Looking for ideas/tips/free family therapy basically as I don't have £175 for the assessment plus £125 for ongoing sessions....
My daughter is 6. She has terrible anger outbursts, directed at me, including physically attacking me. She can't control herself at all and so will not leave me alone if I try to walk away. I am unable to put her anywhere that is 'safe' to cool down (e.g. if I place her in bedroom she threatens to jump out of the window; likewise if I hide she threatens to jump over the bannister or out another window). I'm sad to say that she only stops her attacks when I respond physically (shoving her away usually, although sometimes I will pull her off me by the ponytail) at which point she stops the attack - as she knows I've cracked - and then sobs.
Afterwards I try to talk to her about what happened, apologise for modelling awful behaviour etc, but I don't think she is taking it in. I also try to talk about it hours later and discuss how else she might channel her anger when she feels her rage, and she's open to those conversations, at the time. However, in the heat of the moment she's out of control. It just feels completely dysfunctional and I'm at a total loss of how to handle it.
She is very jealous of her younger sibling (3) and says as much. They can get on, but a lot of the time she is very resentful of time/attention spent on the smaller one. I try to compensate by giving her 1:1 time, saying 'this is your time now, I am going to focus on you' etc - it just never seems to be enough.
Hoping going back to school will help matters - and maybe this is just her reaction to a growth/development stage. But I can't risk that, and anyway, it is NOT OK for her to use me as a punching bag for her own bad moods. And it's similarly NOT OK for me to lose it and react like I do to make it stop and move onto next phase. I need a new approach cos mine isn't working... Can I tie her up?!?! (joke.. ish? no, seriously, is a joke!!)
any thoughts welcomed.