DD hit me across the face

[snottagecheese]

So hard that my glasses flew across the room, and it stung for a good 5 minutes afterwards. She is 6.

Just for context: We were at her friend's birthday party and the birthday girl was upset because she wanted to use one of the inflatable microphones that were floating around but there were none free. I suggested to DD (in her ear as the music was quite loud) that since she was eating a bag of crisps, she could hand over the microphone as she had her hands full anyway. She yelled at me to 'stop shouting in her ear' (I wasn't) and some other things (can't remember what - go away, etc), so I took her out into the lobby to talk to her and as we were going out the door caught on her bare foot, so she screamed at me some more and then she clattered me hard across the face.

She is a volatile little girl, it's certainly not the first time she's lashed out, but she's never hit me in the face before and it really shocked and upset me. I know she's feeling wobbly at the moment - she's always up and down emotionally at the start of a new school year and for various reasons particularly so this year. I know she feels bad afterwards, though it takes her a long time to say sorry. She has been prone to outbursts of rage ever since she was tiny, and she's always been very quick to anger . I'm absolutely not soft on her, but neither do I dish out endless punishments because things like banning TV, taking away toys, cancelling play dates etc (or the threat of these things) doesn't work at all. She cannot control or manage her temper, that is a part of her personality, but I am at a loss as to how to deal with it.

I honestly don't know how to deal with the repercussions, like yesterday - I considered taking her away from the party but didn't as her little brother was there having a great time and it wouldn't have been fair on him, but to be honest I don't think this kind of thing would be massively effective in the long term - in the heat of the moment she doesn't care about being punished, and I think she almost wants to be punished because she knows she's behaved badly but can't possibly admit it, but knows a punishment would be justified. I don't think dealing with the fallout of her anger is the answer in the long term, I think the key is to find ways for her to control it at the source, before it explodes into anything. She is only going to get bigger and stronger, and it frightens me to think how this kind of scenario would play out when she's a teenager. I feel teary today, and a bit despairing. Most of the time she's such a lovely girl: sweet, funny, creative, kind - she can be really kind - but her temper is an increasingly significant problem and I don't know what to do about it. Sorry for the long post. If you've got this far, thank you!

weirdly my dd smacked me round the face when she was 6 and it was something to do with a microphone....
She never repeated it.....if that is any comfort to you.

Also wanted to add, you are doing a good job with parenting and I think your approach to punishment makes a lot of sense. I do think it is worth maintaining consistent "consequences" for the most serious bad behaviour including physical aggression. It was important for my DS because lashing out actually made him feel better and he did tend towards an "I feel better now so what's your problem?" attitude. So it was more a matter of teaching him that aggression was not an OK way to calm himself down. That wasn't enough by itself to stop him doing it, we had to help him find other ways to cope and he had to mature enough to start using them. But along with everything else in the long run it helped.

Op, have a look at oppositional defiance disorder, sorry I can't link as on my phone.
I hope you find some solutions

Kleinzeit - very useful post. Everything you said resonated. What strategies did you use to stop the hitting?

bunique I completely agree with the importance of modelling behaviour. That is certainly the first thing to do (or at the very least to try as much circumstances allow).

What I meant by having 'strangers' involve is that I know I have my own tools to deal with things. I do use mindfullness a lot and have learn to just 'look at' my emotions and let them go,
However, trying to teach that to dc2 at that age would have been .... hummm ... interesting to say the least. I lack the teaching skills necessary to teach that for a start. And dc2 was less likely to listen to me. Just as dc1 now (and he is 12yo!) will look at me in disbelief relating how X teacher said it as important to have foods with lots of different colours, something I have said for a long time but he never believed because parents can never be right and it's clearly a weird idea
Also having someone else doing that removes the emotional side of things.

I know that I actually have never punished dc2 for physical aggression. He has been told it's not on. He has been taken to his room to calm down but not in time out if that makes sense.
dc2 has told me often that, when he had calmed down, he was very sad to have hurt his sibling. Why adding more to that distress?

I've also learnt that dc2 needed support to calm down and he needed to learn to do so. So, from the outside, it probably looked like I have been cuddling him after he had been hitting dc1. In reality, I have been teaching him to calm down. I have been helping him recover from what had been a great distress for him (both from whatever the orginal situation was and from doing something he deeply regretted).
He is now 10yo and never hots in anger like this. Ever. He has learnt to walk away. He has learnt to use words (OK still with lots of shouting sometimes lol). And more importantly he has learnt to say what is not right for him instead of assuming dc1 'knew'.

I would be wary of oppositional defiance disorder, it's often a code used by experts to mean crap parents.

snottage please don't get to hang up on ASD etc... As I said before, dc2 is on the spectrum but I have two other friendd whose children aren't on the spectrum that have displayed similar behaviour. ASD or ADD or whatever isn't always the trigger. Sometime, you just have a child that really need you to support them and teach them how to deal with emotions when most others just learn it from looking and trying it out.

But getting professional support/pov is always a good point.

I see what you mean KevinAndMe

And I agree about not leaping to ASD - I think this is within the realms of normal behaviour for a 6 year old

I agree - she was over-stimulated, high on sugar and e-numbers, and she lashed out at the person nearest her (you).
Honestly I was shocked when my dd did it to me but she never did it again.

Twm OP has already said that she'd only eaten sandwiches, carrot sticks, crisps. So I think the sugar and e-numbers comment doesn't apply. But the excitement of the party is a perfectly possible explanation.

oh ok sorry should have read through better. but as you say, the volume of noise, the excitement...

Absolutely Twm parties are exciting.

On one of her programmes (can't remember which one - not a standard Supernanny one) Jo Frost did an experiment where they had two groups of DC, each group had the same exciting party stuff (bouncy castle/games/etc) and one group had classic party food, the other had normal balanced food. The parents didn't know which food group their child was in, and were asked to guess after observing them at the party. The parents had no idea. It was meant to illustrate that it's the excitement rather than the sugar/junk party food that is affecting most kids' behaviour at a party.

I would not leap to ASD either, but on the other hand it??s not an isolated incident but the most extreme out of quite a lot of lashing out(?) So I can see why snottage might be concerned that something is out of the ordinary. There are a lot of possible underlying reasons and knowing which one would help to identify what??s triggering the outbursts.

kevinandme I know that not punishing for aggression does work well for some children, so no disrespect to your parenting intended. Kids vary so much!

roomonamop I used a mix of Explosive Child, ASC-specific and "ordinary" positive parenting. Probably the first and key thing was to provide a calm friendly and relaxed atmosphere at home for my DS, which meant accepting that I couldn't fix him all at once and I would have to adjust my expectations to his abilities - and that for a long time I didn't know what his abilities were. e.g. He turned out to have some very unexpected communication problems. It really helped if I always acted as if a misbehaviour was a "can't" unless I knew for sure it was a "wont". It also meant there were many "ordinary" activities we didn't do and many minor misbehaviours that I ignored.

The next thing was to identify his triggers - of which there were many! - and start to manage and avoid them. Keeping out of his face was important. You know that Supernanny thing where she tells you to get down on your child's level and get him to look at you and talk directly into his face? Well, if you did that to my DS, you got our own face shredded. I used to stand up and turn my back on him when I had something important to say. Since his triggers were often Aspie-type ones, using Aspie-friendly strategies - routines and timetables and simple clear instructions with a count-to-three so he had time to process them and managing his social interactions closely - helped a lot. But not all Aspie kids are like my DS, the specifics are very individual.

Kleinzeit don't worry, your comment wasn't disrespectful at all.

It's probably more about me as there has been so many comments on this thread (and so many others!) that basically say you HAVE to punish a child, especially for something as bad as hitting. And I always find that I have to point out that well, actually, there are plenty of other ways and for some children, punishing doesn't work or another way might work just as well.
It's such a shame that when it comes to parenting, we all have children that are so different to each other but somehow we are all supposed to parent the same way.

Probably the first and key thing was to provide a calm friendly and relaxed atmosphere at home for my DS, which meant accepting that I couldn't fix him all at once and I would have to adjust my expectations to his abilities - and that for a long time I didn't know what his abilities were. e.g. He turned out to have some very unexpected communication problems. It really helped if I always acted as if a misbehaviour was a "can't" unless I knew for sure it was a "wont". It also meant there were many "ordinary" activities we didn't do and many minor misbehaviours that I ignored.
YY to that 100x!!

There has been quite a bit of time between the time when I thought that actually dc2 might be on the spectrum/he had very specific needs and the time when we got some sort of diagnosis.
I did a lot of the things usually advised for children on the spectrum. Some worked, some didn't. But overall, I did what I knew could help regardless of whether dc2 was NT or ASD or whatever. Explaning why people act in a certain way, giving the child tools to cope with anxiety (eg stimming toys or removing yourself) etc can be very safely used with great efficiency with a child who is NT or one of the spectrum.
So instead of saying dc2 has xxxx, therefore I need to yyy. I said, dc2 behaves xxx ways and clearly has yyy problems, therefore I will help him by doing zzz.
And I think that, as a general rule, when it comes to parenting, keeping your options wide open to all sort of different approaches/techniques (whether it is supposed to be for children with SN or NT or the hippy way or the attachement parenting way or whatever else it can be) has the advantage to allow you to find the one that works best for your child.

Ok i have not read all the way through, but im inclined to say go to your gp,she may have an underlying condition, like adhd or the autistic spectrum,we suspect my son is on the spectrum and hes very agressive.

Even still though i would have taken her straight out that party if not if have sat with her outside because whever or not they have conditions they still need to learn.

For instance my son threw a blunt knife at my other son the other night and stuck his hand under the grill, so i said he was staying in all night and missing the fireworks because he still needs to know its wrong.

Well it could be something or nothing, of course.

She's 6 so perhaps should be getting some handle on how she reacts (ie not hitting), but she is still young.

Does this seem to happen when she is excited/tired/stressed?

I would say that I have a terrible temper and if I'm upset/annoyed my first instinct is to want to lash out or throw something-never mind how I feel when I'm angry!

You talking in her ear-to this day it infuriates me-the feeling of someone's breath near my ear, that & the fact that it was often still difficult to hear what was being said!

Then being taken out & then the door hitting her!

Poor thing.

I could see myself getting more & more wound up in that scenario.

I might have done an over dramatic scream at the door incident & some angry tears.

I'm not sure I would have hit a parent across the face, but if they were trying to comfort me after the door hit me I could quite imagine squirming & wriggling to want to get away & be left alone to calm myself down.

I can quite see that it seemed easier to stay as your son was there as well.

snottagecheese - so much of what you've written in your posts I recognise so much it is almost scary! The first thing that stood out to me was your point about punishment and sanctions not working in the heat of the moment and your daughter almost wanting them but without being able to admit she is in the wrong. Like you it doesn't stop me imposing boundaries every time but they don't help in the long term. Natural consequences have the same effect as artificial sanctions - she has missed out on trips out before, for example, because of there just not being time to go after a tantrum, but it hasn't prevented her behaving in the exact same way on other occasions.

But the sensory issues too - she's had screaming fits because of the seams on her socks going the wrong way on her toes. She is very restless and fidgety. Once I bought her ear defenders for an air show and I started to find her asleep with them on in bed! She is also a big chewer/sucker of stuff. She does stuff like chewing paper into little spitty balls that I find down the back of her bed, and will mindlessly chew other household stuff like a little puppy, as well as the tops of her shirts etc.

My daughter hasn't hit me as hard as you describe, but she will lash out in frustration sometimes. She has a temper that in her case can sometimes make her seem deceptively calm and cold - it mainly manifests itself in absolute point-blank refusal to do anything you ask, which doesn't sound that bad, but makes leaving the house in the morning very difficult even if for something she's previously looked forward to, like recently a book signing by one of her favourite authors. When she is like that she really doesn't give a toss about anything: but I know she is also very alone and scared at those times too - even if she claims otherwise.

Reading this thread with interest, even if I haven't anything helpful to add.

Forgot to say, my daughter is 8.

Findo, if your dd is a chewer she might like some chewy jewellery, we get ours from chewigem, it saves jumpers being wrecked when ds is in chew mode!
You've probably heard of it, so feel free to ignore, but have a look at sensory processing disorder, you may find some strategies that help.

This book might be useful to work through with her. www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1433801345/ref=pd_aw_fbt_14_img_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=0PNGYE2AX946TM05S8HY#

I hadn't heard of it, nor of the jewellery - thank you LeChien.

My friend has 7 year old DD who does this, I've posted on here about it. I think the consensus was to go to the GP. FWIW when my DD behaves unacceptably I send her to her room to read for 20 minutes to reset her mood. I take one of her books out with me, so she can sit on a bench or wherever and read. It works for her.