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.

So you've looked into getting some help? Assessments to rule out any ND? Read about highly sensitive and/or challenging children? Because it sounds like she's in danger of being rejected and scapegoated. She has literally no choice but to try to cope with her feelings in the family she's in. You as an adult can look for help and make changes. She can't.

This is her personality. You have to accept it and work with it as opposed to against. Find something she loves and do a lot of it. I have one the same and he is immersed in his sport every second of the day and that helps.

Does she get much one to one time with you?

The way you have described her sounds exactly how my dgm would describe my dm! I have asd and adhd so do my dc and i would bet my life on it that if my dm was assessed she would be diagnosed as ND as well!

@ExtraOnions I second ' The explosive child '. Exhausting to get your head round at first but so is trying to use the typical parent approach.

OP, what changed everything for me was accepting that typical parenting will not work! Give choice and control always. Make everything a choice. Do you want to do it now or in half an hour? Are you going to do it this way or that way? Do you want to brush your teeth in the bathroom or we can sit in your room? She wants autonomy and will not stop until she gets some.

My son and I have a collaborative relationship. On the outside people would find it insane. It works. Dictatorial parenting will only make you ill in this scenario. It will never work.

Sitting together eating dinner, I let it go. You want your iPad on non stop eating your dinner, fine ,I let it go. You don't want to wear a coat, fine, I let it go.

You'll probably realise the more you look into it that alot of the things we demand of kids we can let go of. Pick your battles and life will get easier.

There's a great book called the explosive child that I recommended to try.

I would try to have fairly set routines so she knows what to expect.
Try not to be on at her for everything. Pick 2 or 3 issues and work on them for now.
Pick one discipline form and use it everytime for those 2 or 3 issues. Don't back down.
Model the behaviour you want from her.
Lots of praise.
Try to distract, manage situations before they escalate.
Find a couple of things that calm/distract her. Use them when you sense she is struggling or when you need a break.
Consider she might be nd and masking at school. Googling asd and adhd traits in girls

@gingerbreadbunny mine was strong willed too but I kept putting her back on that step. Or escalated to "if your bum leaves this step, you will lose X toy". Now she knows she won't win the battle and actually listens and understands that a firm word means something. I feel for you but you seriously need to be prepared to see through the consequence. If she knows she can win she will always push the boundary because she knows she will win and you won't won't the fuss.

ETA - This approach needs to be balanced by actively looking for opportunities to put her first like asking to hold her hand and telling all the kids you will take turns. She needs to feel like no1 sometimes but needs to hmunderstand boundaries

She sounds autistic. Speaking from experience.

I did wonder if she was nd to begin with and spoke to her nursery when she was around 3 who looked at me as though I was unkind for thinking that and said definitely not she's a lovely little girl and I felt bad for suggesting it.
I also told her teacher what she's like at home and she looked surprised and said she's good as gold for me and probably just gets tired.
A lot of people are suggesting it here so it sounds like it could be after all, I definitely see something the school doesn't.
I will write down some of it and talk to the GP and see what they think.
If they ask the school for an opinion they'll paint a very different child though.

OP just to pre warn you. I was gaslit beyond belief over the ND suspicions. By the GP, child's father, the school, even family blamed me. An NHS assessment was declined. My son it turns out is autistic/ADHD.

I strongly advise paying if you can afford it. It's approximately 1-2k. Our assessment involved watching my son in school. It revealed so much. It was the best thing we ever did.

My DD’s school didn’t think she was ND either. Smart, yes. A rule follower, yes. Able to debate adults under the table if she thought a rule was poorly made, yes. Perhaps not quite like other children, but perfectly lovely, yes.

we didn’t figure things out until she was 9 and stopped being able to hold things together at school. At that point it was an emergency and navigating a system not set up to handle children in crisis was awful.

I would agree about the ND thing. This is exactly like my DS.

The PDA thing particularly. Might be good to watch the webinars by Naomi Fisher.

The biggest clue is that you have three conspicuously NT children, and one that is totally different.

Sounds a lot like my son, who is autistic. Things I found that help:
Infinite patience
Not escalating the situation by reacting to whining
Establish rules about whose turn it is to speak
Making sure they have time to speak to you one to one, especially straight after school
Accepting that some children take much longer to develop self control and need to be treated as you would a younger child

Autism in girls presents differently than autism in boys.

Your OP had me wondering straight away.

Don’t let them fob you off with ‘she maintains eye contact’ etc.

Girls present differently to the very male diagnostic criteria.

I kept looking and thinking, no she doesn’t have repetitive behaviour or obsessions with collecting trains.

She did however watch the same thing over and over again ( and still does) . She was obsessed with Jellycats and Minecraft . Seemed normal at the time. And this is why girls get missed. Animals or teddies are normal things for girls. My Dd never played with her Jellycats, just organised them all the time.

This has a helpful list. Take it with you. She may also be adhd.

https://autisticgirlsnetwork.org/keeping-it-all-inside.pdf

And l used to feel like you. Like ‘What am l doing wrong?’

I remeber trying to wrestle her on the naughty step when she was about 4 ( size of a 7 year old) and she would not do it. And l kept looking at Supernanny and thinking WTF?

And she’s be tantrumming, and any challenge or attempt to discipline made it worse.

Shes 17 now and just lovely. So lovely. Still gets worked up. Still obsessed with Jellycats. And Taylor Swift. I know everything about that bloody woman😭

I agree with others about getting an assessment.
my DS is not autistic, but has special needs and ADHD. Your OP was very familiar to our experience as a family. It is exhausting. The sooner you get help the better.

I also have 4, one of whom was a much bigger handful than the others, though I always adored him and never wished him not here. He has, I suspect, got ADHD - as a child he was strong willed, volatile, needy, explosive and impulsive. He is also my only left handed child. As a young adult he is a total delight, and enormously creative, doing fabulously well at uni on a highly creative course where he can hyperfocus.

You’re getting lots of posters (including me) who have ND kids because we can all relate to the title of your post! We love our kids of course but boy it can be hard.

i would read up on ASD / ADHD and PDA in girls and see if any of it rings true. I would look at the PANDAS approach for PDA because I think it’s helpful approach even if she is not PDA.

and also the explosive child as others have mentioned

@mossylog the only significant difference it will make is in school. He will be given extra time to complete exams and extra support in lessons, although I'm not sure of the specifics yet. My son is also pleased with the diagnosis, as it explains for him why he struggles with some things. He used to think he was stupid for not being able to follow instructions for example. Now he realises that his brain processes information differently, I think he is relieved.

sounds just like my DS - he has adhd and we're also waiting on the results of his recent autism assessment. He would drain the life out of you.

@mossylog I should also add that I think it might help me be more patient with him, when he is being " difficult"

This just doesn’t work for NT kids.

The horror l remember of the naughty step, then removing stuff. It just made her worse and worse. Until we were both hysterical.

Adopting low demand, options and rewarding good behaviour changed everything.

She sounds insecure and she'll be picking up on your feelings too, which won't be helping.

Insecurity is a sign of ND as well so I agree with the posters who are suggesting that.

I wish someone had mentioned it to me earlier. School said she was “anxious”, found it hard to make friends, and hard to work in a team.

She ended up having multiple panic attacks (or meltdowns), had a mental health breakdown, for depressed, didn’t leave her room at all, missed all of Y10 & Y11, plus is now a year late a college (but is attending)

ASD was first mentioned as a possibility at 14, diagnosed at 17.

She / We are in a much better place, but we had a hellish few years as I tried to parent a ND child as if they were NT.

I second what someone said about “collaboration”, things really changed when I said “I’m on your side”

She sounds just like my 6 year old Dd. Shes being referred for a ASC assessment. I also did an online test for Oppositional Defiant Disorder on the ADD website and I actually laughed as it's like it was designed around her.

www.additudemag.com/what-is-oppositional-defiant-disorder/