Is it ever ok for a child to hit a child back?

[dobbledo]

If a child is constantly being hit by a younger sibling 2 years younger and smaller than them with SEN is it ever ok for them to hit them back?

So his refusal got him over an hour of 1:1 attention.

Try phrasing it as “it’s bedtime now. If you get your PJs on quickly we’ll have time for X before bed”.

It takes away the demand and refusal cycle.

Of he says “no”. Just shrug, say ok then - night. And walk away.

Understanding the route of behaviour is t to excuse it - it’s to find another way to support. In this case it’s about taking away the demand and subsequent attention.

Depending on the severity of the SEND needs that child needs to be taught that this is not ok. The child being hurt also needs to know that physical violence is not acceptable.

1. the SEND child will grow up thinking that it’s ok to hurt others. What happens when they get a job and they are asked to do something they don’t want?
2. the child getting hurt will accept that not just now but later in life and think it’s normal. Meaning they could be more accepting of domestic violence.

I have always told my children never to hit back. That was until my child was violently attacked twice by a child that has autism. My child was at school and could not get the child off her. I have since changed my tune and will told her that if you can’t get to someone for help you do whatever you need to get them off you, if they get hurt you won’t get into trouble because it’s self defence. I never imagined she would be in this position and realise I had set her up to fail, and thinking about it if we were attacked as an adult and could not get away we would fight back to protect ourselves.

Said child tells the kids in his class that he has autism so that’s what he does. This child clearly has enough understanding to know that it’s wrong and him and his parents are using SEND diagnosis as an excuse for poor parenting. If that’s the kids attitude on life then he is clearly not going to amount to much!

Your 10 year old is old enough to only hit as a last resort and in self defence.
Your 8 year old should never be left alone and in a situation where they can hit or wreck a room.

Keep removing 8 year old. If they object to staying with you preparing dinner etc. keep bringing them back.
Pjs can be optional. They just go to bed without. Turn out light.

Why do they need to share a room?
Can one parent share with 8 year old?

It sounds like parents of DC8 need to be solidly in agreement and solidly consistent.

OP this sounds really hard but you do need tomfence Nd strayer that helps whilst they are still relatively little.
Do they have a diagnosis? Do you have support? If not start those wheels.turning it takes time but diagnosis can help.understanding and make searching for strategies that help a little easier.

Do you have nice clear consistent routines near for bedtimes? If not start some they may fight them to start with because they are new but eventually it may help because the steps become less a demand and more a habit.

Reduce demand where possible if they are PDA the less.pwrcievwd demand the better and give the illusion of control where possible
So they don't like going to bed first but that's a non negotiable however choice of pyjamas can be offered so they still have some choice.

I don't have a PDA or ODD child but they are ASD/ADHD and at height of burnout could be oppositional/ try and provoke reactions mostly it was disturbing a younger sibling at bed time. On bad nights.one of us just had to sit on the landing to try and prevent them getting to sibling. Yes it's hard and draining.
We also worked on hard on child identifying how they were feeling that made them do that and talked about other strategies to use instead (although this was never dome in the moment but only later then they were calm. )

I personally would take TV out of bedroom screen can be over stimulating for little brains but also know that different things work for different families so that one is up to you and what works for all.

Have you had any investigation into sensory profiles some behaviours can be driven by sensory seeking understanding that may be helpful as you can build suitable input into child's day which in turn may reduce the unwanted behaviours.

Minimal verbal input if behaviour is ramping up can help.

But yea I think sometimes you will need two parents and family time won't be as a group. It maybe separate one on one activities or your youngest being removed from room and redirected by one adult to keep them away if being on the room means hitting their siblings. That isn't fair on their siblings and they need to feel heard as well.

Lots of time/ warnings before changes in activities etc maybe useful as well.

It's hard because we didn't not know your youngest child's level of self awareness/ understanding so what works for one person may not work for you.

A really excellent child psychologist where I am from who does a newspaper article wrote a whole piece on why he believes that children need to be allowed to defend themselves and tight back physically if they are subject to physical threat. Unfortunately I can’t seem to get full access to the article see below

https://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/family/david-coleman-why-im-in-favour-of-kids-fighting-back-against-the-schoolyard-bully/a/135566585.html

but this goes through his thinking

https://www.today.com/parents/poke-back-why-one-psychologist-says-parents-should-tell-kids-t100941

I completely agree with him and I have given my own children this advice always. They have our complete permission to defend themselves if they are attacked physically and we will defend them if there is any negative outcome from that.

Just to add I have a child with autism and the same rule would apply. I would obviously never hit my child but if he was physically violent towards his older siblings I would have given them full permission to defend themselves from that. I think having consequences is even more important for autistic children as they can quickly get into bad patterns.

Protect your child.

They are 8 and 10 now. They won't be for long.

You are allowing one child to abuse the other. It doesn't matter if they are older and the younger one has SEN. There is still siblings abuse going on and you are failing to safeguard.

You should talk to school - at some point the older one is going to go in with bruises and questions will be asked if this continues. Or the eldest will tell someone. That's going to cause issues. Better to be upfront about it and seek support.

Or one day the bigger one will just snap and completely beat the crap out the younger one and get into so much trouble for it even though he's been pushed to breaking point without support from his parents.

A friend is in a similar situation. Her eldest is now deemed officially as 'at risk'. This has opened up support and opportunities for the elder one to have time away from the youngest. Because it's been done voluntarily it's not raising red flags with social services and they are helping with the situation.

The point here is you have TWO children here who needs help and support. Not just one. You need to protect both by whatever means you can. No it's not buts. No lengthy explanations of why it's inconvenient or difficult. You just do it even if it's the hardest thing in the world for you.

Safeguard them both.

Good article @Mygiddyvalentine! I’m really interested to see where the turning point in school (and life!) came about that we began teaching children that they had a role in being the victim of unprovoked assaults, and they had to prioritise the feelings of their attacker! “Poor jimmy is upset now that he punched you, why don’t you go and tell him it’s ok and you can both say sorry”

Yes. Step up and bloody parent, op.
You’re the one supposedly in charge.

Don't argue with them. This is again just excitement for them - a dopamine boost. Step away and say nothing. It really isn't worth it, it will just make things worse.

Agreed. His thoughts would have been my instincts before I read it but he opened a whole conversation at the time and I think his approach was shared by many.

Obviously schools aren’t universally going to love it as an approach but that is separate to what we are discussing here. I have come across plenty of school principals over the years who have supported it in practice.

I believe it applies even more firmly in this situation because autistic children often do not understand the the social nuances in relationships and it takes empathy development longer in many autistic people due to the affective empathy deficit that is often a part of the condition so instant feedback from an older sibling is appropriate.

So he says "can I have some sweets" and you say no, he whacks you and then what? Gets the sweets?

@dobbledo have you ever had any support or training for handling PDA?

There are loads of resources available on the NAS website. CAMHS and social services should be able to direct you and refer you to NAS courses (they did for our family). And if you google it, you can access resources and on-line courses? With PDA you cannot just demand that a child puts his PJs on - the fact that this isn’t blatantly obvious to you suggests that you haven’t been counselled or supported to understand what it is or how to manage it. You actually say ‘it’s nearly bed time, do you want to put your PJS on now or when you go to bed?’ Both achieve the same result - putting his PJs on for bed. But ‘demanding’ and the getting a defiant response - which you then counter with defiance also - is a predictable scenario.

TBH, knowing that ND-ity does not arise out of nowhere and reading both your responses on this thread but also in that PJ situation, and I think the core of your family’s issues may actually be that you, too, are ND with PDA. Pretty much everyone in my family, going back several generations, is now or was formerly diagnosed with an ND (autism, ADHD, AuDHD, dyslexia, hyperlexia, dyspraxia - usually in combinations of the above - many with PDA elements and RSD, ARFIDS, EDs etc). I think that what you may need is really family support, exploration of your own and DH’s ND/NT profile and help in navigating this as a family where every single family member’s needs are met. You are currently rushing headlong into a common scenario where a couple divorces and the children are separated - ie your DH could eventually walk and take the elder child with him because it is the only way to safeguard him. I’ve seen this several times in the last 10 years.

However, here is one resource that may help in the short term, if only to show you what ND/PDA orientated parenting support might offer:

https://queensonlineschool.com/pathological-demand-avoidance-strategies/?

Having grown up in a complex, chaotic ND household I was ill-equipped to parent, and even less so when presented with a challenging ND child (well, two). The way we got through it was by not burying our heads in the sand but, as a parent couple, contacting every agency, the GP, the NAS, CAMHS, the Crisis Line, the pastoral and SEN leads at school, local ND parent networks - to ask for help and actively engage in the resources and training they signposted or arranged for us. You don’t have to do this alone - getting support is the most loving and proactive course you can take.

Absolutely. Self-defence is reasonable and expected if there is a repeated threat. SEN or not.

Seems to me you have a million excuses not to do anything that will ultimately help. Have you just given up on them? You don't seem to be taking on board anything anyone says on here (if you're even bothering to read the comments properly). Your thinking is entirely negative, always beginning with "I can't.... ".
I'm not sure why you asked here if you have such disdain for all the replies. Perhaps it's time to get "proper" help from someone you respect. I don't know who that would be these days; when I was bringing up my kids it would have started with the health visitor.
To answer your original question though, it's entirely ok for your older child to hit back when provoked (it's a natural response); it's not ok for you to tell them to, in the hope it will solve the problem for you. Please fix it for both your kids' sake and if you want a good relationship with your daughter when she's older.

But what do you do when any request or instruction is seen as this awful “demand”?
how is the child going to function as an independent adult if their employer or other people in authority eg police have to do this dance of only being allowed to engage in the approved way?

do they reciprocate with their interaction of others, as it sounds like they are happy to make demands.

This is why, although we find some of the "low demand" ways of phrasing things very helpful, I don't think "PDA" is a separate thing (and it definitely isn't a "nervous system disorder", except in the sense that we all have brains and what we have learned so far in our lives and how our brains operate interact to make us how we are currently).

Sure, strong demands can make a child who avoids demands anxious, and for some of them they will react.
But this doesn't mean we should remove demands. Rather the opposite, it means we should gradually increase them.
The OP is describing our DS aged 10 or so, to a tee. But he is not like that now, and part of it was discovering that if you remove demand A, then demand B becomes more anxious-making. So we gradually increased them.

But one of the ways to make demands and requests less troubling, is to give them in a more low key way, and say them only once. Don't ask the child why it's hard, don't talk about them at all, just say them once, say what happens next, and then leave the child alone.

In adult life you will be asked to do things - but it's unlikely that you'll be asked 10 times with repeated urgency! The police are trained to de-escalate and from what I can see it is usually by saying things simply and stepping back, speaking calmly, not getting into an argument. Leaving people to decide in their own time to do what's needed, and not getting in their face.

It’s a common misconception that autistic people lack empathy.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11447414/

[OP has said her child has SEND but does not say what that SEND is. We can only guess based on what OP states in their answers. And even then the saying, “If you’ve met one autistic person then you’ve met one autistic person” holds true. The autistic community is as diverse as the neurotypical.]

I don’t condone any violence but do have combined ADHD which is medicated but even though I am sure I have autism I didn’t get tested for autism because there’s no medication for it anyway.
I did the online autism spectrum quotient and scored 50/50
I am 100% sure I had odd growing up and still do now, as a child it came out at school as I’m in my mid 40s and wouldn’t have dared play up at home, my parents counted to 3 and I never dared let them get to 3 or I would have got a what my parents would call a bloody good hiding which in reality was a smack bum which probably only ever happened once just to show me they meant it.

I have deliberately used they in my posts so not to be outing but she is actually a girl and I see myself in her, the only difference is she doesn’t listen to me because she knows I am not allowed to give her a smack and I wouldn’t but I do know my daughter and I know if I did then she would only have ever hit her sister once and wouldn’t dare talk to me that way again like I didn’t because that was my only fear.
I was a little horror at school because I knew they couldn’t touch me and she’s the same at home because she knows I can’t.
One time she was happily being rude to me and wouldn’t stop doing something I was telling her not to and I snapped and said right and jumped up and she jumped out of her skin and immediately did what I was asking, I never touched her and never would but in that split second where she panicked as she didn’t know what I was going to do she obeyed me just like I obeyed my parents and her ODD is not worse that mine.

My parents didn’t and wouldn’t have put up with it for a moment because they had the means to make it stop and it worked they only ever needed to do it once.

I’m not saying that’s what I should do, because we’ve moved on from then but I’m just saying that’s what worked with me for my parents who had a daughter just like mine but they probably never even knew it because I didn’t dare disrespect them and that’s the reason.

I have always and still do have a very close relationship with my parents and respect them very much where as our daughter is completely disrespectful to us and we are her punch bags that can’t do anything back, she knows this and that’s why she does it without a care.

Times have changed and that’s why lots of parents are struggling to get their children to behave because

Stop climbing on the furniture = no.
but 1…. 2…. = child quickly getting off furniture before parent gets to 3 and not climbing on it again.

Having re-read your posts, OP, do you have a formal diagnosis for your youngest? As you haven’t explicitly said that you do and your latest post has made me wonder whether you have self-diagnosed her because you see a lot of yourself in her.

If you haven’t got a formal diagnosis, then you need to get onto that now. As PP said, you need family support and appear to be quite uniformed in the best methods to parent ND children.

And you clarifying the sexes changes things somewhat. You can’t teach your eldest son to hit his little sister. Boys need to be taught it is never OK to raise your hand to a girl.

Men are still able to defend themselves though. I absolutely don’t condone violence against women but men are allowed to use restraint if necessary and not just accept any and all violence to them because the offender is a woman. It’s a tricky one to navigate but I do not think the older child should just accept being beaten if the parents refuse to intervene to prevent it.

This, @Franpie are you dismissive of men in domestic violence relationships?
Why shouldn’t the message be “the sister shouldn’t be taught she can be violent because she’s a girl”?

Defending yourself is very different to hitting back.

Give it 5 years and the older boy will be significantly bigger and stronger than his sister.

OP’s DH is simply telling the boy to hit her back. That is wrong. No, the girl should not be lashing out and attacking her brother. But the answer isn’t to tell the brother to hit his sister. The answer is to parent the girl effectively.

I have an elder daughter and a younger son. DD is ND. She has been through phases when younger of lashing out at her brother. We would be in a whole world of shit now if we had taught him to just hit her back. They are both teenagers now, he is a 6ft gym bunny and she is a 5ft2, size 6 waif. If he were to hit her, he would knock her into next week! It is DH and I who deal with her behaviour issues, not DS.

Younger sister hit older sister.