Posting here for traffic - I'm finding it hard to cope with my DD1's violence towards me and DD2.

[Lizzie48]

I've posted this on the adoption board but I'm posting it here too looking for a response as I'm finding this really hard right now.

I'm really at the end of my strength with my DD1, because of the way she's lashing out when she's angry.

My 2 DDs are adopted so behavioural issues have more complex routes than for children brought up by their biological parents so please don't judge my DD1 (8) too harshly. She's been diagnosed with Attachment Disorder and with SPD so life has been challenging to say the least.

She's been violent towards me and my DD2 on and off the last few years and it gets worse when she's not in her usual routine, ie school. We've been waiting for her to have therapy for some time, and it's finally going to start in the New Year, thankfully.

We’ve had some really bad behaviour from her the last few days. She’s had massive meltdowns and yesterday, just before church, she launched herself at tme and punched me hard twice and would have gone on if I hadn’t pulled away. And she regularly throws things and hurts her little sister, though she’s less aggressive with her from what I can see.

It’s becoming more scary because she’s now 8 years old and is growing stronger all the time. And although she hasn’t yet really hurt her sister, it’s becoming more of a safety issue as she gets older.

She's so vulnerable at the same time. She so often throws at me, 'You only care about (DD2) not me.' That's because she has consequences for her behaviour, which DD2 doesn't have as she doesn't behave in the same way that DD1 does.

Any advice on strategies we could use to deal with her behaviour would be very much appreciated.

We've been trying to use DS room to calm him down more the last couple of days but at the moment either a) I stay in there and hold him and he continues to attack me or b) he just runs out and continues to attack whoever else he was attacking.
So I've had to put him in and shut the door. I really hate doing this but at the moment there are no consequences for his violence and therefore it's just his first response to everything. He is however calming himself down if I'm sitting at the door. So I guess that's a win.

P.S. We are trying lots of connected stuff like one to one time, cuddles on the sofa and lots of praise for even small good behaviours. I really hate using his room like this but we can't go on with everyone flinching every time he comes in the room.

I hope therapy helps her

She obviously has a disconnect from her violent outbursts and thinks that it’s normal behaviour (maybe from her past home life). She needs to understand that there are better ways to deal with her frustration than violence. If she feels like DD2 is treated better, you need to emphasise that DD1 is only on time out etc as a result of her own actions and is nothing to do with DD2.

She was never with her birth family, she and her sister both went straight into foster care. It's not clear how she got the head injury, I personally suspect some kind of accident. There's also possible FAS and ADHD, but definitely Attachment Disorder. I don't like to think badly of her foster carers, but her older half sister has the same issues and she had the same foster carers. Her little sister had different carers, who really adored her.

At the end of the day, we don't know and it's all speculation. She had another violent meltdown this morning. All we can really do is make sure she's safe and keep the rest of the household safe, and then go and talk to her afterwards.

She just says 'I don't know' if we ask her why she flips out like that.

Our DCs were both in care from birth too but likely ADHD for DS, though there were apparently arrests for DV while birth mum was pregnant with DD, and birth mum's comments about DS' dad leaves me to suspect similar, plus other aspects of the prenatal environment that were, um, less than ideal.

Yes, absolutely the same here, drspouse, DV is the main reason for the birth parents not being able to look after their DCs, in social services' view along with drug use and learning difficulties in the BM's case. They were also trying to hide the pregnancy from SS, in the case of DD1. So altogether dysfunctional sadly. She tried to get her act together when pregnant with DD2, hence probably one reason why she doesn't have the same difficulties.

I do have a lot of sadness for DD1, she also has difficulties making friends. DD2 is regularly invited to parties and friends' homes, DD1 finds it harder. But feeling sad for her doesn't make coping with her violence easier.

Sounds like it's a similar situation for you with your DS.

An update: unfortunately the violence escalated over the holidays, and yesterday was the worst incident yet. DD1 (accidentally I do believe) pushed DD2 away from her because she knocked over the Jenga tower she had built. DD2 fell backwards and banged the back of her head on the bed. It must have been hard as she was very distressed and took a long time to settle down.

Then when I gave her a consequence, she picked up the rounders bat, which happened to be to hand, and hit me hard with it twice. It hurt me but I was able to minimise the damage and get myself away.

But this is getting well out of hand and I'm really worried about what the future will hold as she gets older and stronger. She doesn't display this behaviour towards other people, only DD2 and myself.

What's also unnerving is that she has zero empathy. She really didn't care about the distress that DD2 was in.

The other thing that makes this so hard is that she just doesn't go to sleep before 10:30/11pm. It's as though she just doesn't get tired at all. It's exhausting.

I'm not really sure what I'm looking for here. DD1 will be starting therapy soon, hopefully. I'm really just needing to vent about this. She keeps saying, 'You don't care about me at all.' Of course I love her. But I don't know how much more of this I can cope with. And the distress for DD2 last night means that we desperately need help.

The sad truth is that the real truth of what has happened to her and other children in her situation is never quite revealed which kind of makes it unfair to you the adopter because you don't know what you are dealing with.

I think what you need to hear is that it is common for adopted / fostered siblings to be split up where the older sibling generally has experienced more violence in their life and is therefore unmanageable, so that the younger siblings have a chance.

I have written this in a shortened version so it may comes across as a bit blunt which is not my intention at all I am just trying to relay the facts.

Oh no, I'm so sorry to hear that.

We had a very hard Christmas (it was hard when I posted but didn't get much easier) and as I say we have been a little more immediate in our consequences - in Reception class they had a 3 strikes system which DS understood and we have gone back to using that. And he has managed to calm himself down after one or two times and therefore not had to go and calm down in his room which is very good for him and we've been praising him a lot for that. (But we can always do more).

I know this is very anti-therapeutic but the research I've read about children who struggle with empathy is that it is VERY hard to teach it but it is effective to teach them that behaving as if you have it is how to get on in the world. So if you do something that is horrible to someone else, it will not get you what you want, and if you do something nice, it will.

DS does show empathy (e.g. offering toys to DD if she is crying, trying to hug her) but he also laughs when someone is hurt which we think is partly deflecting but also that normally, if you look happy, people laugh with you, so he's trying to cheer us up in an odd kind of way!

Things perked up towards the end of the holidays and DS had a lovely birthday party with no hitting (I highly recommend trampolining as unlike soft play everyone gets their own space!). Back to school today and he was cheerfully going in.

With the not getting tired - have you investigated medication? If she fits the bill for ADHD then the medication for that might help with outbursts, and if not then melatonin?

Sorry if that's already been said.

Thank you for your comments. I'm glad that things seem to be going better with your DS, drspouse. The 3 strikes idea sounds like something we could try with DD1, but it escalated so suddenly, that's the problem we have.

And yes, we have thought about ADHD. We need the therapy to start soon so it can be explored. It would help if medication could make a difference.

Neither of our DDs were with their birth family, they went straight into foster care for the first year of their lives. DD1 had a head injury whilst with the foster carers, leading to fitting and damage to her sight and hearing. Nobody knows how this happened.

We also find that sometimes it does escalate quickly.

So sometimes he'll hit someone, we'll say "you've hurt X, we don't hurt people, if you do it again you're getting a warning".
Then he calms down (sometimes he takes a swipe at thin air! and we can say "well done for not hitting anyone).

But sometimes he'll hit you, then again immediately and we say "you've done it again, I'm giving you a warning, then you need to go in your room to calm down if you do it again". And then he hits again within a couple of seconds.

He just got bunk beds and we're going to make him a den underneath with curtains to go in and hide. He likes hiding...

I don't think therapy will explore ADHD. You need a paediatrician for that.

We had therapy with CAMHS and it did give us some helpful ideas but it wasn't any type of diagnosis.

Haven’t read the replies sorry.

If she’s suspected spd can you google and try some deep pressure? My sons have spd and learning difficulties.

When she’s lashing out you can try saying firmly and slowly ‘ calm down’ while pressing on her shoulders and then if she does calm a bit trying pressing on her head. The saying calm down bit is normally more for me.

You will need to try it out while she’s calm first and some kids don’t like it. Try wrapping her in a tight blanket like a sausage roll and starting at her feet press down in her. Or try joint compression too.

Might not help at all but it was advised to us via occupational therapy and it works for us

ADHD isn't assisted by therapy (my sister and niece are both diagnosed and medicated for ADHD). You need to push for a diagnosis of ADHD and then consider whether medication will help. It would certainly improve your DHs concentration, her ability to follow instructions and may reduce her unpredictability (my niece without her meds is totally impossible to predict!) ADHD sufferers tend to stuggle with sleep and seem to need less than the rest of us. This is not helped with meds. They just plain sleep less!

Our post adoption support therapist did talk about organising an assessment for ADHD about a year ago.

It's the GP you want for ADHD. A letter from school will help too.

That's the problem, she behaves like an angel at school. She goes off into her own world sometimes and struggles with independent work, and she also finds friendships difficult to form, unlike her very popular little sister, but she never has meltdowns. She keeps it all bottled up and is like a pressure cooker waiting to explode when she gets home.

She actually demonstrated this openly one day when she said to her sister that she didn't have to behave as she wasn't in school anymore.

So attention is a problem at school. That's a symptom.

We have issues with DS although not involving violence towards others. He is in play therapy which has been really helpful. we also watched this video which helped us see things in a new light and put together some strategies at home. It also helped us feel we are not alone x

I'm in a similar situation with DS(9) (has AD). I bawled my eyes out at the docs this morning - he is letting another gp know what's going on because of the violence/aggression towards me. That will make 11 professionals involved with him/the family.

Other things happening:

CAMHS are doing Non Violent Resistance training with me but that will be a few more weeks yet and I'm expecting things to get worse before they get better.

SW has done a referral for a family support worker for me.

His school are buying into support for them from a Pupil Referral Unit outreach worker. They're also doing attachment training at last.

It's been absolutely, indescribably shit over Christmas and I'm dreading the start of school as he's school-refusing intermittently. He had exclusions twice in the last two weeks of term.

Didn't mean to hijack your thread, just letting you know you're not alone in your battles x

Full sympathy here. My DS is 10 and adopted we have lots of aggression and violence although I would say it is reducing. He has attachment difficulties,ADHD and SPD.
PACE is the way to go read up on PACE and Dan Hughes if you haven’t already. It’s really hard to apply consistently but when you can it does help.

Huge sympathy, ChipInTheSugar, it sounds horrendous. I was bawling my eyes out last night, just wondering where it would end. The CAMHS training sounds very useful, though, it sounds like the sort of thing that would really help me.

And full sympathy to you as well, Crusoe, it does sound like you're going through a very similar experience to us.

to you both.

And thank you, SitUp, that DVD looks really helpful, I'll show it to my DH as well. We both need that message.

Situp - great link, thank you.

And to answer a PP's question, yes DD1 does have SPD. It manifests itself in extreme fussiness, there are very few foods she will eat. She'll eat sticky rice, jacket potato with baked beans and cheese, cheesy pasta and plain pasta. Oh and Yorkshire puddings, toast with marmite or chocolate spread. Anything else it's really painful to get her to eat and she'll take absolutely ages to eat vegetables of any sort, though she will eat apples and grapes.

But even all these things she'll refuse to eat sometimes, and then she wants unhealthy snacks, which she'll sneak upstairs. If we say 'No, you can eat more of your tea,' she'll say, 'Don't you care that I'm hungry??'

She's so skinny that I get really worried that she might deliberately starve herself, because she'll absolutely refuse to eat anything she doesn't want to.

She has been known to throw a plate of food at me when it's not exactly what she wants, 'You know I don't like this!' And so it goes on.