To wish I didn't have my daughter

[gingerbreadbunny]

I have 4 children, 3 are lovely easy children and 1 who whinges and whines all day about anything and everything.
She's really hard work, the other 3 go straight to bed but not her she's up fussing back and forth for hours, it's exhausting.
She doesn't ever want to go anywhere and will make everything about her by just being difficult and awkward, she won't do as she's told,
if she doesn't get her own way she screams and tantrums and ruins everyone else's day.
She constantly and deliberately upsets her brothers and sister who have had enough, she'll only play with them if she gets her own way and if they don't want to play her way she'll ruin it for them or won't play.
She's 6 and I love her but I just know life would be so much happier for us all if we hadn't had her.
I feel like she sucks all the energy out of me every single day.
She always wants everything to be about her and will deliberately talk over any siblings who try and talk to me.
If I hold another's hand she'll pull them off me so she can hold my hand instead.
I just don't have any energy left, she's completely depleting me and dh.
She is full of anger and hatred and is wearing us down.
She can be lovely when it suits her but it's usually short lived, just until something doesn't go her way.

If she is ND, labels can be very helpful but it depends how you use them.
Natural consequences instead of toys/pleasures taken away.

Heads up OP @gingerbreadbunny

not sure if you know but I just saw this on my FB feed as an article in the Sun.
www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/27606935/mum-of-4-whinger-wish-didnt-have-her

Thing is, the minute a child behaves badly, many on Mumsnet say it must be neurodivergent. Of course, that may be true, but it is also equally true that the child may be very naughty and wilful. If a parent has tried reasoning, cuddling, discussing, naughty step, banishing to the bedroom etc, and nothing has worked, there comes a time when a swift smack on a clothed bottom will be enough to shock a child out of bad behaviour. No one wants to smack a child - but if nothing else is working, that will. It's not abuse. It's teaching a child boundaries if nothing else does the job. In my experience, knowing it will happen of necessary is enough of a deterrent to stop bad behaviour .

This.

read “we need to talk about Kevin”.

😍😍

Sorry but there is usually a reason behind behaviour. Mum needs help to find that and fix it.

"If nothing else is working, that will."

Always? Don't be silly. Of course it isn't a definite that it will work. And if it doesn't 'work' then you could be left with damage to the relationship and a child (who may be neurodiverse or not) now frightened if their parent.

I think that would be rather sad, don't you?

Lots of us grew up with parents who smacked us. Some genuinely lovely parents who at the time didn't know better and thought it was normal / the right thing to do. The fact most of us may have made it out unscathed and not having deep wounds from it doesn't make it acceptable or right for an adult to hit a child.

Imagine someone double your size smacking you. Would it make you respect them more? Trust them more? Enjoy their company more? No, it would make you more fearful of them. That's not a healthy power dynamic between children and adults.

" She has a 10 year old brother, then there's her sister who's 7, she is 6 and her younger brother 4 so they are all growing up together."

So she was expected to be a good baby while you attended to her older sister's "two's", and you had a brand new baby when it was her turn. You were exhausted and PP when you say she started to "act up".

Is your 7 yr old quiet and withdrawn?

You clearly wanted a large family, but one of your children is not the quiet and compliant child that you expected and the others are, and you are letting her see that. The hand holding thing tells me that she is jealous, and feels left out.

You can say the words “it’s not abuse” but that doesn’t make it true.

Also @Snippysocks the regular smacking that was dished out to me did not shock the ADD out of me. Funny that!

Or it teaches your child that it's ok to hit someone when they do something you don't like.

Regular smacking would never work and I've never advocated it. The fact that it's rare is what makes it effective.

If you’re smacking a child it’s either because you’ve lost control, in which case you need help with coping strategies to avoid it happening again, or you’re in control and you think that inflicting physical pain on a child is an acceptable thing to do. Either way, you need help.

I agree completely.

On reading the original post I thought of Oppositional Defiance and Pathological Demand Avoidance as I have seen similar behaviour in a young female child neighbour.
She got a diagnosis eventually - her parents were unwilling to accept that she was ND initially.

I haven’t read the whole thread but wanted to say she may be neurodivergent and masking. She may be behaving well at school and masking and then explodes when she is at home as you are her safe person.
A website I recommend is autisticgirlsnetwork.org. Lots of info there. They have Facebook pages too and it will have links to adhd.

Whether it’s rare and effective or regular and ineffective isn’t the point though. Maybe you can get a child to behave through fear of being hit but at what cost?

Right now, teachers are leaving in droves because of discipline problems in school with badly behaved children who have had ineffective boundaries. What many Mumsnetters consider 'hitting', I see as firm boundary markers - used rarely and acting as a deterrent. 'Gentle' parenting works with many children. It doesn't work with all. Unless something terrifying is happening in our society, most children are not ND. They need boundaries to ensure they become useful members of society.

Some of us have suggested that OP looks at this, but it does seem to me that she is laying all of the blame for behaviour on the child. Whether she is ND or not, it is clear that their relationship has broken down and she need professional help to fix it.

@Snippysocks sorry but smacking is just crap lazy parenting among other things

thankfully in this day and age most people see it as archaic anyway

God I feel sorry for the OP reading this thread.

I don't know if the poor thing has gotten much from it. It's been a mixed bag in places!

Hope @gingerbreadbunny is doing ok.

Out of interest, would you be happy enough for your child to be smacked in school?

If my child was badly behaved, I would expect 1. a verbal warning issued to my child, 2. a sanction, 3. communication with me as mother. Then I would quiz my child and add sanctions of my own. I'd support the teacher in any sanctions apart from smacking.

My daughter was like this at 6. She was arguably worse. However she was an absolute angel at school. A friend with an ND daughter made me aware that there were lots of flags for neurodivergency, and that "bad behaviour" is just a child's way of communicating their needs aren't being met. I researched ND friendly parenting methods and switched up my approach which helped massively.

I also actively worked on identifying what needs were unmet. After my daughter was calm, we would discuss her "big feelings", and talk about what made her feelings "grow" like that. It may be controversial but I made sure she didn't feel as though I was shaming her for her behaviour, because I wanted her to open up to me, so I could find and address the root of the problem.

I also made sure my expectations were very clear and simple, and got DD a star chart to reinforce this. It really helped as DD is super competitive. I also made sure that consequences for rule breaking were clear and consistent, and tried to only use natural consequences that were related to DDs behaviour.

I also booked to go on the Triple P parenting course to learn new parenting strategies. But COVID put a stop to that.

For what it's worth DD is 10 now, she's been diagnosed with ADHD, moderate learning difficulties, and a mild language disorder. She's also on the ASD diagnosis waiting list. The root of all DDs behaviour was quite simply that she sees the world around her, and everything within it very differently to her peers.

DD rarely gets defiant anymore, and meltdowns are non existent. I genuinely think changing my parenting strategies has done far more than her diagnosis. It was hard work changing everything I did. But it's been so worth it

GIRL. This sounds EXACTLY like my daughter. Even from infancy she would scream… not cry… scream… CONSTANTLY. Just in anger at the world. She refused to sleep as a toddler and would have meltdowns constantly that (like you said) were so draining and made me regret having her. Like you, I have 3 other kids who are all easygoing, and she will force them into her games… then throw a fit if the world doesn’t bend to her whim.

She is now 14 and diagnosed with ASD (since 8 years old), as well as ODD. She hit all of her milestones, so we didn’t catch it as early as many boys get diagnosed.

Medication and therapy make it manageable (sometimes), but now hormones throw a whole other element in the mix. My advice is to her to a good child psychologist… they’ll be able to help you figure out what she is struggling with! It’ll get easier :-)