My 8 year old is out of control

[holidaymakers]

I am really struggling to get through the summer holidays, my daughter 8 is hateful and gets such a kick out of annoying her older sister, she hits her for no reason but to make her cry several times a day.

She is so rude to me and her dad and whenever we speak to her she shouts shut up.
If she’s asked to do anything we get a flat no screamed in our face.
I have confiscated things, removed privileges and she’s missed out on things but it doesn’t change the behaviour she just reminds us how much she hates us.

I feel sorry for her sister for what she puts her through, she is so kind and well behaved in contrast.

We have suspected ODD and ADHD for a while the doctor wants evidence from the school and we’re a long way off any diagnosis.

She constantly reminds me I can’t tell her what to do and I can’t make her, she hits me whenever I ask anything of her and she makes a high pitched squeal all day every day which is ear piercing and unbearable to hear.
She demands things instantly for example if she’s suddenly hungry she’ll repeat it while hitting me until she gets something or she’ll constantly kick her sister saying I won’t stop until I get food.
She is so angry, constantly talks through gritted teeth with fists clenched and I’m so jumpy around her because I’m constantly flinching I never know when she will hit.
I know I have to find a way to cope for my other daughter but I don’t know how.
I can’t think straight through the high pitched squeal, it’s driving me insane.
Her dad is at work all day but even he is drained within minutes of being home and is at his wits end too.
Shes ruined our life, our family, my daughters home life and if it wasn’t for my older daughter I’d walk away tomorrow and happily never see her again but I couldn’t leave my eldest. I feel so done, yet I’m also worried that if she continues to hurt her sister I could lose her if I can’t prevent it and I know I would never be able to look at her again if she caused that.

Put a lock on your older daughters door so that she has a safe space.
i don’t know what else to suggest to push through a diagnosis.

It’s not a personal reward, we go out and about as a family especially in the holidays.

My point was that whatever we do and whatever she gets is never enough and she’ll always have a tantrum about something she didn’t get or somewhere we didn’t go, this leads to anger bursts.

Agree.

I'd love to understand more about how to tell the difference between a child masking e.g behaving at school and exploding at home, vs a child who behaves at school because there's simply no choice and doesn't at home because their bad behaviours get them what they want at home. Is there very good scientific evidence for how to distinguish real masking?

I've had children push it on playdates at mine, realise it isnt allowed, and behave very well, only for mum or dad to say at pick up "Well, yes, they would behave for you. They're masking, i'm their safe space. They'll let it all out with me at home."

Maybe the parents just are not strict/strong enough, or consistent enough in applying unpleasant consequences over long periods.

There. I've said it. 😳

[hides from the inevitable pile on as everyone tells me I know nothing etc].

If your daughter picks up and how you feel about her that will escalate her behaviour. Pour as much love as you can into her when she is not being aggressive. Pick your battles, it sounds like she could be PDA. The main problem seems to he hitting her sister so you need to let the other things go for now and focus on tackling that behaviour. If she is always on trouble there is no reason for her to behave.
If she starts hitting her sister ask her sister to move to another room, you block the door so she can't get through, block the hitting out to you. Tell her she will stay in that room until she has calmed down.
Give her a daily routine, a visual board may help. Incorporate plenty of snacks, if she is demanding food and getting aggressive when she doesn't have it hunger could be a trigger.
Try and get lots of movement in for her, if she is ADHD she will likely have sensory issues and have a higher need for physical activity. Get her doing cartwheels in the garden, dance routines, trampoline, climbing at the playground, swimming, whatever will get her using all her muscles and meeting her sensory needs. Some children benefit from deep preassure too, firm back rubs, weighted blankets/teddies.
Children with ADHD do need a different style of parenting, the typical removal of things they enjoy won't work. Meeting the sensory needs, reducing demands and rejection, giving the right level of stimulation (which varies child to child and time to time, some need high stimulation, some low stimulation, some need time doing both).

Shes 2 years older but she doesn’t have it in her retaliate, she’s the opposite and just couldn’t bring herself to, she has such a kind and caring way, it’s just not in her nature.

Remember, children actually need the safety and security of knowing their parent is in control, not them. Its terrifying for a child to feel that their parent is not in control and they are. Children associate control with responsibility and do not have the maturity to cope with either.

I don't have the answers OP, but I'm so sorry that your family is going through this. If she is reasonably okay at external settings I'd probably try and book her into a holiday camp of some sort. It won't address the root cause , but it'll give you and her sister some much needed respite. I hope you get the help that you need 🙏

Just in short to save me writing an entire novel later on. These are the major things I have learned which I didn't know before, which helped me a lot.

1. The first big thing which helped me understand the root cause of this kind of behaviour was understanding the concept of dysregulation (aka "stress behaviour"). This was life changing for me, so it would be helpful to know what you know about this subject. In the way I'm thinking about it, it does describe a very specific thing, unfortunately the word "(dys)regulation" is used a lot more casually on parenting social media now so the meaning has become a bit muddied. If you get the specific meaning then I think you will know. It's more than just calm vs agitated.
2. Understanding what they call the coercive cycle and how we were escalating each other. You can briefly look this up, but the basic thing is stop engaging when she's picking a fight, by learning some specific things to replace your automatic/instinctive response. Figuring out my own emotional regulation has been a long road. I'm not fully there yet, but definitely improved.
3. Then, I had been through the whole gamut of gentle/empathetic/low demand/etc parenting - much of this is helpful, but I also rediscovered behaviourism through a more modern, methodical lens (OMG I sound like a twat sorry) - I had always been fairly anti-behaviourism because I thought this was just "enact power over your child until you win" - which does not sit right with me, but also doesn't actually work with this level and frequency of behaviour anyway. There is a more subtle, nuanced level which does help, but you have to do it in quite a specific way.
4. Sensory processing issues are also often very useful to understand a bit about. Many children with ADHD have sensory processing issues, sometimes in a non-obvious way. Most of them are sensory seeking (e.g. want to be moving constantly, making noise/mess/etc, has to be literally ON your body at all times etc) but many are also sensory sensitive (overwhelmed and pushed into a stress state by sensory input such as noise, smells, etc) and they may also be low registration (clumsy, miss internal body cues such as toilet need/hunger/too hot/cold).

It will help me direct my post a bit better if you can tell me where you already are with these four topics, and/or which one or two you want to hear more about.

In case I don't come back for several days I would also recommend the following resources:

Stuart Shanker's Self-Reg
The Occuplaytional Therapist
The OT Butterfly
TheTeacherMomma
Conscious Discipline (Becky Bailey)
Mona Delahooke
ABCs of Everyday Parenting on Coursera (version without certification is free)
ADHD Dude
The Declarative Language website (I have heard the books are good; haven't read them yet).

My DS15 Asd has always been hard to manage but when puberty hit 12-13 he became violent. Luckily I'm strong but I had to use all my force to restrain him from hurting himself, his younger brother, me or his father.
You do need a plan for when she's older.

Also, please book a meeting for your older daughter with a therapist. I did this for my younger son. Google "glass children" to learn more about the effects on siblings living with someone like your DD or my DS.

If you have no compassion and just want to come on to put the op down maybe it’s time to seek therapy for yourself to see why you’re so unhappy that you have to put others down to make yourself feel better.
now I think it’s time you make yourself a hot drink and go about your day without the unhelpful comments on here. Absolutely no need for it.

Her daughter will not be immune to how her mother feels though! You are naive to believe this child does not sense how her family view her. Ever heard of a self fulfilling prophecy. It is complex dynamics at play here and in all honesty we have not heard the 8 year olds side of events.

Of course the situation is unliveable but, it’s not for an 8 year old to sort out either.

The adults in this situation are letting both children down.

A solution needs to be found but an 8 year old is not responsible. The parents are.

If OP can’t change her feelings of disdain and repulsion and wanting to abandon her own child she needs to get help because at the moment these feelings are only furthering the 8 year olds bad behaviour.

I have worked in autism diagnosis for over 20 years and I don't think there's enough info here to assume PDA autism.

I actually don't think it sounds much like PDA. "I will kick my sister until you get me food" is demand-led behaviour, not demand-avoidant.

OP consider the purpose of DD's behaviours. Where there are attachment issues behaviour is often related to "keeping me in mind" - the child needs attention directed back to them. I wonder if DD is neurodivergent, which means that some of her behaviour is difficult to understand and handle, but you have accidentally got stuck in a negative attention spiral. She gets attention in a series of negative ways. You respond in punitive ways. This isn't intended to be judgemental. We all do the best we can at parenting and kids don't come with a manual.

When is DD calm and happy? What happens between you at those times? Do you catch her being good? I don't mean treats and outings. I mean watching a film with her or joining her playing a game.

It all sounds like the relationship has got stuck in being transactional and you are missing connection. That means joining her in her world and liking and admiring aspects of the way she moves through life. Find the glimmers.

Will she let you reconnect at the end of the day with the likes of a bedtime storey or cuddle time watching a tv programme before bed?

.I recommend following naturedockids on Instagram, which is run by Lucinda Miller, she specialises in helping children with symptoms like your daughter. But from a holistic and nutrition perspective. Her blog has some amazing insights and advice too, it might help you.

@holidaymakersit sounds like ADHD, my son is the same, not as bad but I could see we was heading down this track.
he doesn’t mask at school but in the end he was taking over the whole house and it was affecting us as a family.
we made the decision to go private and he since the age of 6 he is medicated. It’s changed his life and also ours.
dint get me wrong, it’s still hard as before the meds kick in, he is running around, high pitched noises and refusing to get dressed and also at night when the medicated has worn off, but overall he is 100% better to manage now.
if you are in the North west, I would be happy to share the details of his clinic he goes to.

Lots of helpful posts here. Here's what I would add...

• ND children often have (undiagnosed) ND parents. That makes it harder for everyone since they need patience and understanding, but their parents can often be overwhelmed and not having their needs met, which makes it harder to meet the kids' needs and connect with them. I'm not saying you're ND as you haven't indicated that, but something to consider.
• Be kind to yourselves. Do less. Focusing on minimising stress for your family. Take a step back and think about 'stress points' and what parts of your everyday routine are causing stress. Is it getting dressed in the morning? Getting ready to go out? Dinner in the evening?
• Make sure you have time for yourself. If you can, book both girls into (different) holiday clubs a couple of days a week. You'll feel much less ground down and more able to deal with the behaviour if you get a break from it.
• Replace stressful days out with low-key outings. Hang around your local playground - great for developing social skills in a low-key setting while keeping active. Also, lots of children find activities like swinging and climbing soothing and helpful for decompressing.

She is seriously unhappy because she has lower threshold of patience / tolerance even when she is hungry, she hits her sister or mother. By 8 kids should have some patience / tolerance. If she is hungry, her mum would need at least a few minutes to sort the food for her, even if it means heating up already cooked meal.

Yes she does, she’s utterly exhausted at 7:00 and will ask to go to bed, we have a cuddle and she is lovely again, sometimes she’ll apologise for her behaviour and other times she will deny it ever happened.

The other daughter is fine so I don’t think it’s her family that are making her unhappy.

This sounds very difficult and very unfair for your older dd. I hope you find some solution because your other dd can develop resentment in her adult years that you didn’t do much to protect her. I am not saying it’s your fault but you need to get some help.

Can you afford to see a doctor privately? She needs some sort of behaviour therapy.

She's the child, just discipline her.

Or possibly undiagnosed as yet?
Therefore her needs not being addressed.

It doesn’t help that she’s got no friends so nobody to play with at school and then she comes home and her sister who loves her to bits and wants to play with her gets called names and hurt.

This is the most obvious answer. She's basically spent 4 years at school with no friends and almost certainly internalised the idea that she's unpleasant, unlovable and not like everyone else. With ND children, it's the tiny things that make the biggest difference. Just being included in friendship groups, being invited to birthday parties, learning how to play or befriend new children can make a massive difference to their long term behaviour and MH.

ND children often have intense special interests or hobbies. OP didn't mention anything here but they will often be happy, calm down or self regulate if allowed to pursue their special interest. Unhappy ND kids can often be improved if they have the feeling their parents take an active interest in their interests and they are encouraged to pursue it to the fullest (including buying them supplies, merchandise, or researching and attending events related to their interest). At the same time, parents need to work extra hard on proving a normal social life which may involve organising playdates, befriending other parents, taking on an active role in the school community or doing anything else possible from a parental perspective to make it easier for the child to have positive social experiences.

What’s a typical day like?
what does she enjoy doing? Is there an activity/hobby that she focuses on?
Lots Of good advice. I agree with others - lots and lots of time outside is essential.