dp hit my ds tonight and i cant stop shaking

[justsooverwhelmed89]

hi, sorry if this is all over the place this is my first post and im typing one handed with the baby on me

i dont even know if im in the right place. im really shaken and panicking a bit and just need to know if im overreacting or if this is as bad as it feels right now.

tonight dp hit my ds (6). it was one smack but it was in anger and i saw it happen and i cant get it out of my head.

before anyone jumps on me please understand the context. ds has very challenging behaviour. lots of shouting, swearing, throwing things, getting right in dp’s face, pushing and laughing when told off. tonight he’d been at dp for over an hour, constant noise, screaming, throwing toys, deliberately wee’d himself on the floor and then stood there smiling saying “wasnt me”. dp kept telling him to go upstairs, to stop, to leave him alone. ds followed him room to room shouting.

dp has been signed off work for his mental health, anxiety and depression, and has really struggled lately esp with ds. he gets overwhelmed by noise and confrontation and i could see him getting more and more wound up. i told ds to go upstairs, he refused, dp told him again, ds squared up to him and shouted right in his face.

and dp just snapped. he smacked him on the arm/side. ds screamed, i screamed, dp immediately backed away and started saying “oh my god what have i done”. he didnt hit him again. he didnt leave a mark. but it happened.

dp is now downstairs on the sofa crying saying he’s a monster and he should leave. ds calmed down weirdly quickly and is now in bed. baby is asleep on me (for now).

this has NEVER happened before. dp is not violent. hes gentle if anything. he hates shouting. i feel like im defending him already and i dont even know why.

i dont know what im asking. am i being stupid for thinking this is a huge line crossed? do i need to do something? report it? leave? or am i allowed to see this as a one off that happened because everything is just too much right now?

please be kind, im exhausted and shaking and already feel like the worst mum in the world. i just need some perspective 😞

I agree.

My, then, 8yo, pretty small, dd hospitalised me once when she was lashing out, and I'm not a small woman and was able to handle myself pretty well back then.

I've still got scars to this day.

There's no medal required.

Because it's a 6yr old. Yes they flail. And?

And in this case, the child was no violent ball of rage, just being an absolute arse, goading, urinating on the floor and laughing about it. Screaming, yelling, unparented. He got a slap on the arm....and would you look at that, he became "weirdly calm."

Forming excuses that just make mum some helpless bystander, incapable of handling her small child, are a big reason as to why the child is like this in the first place.

There's always an amateur psychologist on these threads waiting to diagnose a child from a brief description they've never met.

I am fully aware, I have a child with addition needs. They need strong, resilient and boundaried parents who are prepared to engage with the behaviours and be curious- none of that is happening here. OP and her partner need parenting support regardless of where the issues are stemming from - an armchair diagnosis solves nothing.

Christ on a bike. I’d have snapped and smacked him, too.

My mother, on the other hand, would have knocked his face off, stuck it back on and knocked it off again before he’d even got to the peeing on the carpet bit. I shudder to even think of it.

I don’t condone hitting kids, but we’re going to have to come up with some sort of middle ground between endless pointless appeasement and losing our shit, aren’t we? Because kids aren’t doing very well at the moment. Nobody seems to know what the fuck’s going on.

Yes.
Nowt worse that fellow SN parents putting down others for not managing things quite like they have.

I went to an ASD meet up when mine was first diagnosed, and never went back as it was full of smug mums commenting that the “violent kids” all had useless parents who couldn’t/didn’t discipline like they had. It’s shit.
Empathy doesn’t go amiss.

Whatever. I genuinely don’t believe you’ve had a violent child though, you sound like you have no idea.

Please do not diagnose children you've never met online. This may have similarities with your child, but does not mean it has the same cause. Daytime wetting is a known thing for children who are anxious, stressed or experienced trauma. Toilet habits are the one thing children feel control over, and so they can use it to express their emotions.

Here's a good resource on daytime wetting :www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mental-health/parents-and-young-people/information-for-parents-and-carers/children-who-soil-or-wet-themselves-for-parents

This line stands out:
"It can also happen if your child is anxious or has experienced emotional upset."

As PP have said, he is dealing with a new sibling and a mentally ill father. You need strategies to deal with this.

My tall ND son had multiple meltdowns at age 5-6, would try and gouge my face, bite me etc. I’d pick him up in a fireman’s lift over my shoulder, no risk of harming him and the worst he could do was hit my back with his free hand. His behaviour is much better now - I can’t remember the last time he was physically aggressive to me and we’ve had no issues with physical aggression or isolations at school in over a year. Firm boundaries, consequences for bad behaviour and lots of love, support and positive reinforcement in finding better ways to manage difficult feelings. The “boundaries don’t work on ND kids” argument is not true for a lot of them - boundaries often help ND kids to feel secure.

It’s fine . Your husband is not a monster so make sure you tell him that. Your child is frankly a bit of a brat and a wee smack won’t do him any harm. If anything that was probably exactly what he needed.

An armchair recognition of my son’s behaviour solved a lot for my family as it led to useful strategies and a few years later his diagnosis. I’m still very grateful to the MNer who replied to my desperate post years ago.

No one is diagnosing the child. Parents of similarly behaved children are commenting in a way that may help the OP more than shocked and judgemental comments.

I wouldn’t blame DP.

I think any person who says heyd never smack their child has never been pushed to their limit. It's a one off, your husband is upset and contrite. I'd focus on moving forward and getting the support that your husband and child need. Your son sounds extremely challenging, maybe this has shocked him into some sort of reflection about his behaviour.

Your son's behaviour is not normal, on any level. Do you have support in place for him? Does he display this kind of behaviour at school too? What consequences are there for your son, when his behaviour is poor? Your son is 6, he's already aggressive, what happens in a few years time, when he's bigger and stronger than you? You could not only have an aggressive child, but a violent one too. Your husband is suffering from MH issues, and if you're all having to deal with your son's behaviour, then I'm not surprised, he has.

Of course your husband shouldn't have hit your son. Does it make him a monster? Given the circumstances, no, it doesn't. It's a man who is suffering with MH issues, driven to the end of his tether and he lashed out. What support is your husband having with his MH issues? Is your son's behaviour the reason or part of the reason why your husband is struggling?

You need to seek support from your son's school and/or refer yourself for Early Help with SS. Your son needs urgent intervention and your husband needs support.

I agree that poster had no clue.

yes he is his dad so obviously this is really tearing me up even more because i know he loves him and would never normally do anything like this but the way things have been for months now it just built up to tonight, its not like its a normal thing at all

he does not have any SEN or diagnosis, school have said he’s just a bit loud and challenging and that they dont see anything that needs extra support, they have tried saying things like use parenting strategies and ignore minor stuff but its not really that simple and i do feel blamed for it a lot even if they dont say it directly

this has been going on since he was tiny really with the intense behaviour but the last year or so it’s gotten worse and more direct at dp, constant shouting, deliberately breaking rules, swearing for reaction, running after him, waking him up early etc, dp does not have a positive relationship with him at all, he’s much closer with our 2yo normally but now he’s started copying the same behaviours too which is making it even harder

consequences at home are just time outs, taking toys away, taking him out of the room, removing privileges but it only works sometimes and most of the time he laughs at being told off and it just escalates, tonight he was literally laughing and shouting while dp tried to get him to stop

i didnt intervene because i was holding the baby and also i knew if i got between them it would just escalate things even more and i honestly didnt know what else to do, i was frozen and terrified of making it worse, i feel awful for standing there and watching it happen but i didnt see any other way to keep everyone safe, i feel like i failed both of them

i’ll read all the replies properly in the morning, im exhausted

You seem to have missed where I said I have a 17yr old who was a violent child.

So as opposed to "haven't got a clue" try "could write the fucking textbook"

One of the mums at a group we went to, also couldn't restrain her child. It was a 7yr old girl in question. Causing merry hell and swinging for her mother because she didn't want to get in the car. It happened most weeks and the mum would say that it was impossible to put her in the car and she'd do this dance for up to an hour. One week, of the other mums, simply said, "may I?" picked her up and put her in the car seat. She was still swinging. But she did it. The other mum said the following week that her DD obviously was just behaving better because it wasn't her mum trying to put her in the car, but you could see quite clearly that the child was swinging exactly the same at this other woman.

It's easy to make snide comments that the other woman is such a wonderful mother, have a gold star, have a medal. The fact is, some parents will refuse to entertain this a possibility, even if someone else in a borderline identical situation is showing evidence to the contrary.

What about rewards though? Consequences for bad behaviour is only one side, you also need to be positively rewarding and reinforcing every instance of good behaviour. Star charts, or if he is money motivated earning 5p each time he does something well. Otherwise you end up in a cycle of misbehave, consequences, kid is angry and upset, misbehaves, consequence and on it goes.

For me early help was provided initially through a charity. Wonderful people. But sorry cannot remember the name.

You stood back and let your mentally unwell husband deal with this for an hour? You’re more to blame than your dh who had had enough. I guarantee your son now knows who the boss is and you may find that the threat of a slap is all that’s needed in future. I’m not condoning violence but if you don’t sort his behaviour out now it will escalate as he gets older and it will not be good for any of you. School are telling you because their hands are tied, you need to sort him out and teach him how to behave at school. He needs to learn about consequences.

You need to take your DS out of the situation. Tell him that his behaviour is unacceptable and that you are too angry to deal with him right now but will be back in 10 minutes to talk about it. Gives both sides some time to calm down.

He’s 6. What are you going to do if this continues? What will happen when he’s 15 and 6 ft tall?

Noone needs help to parent a headstrong 6 year old. Wise up! Unless they’re really crap parents.

You evidently do not know what this sort of behaviour is about. You should stop your crap parent accusations as it is not helpful.

This is an insane take. ‘Crap parents’ need help the most!

I think you should have put the baby down some where safe and taken over. Your child was disregulated and got more and more worked up. I had a very angry child and in the circumstances described I would have picked him up and taken him upstairs. I don't think your partner sounds well enough to cope to be honest.

This!