Jekyll and Hyde behaviour from 7yr old DD

[scatterbrain]

My dd is bing a complete nightmare at the moment - I thought it might be hormonal but am coming to the conclusion she is just a very vary angry little girl !

At school, and indeed anywhere apart from at home with us, she is angelic - no-one outside the family can believe what she is like - she is quiet, polite and even shy.

At home she swings between being a lovely sweet little helpful girl - to being a screaming, door-slamming, shouting, abusive, hitting nightmare !

I just don't know what to do with her tbh !

We have decided to change her school in September - to one which is less competitive and more nurturing - as I have a feeling she is so repressed at school that it all gets taken out on us at home.

But in the meantime I am wondering whether we should try and get her some counselling or something - but I have no idea where to start with that.

Has anyone had a similar thing - and what did you do ?

Forgot to say - she flips from being lovely to livid in the drop of a hat - I have been trying to identify triggers and all I can see is it's when we ask her to do something that isn't in her plan - or we do something that she can't control !

All children go through a growth spurt at 7-8 where they turn into the child equivalent of satan. If she is able to control her behaviour at school snd elsewhere then it is doubtful that she has an underlying problem. Does your family shout alot at home? does she have brothers or sisters? how do you discipline her when she is behaving this way?

dh has a very loud voice - and is pretty stressed out by her behaviour - so his response is usually to shout at her yes ! I TRY very hard to be calm and rationalise with her - but I have to say her behaviour has pushed me too far many times lately - and yes I have been shouting at her !

She is an only child - not through choice.

I'm very sorry to have to say this but her shouting is taught behaviour. She's being a bit of a shit because she deos not know how else to get her point across. I have seen families like this before, I lived in one as a child. Steve Biddulph has written a fantastic book called the secrets of Happy children, I use his discipline techniques on my son, they are great. It sounds like she needs to calm down. Do you have a list of house rules? these need to be written and displayed as family members forget them and once they have been ignored they will no longer be effective. I would get together as a family and write down all of the things that happen in the house that you all do not like and the punishment for a breach. I recommend facing the wall for each minute of her life, after which she must appologise. She may not like it when you shout at her, so she will shout back. She may want to spend some time with you so maybe you could have a set day where she helps you cook the supper. You need to find a discipline method that works for her. Does she react well if you confiscate her things? does she get time out when she's naughty? Have you tried a sticker chart. You won't be able to change this behaviour if you are doing the same thing. It's possible that she may be doing it to watch what happens. You need a no nonsence approach, write the list, put it on the board, she'll get one (it really needs to be only one. If you slip up and forget you go back to square one). tell her in a calm but firm voice that you she's doing (you're behaving this way, never you silly/stupid/dumb/look what you've done. It's the behaviour that's wrong, not the child).... You will not tolerate this type of behaviour and you want her to stop. Some children respond better to this if you are touching them. If she carries on make her face the wall. You and your husband need to work as a team and you both need to do this. Don't rationalise, this is how you have behaved, I do not like this. You must stop. No negotiation, no discussion with her, this is how it is. As an only child she has all of you attention and it sounds like she's making the most of it. You are the boss, not her.

Done it, read the book, got the rules on the wall - done time out, naughty step and standing in the corner - she just doesn't get it - she doesn't respond like the book says she will.

She just screams and screams and screams. It is no joke - I've got all the books, tried everything - what I need is some professional help. hence the question about counselling.

Are you being consistent with them? Have you spoken to her teacher? Your gp could refer you to family therapy but it takes ages to get an appointment. In the mean time, what do you do when she screams and shouts and fights?

Dd went through a similar phase at about this age, though I put it down to the awful time she was having, as she developed a painful disability which the first doctors told her was all in her mind. But maybe it was partly developmental- I never thought of that. I always assumed there was an external explanation for why she flipped. (and there certainly was enough external pressure)

In fact, her tantrums seemed worse than what you are describing- she used to lose herself to the extent where she didn't seem to even recognise people around her.

She always behaved perfectly at school, too, despite the fact that they treated her very badly at that time. I saw this as a positive sign, as it showed that she did have a measure of control (and that I had taught her proper boundaries).

We had some counselling but I don't think it ever did much for her.

What did help was my staying relatively calm and in control of the situation (most of the time ). I restrained her gently but firmly when she needed restraint. I never gave into her about anything she had a tantrum about, even if it meant picking her up and carrying her out of the house, but I think on the whole I managed to stay fairly in control of myself. Was a difficult time though. Dh backed me up over matters of discipline but usually stayed out of the big tantrums as he found the situation more difficult to handle (more afraid of being hurt).

Anyway, she is now 11 and a very mature and intelligent young girl who deals with a difficult situation (still has painful disability) with a lot of courage and a great sense of humour. And we are still very close.

Thanks both - yes spoken to teacher who looked at me with incredulity - she is so angelic at school that she clearly did not believe me - and assigned me to the loony neurotic mum folder !

We have been consistent yes and seen no improvements in months.

Cory - what you say is encouraging - someone did say to me that children like this often turn out to be quite nice teens ! So maybe if I survive this I will have an easy time when she is teenager !!

I will get my Steve Biddulph back out of the loft tomorrow and work on keeping calm, might try restraining her too. My dd doesn't exactly lose herself - but she is pretty unstoppable when she is in one of her tantrums - she has at least 3 a day at the momnent !!

'tis hard when you work full time - are really harassed and knackered and your quite big child tantrums at 7.30am about putting her tights on, at 8.30am about putting her shoes on and then after school when she refuses to go to bed at the usual time !

Very hard work ! Surely someone else must have an angry seven year old ?

My ds is 7 and going thru a horrible stage at the mo. He is laughing at me when I tell him off, he is answering back and is just getting into trouble alot during the day. But then..... he is a lovely caring little boy with excellent manners and im proud of him.Its like he is changing from a little boy into a big boy all of a sudden. This may be the same for your dd, I do feel that the girls are definatley hitting the hormones earlier these days, iv seen my niece at her worst. Good luck x

My DD did similar but not so extreme...I think it was (in her case) a feeling that she had no control anywhere. School is very regulating and she may just be blowing her top as she can't cope with being "good" any longer. And she felt she could safely "vent" at home but not at school.

My strategy was:
work out what is important to stress as something we must do and those things that can be let slip (yes, she does wear odd socks for the hell of it)
talk about times when it is no fun to have to do somehting...such as some days I don't feel like going to work, but I do go and the reasons why...
Ask about her day, and how she felt about something that she mentions, I found she was being harassed by a boy telling her "girls can't..." so we discussed this
Try not to shout even if it's such an effort you have to leave the room
Find someone impervious to the screaming (like my dad) who sits there until the screams stop and says "finished?"

We also played pretend school with her toy animals and I looked at how she was adressing them, this gave me an insight into how she was being addressed herself in lessons and her intepretation of school routines, then I asked "why is this?" and pretended one of her toys was crying and unhappy and saw how she dealt with it (she was being the teacher) and then chatted afterwards about how the tiger acted and what happened, and how tiger was sad/happy etc which brought out some amazing stuff about how she felt about a situation...

Another great diffuser of situations was "silly time with daddy" as soon as he got in where they jumped up and down pretending to be monkeys etc or he hung her upside down, which she loved. Amazing how far silliness gets you.
When she cries, DH wails too and says "It's be sad time...no one can smile or laugh or feel good EVER. Are you smiling or what?!" in a really silly way and then gets the "smile police" to come round by which time she is generally giggling. The giggling police tickle you, by the way.

Try the fun stuff first as it makes you feel better too...I also do "yoga pretzels" with her now which she loves.

Oh Miggsie - I think that's it - the not having control anywhere thing !!!

Her school is strict and yes I have seen her act this out on her toys when playing schools too - I think they are quite harsh with them really - part of the reason for moving her for Y3 is to get a more nurturing approach, where I hope she will be allowed to be herself ! A bit more anyway !

Daddy doesn't really do silly things - he is a bit of a sergeant major with her at the moment - he thinks if she is sent to her room often enough, or has enough toys taken off her, she will eventually start to conform !

But I will see if I can be more calm and try and persuade him to be fun Daddy sometimes too.

Thanks for the advice.

scatterbrain: tell DH he must have fun with his daughter! For both of them!

The outside world is a crappy enough place so home needs to be a supportive place...of course when the DD has meltdown, being supportive is about on a par with the ability to fly to the moon on a pat of butter, however...persevere, have more fun...we have silly times but DD is not allowed to shout in public, must be nice to people etc, I'm not advocating a lack of discipline (in fact we are very strict parents in terms of what behaviours are acceptable) but I think children and families need more fun.
I read her Spike Milligan poems standing on one leg for instance and I also found Alice in Wonderland a useful book to read as Alice is so stroppy! The Bagthorpe saga is another great one as Jack always feels out of place in relation to his family...

I hope the new school works out...does she have a physical outlet? My DD puts on her jazz dance shoes and hurls herself round the room to music going "ya ya ya!" now and we let her, noisy though it is!

And do you know "nobody loves me, everybody hates me, think I'll go and eat worms...". DH often sings it. DD then gets the chance to say "don't be silly daddy" which gives her a great feeling of being better than her parents and being a responsible adult. Once DH was rude and she put him on the naughty step, and as it was something she would have had naughty step for, I had to agree. He really sat there yelling "how many minutes?" for 2 minutes.
That was a real turning point in the behaviour problems as she saw life was unfair to all of us!