. Both will feed into each other in a positive way (as long as behaviour management/imposing of boundaries is done in a supported and empathetic way). Also remember that behaviour is communication and that applies both ways – negative behaviours indicating a need which is not being met, positive behaviours (not destructive, engaged, vaguely co operatieve) indicating a child is settled and happy and so tells us that we are doing something right. Pick your battles with her I agree – I think this always applies with kids (and everything else in fact..)

@121sarah121 I suggested writing down the strategies and having a meeting upthread but I have had a re-think as I have remembered your other posts about your ds being violent at times and things getting worse. I apologise for length of this in advance but I wanted to be clear as I could in what I am going to try to explain. At the time I wrote out strategies for the school and had meetings with the school, as per my suggestion upthread, dc was 5 years and had at that point already very significantly improved. However, his behaviour at 5 was still pretty extreme, and the central focus of what I wrote for the school was that I was sure it was trauma and not a disorder or disabilities. I explained that I felt sure of this because of how he had been before the trauma plus how with all the therapeutic work I was doing and strategies I was using, he was continuously improving – ie constant improvement is to be expected for trauma (with the right therapies) – continuous dramatic improvement would not happen in the same way for disorders or disabilities. My ds' behaviour at 5 was similar to what you describe with your dc, incidentally – except that there was continuous improvement.

I needed the school to buy into what I was saying because if I felt strongly that if they started to bring in special measures or assessments at that point it would increase the stress for my dc (likely trigger more trauma reactions) and make recovery less likely. So this was all driven by my certainty. The teachers did agree to try, and over time they have also seen the huge changes, and I think that it has been this which has made it easy to work with them.

In your case I remember you saying that things were getting worse and that your dc had become violent. Therefore I think for you to work with a clinical psychologist with appropriate expertise outside school as I referred to in my earlier post would be hugely productive for you. The school may need to do their own assessments before acting but they would hopefully eventually act. In relation to what could be done for your dc if you watch this video from beginning to end you will see how a professional can work with you, the school, the doctor, all caregivers, together, to ensure a cohesive approach – the explanation for this starts at 7:15 so you can skip and watch that, but you would then need to go back and watch from the beginning to understand about the right therapy and how the brain heals from developmental trauma:

Thank you for all of the replies and sorry I haven’t responded sooner.

Yes my older daughter is my birth daughter.

We walk a lot anyway but more like regular hour long walks so yes we can definitely build on that if it could help.

Picking my battles is something I definitely do or I’d go mad!! I do sometimes have to remind myself of that though. At the moment I am only specifically addressing aggressive or dangerous behaviour the rest is just distraction and downplaying really.

I’ve rejigged my working week to give us more 121 time together. I’m also trying to put things in place to reduce her anxiety levels. I’ve made a visual timetable of the week, ‘calmed’ the house and I’m trying to stick rigidly to routines to make things as predictable as possible.

The Post adoption support social worker is going to refer her for a ‘specialist assessment’. I feel immensely relieved that my concerns have been taken seriously at this stage, for her sake.

She sounds very much like my dd. She was placed with me when she was 21 months and she's 9 now.

We've had a sensory assessment done and and also a psychologist assessement. We've been told that a lot of her behaviour is down to attachment disorder and we are all seeing a psychologist on a regular basis, she's also got some sensory issues.

This was all funded by the support after adoption team, but I really do have to push for it. You're entitled to 5k for these sorts of things but you need to push hard.

Parenting a child with attachment issues is a lot different than birth or 'normal' children (sorry if that offends anyone). As you said op, consequences don't work, actually any form of punishments don't work, you need boundaries though. Look up attachment parenting and PACE. Your support after adoption team will be able to help you.

I also pushed for a paediatrician assessment which took around 18 months to get and I involved school senco who were a massive help. She's now been diagnosed with ADHD and takes meds which have helped

The problem I found is the minute you mention the word 'adoption' professionals automatically think 'attachment' and it can be so difficult to get them to explore any other avenues