Dd shouted and hit me

[Ffswhatshappenednow]

How would you deal with this?

Dd, 5.5 is generally a very sweet, fun and bright girl, but often finds her hard to control her temper.
We’ve just had a nice time making brownies, sat down with hot chocolate and read stories. All was fine until she saw i
was drinking out of her cup (she’s not normally territorial or fixed on certain things) we both recently bought new cups with dogs on and said only for us to use (bit of a joke as Dh uses all the cups and loses them)
Dds and I new cups are v similar, I was drinking from hers by mistake. She just completely blew up, shouted and hit me.

Ive just switched off the show she wanted to watch and said no more tv and she’s got more upset and said she doesn’t like me anymore and wants me to stay at work forever when I go (saying unkind things is fairly new too)

Is this all normal behaviour?

How would you deal with it?

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.

your opening paragraph is sinister

@Nestofwalnuts

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.

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.

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.

@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'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 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.

@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 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.

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.