I don’t know what to do anymore. My near 6yo dd’s behaviour changed literally overnight 6 weeks ago. She was no perfect angel before by any means, but it’s such a change - she literally flipped overnight. Back story, during May half term she got ill with a cold, had thrush and worms (she’d never had this before). She didn’t sleep for 4 nights in a row. By the Sunday before school started she began having these rage episodes that came out of nowhere! These have continued, usually around 4/5 nights at a time, then a few days off, then rage again. They mostly begin when she gets into bed - goes up to bed, gets pjs on, brushes teeth all fine. Then when deciding what to read or listen to, she starts flailing her legs around, talking like a baby and refusing to get back in the bed. Says she’s not tired. She then starts jumping off furniture, bouncing around and saying really strange things (eg ‘fishes in the swimming’ or ‘my name is engine’) and uncontrollably laughing and screeching. We take her out of her shared bedroom because she’s causing her older sister great distress. After a while she decides she doesn’t want to do that anymore and becomes incredibly angry, screaming, hitting, crying, trying to injure us or herself, repeating the same thing over and over again (eg ‘i want to go downstairs’ - we keep her in our room as downstairs is too open plan and we can’t stop her from injuring herself). She rams into us with her head repeatedly. This can go on for over 4/5 hours.
We’ve had to call 111 a few times and even 999 on one occasion as she was repeatedly bashing her head on the floor and we had to pin her down to stop her causing a head injury. The 999 paediatric nurse could hear her distress and sent us to A&E as she thought she was in a mental health crisis. Got there, she completely calmed down when getting out of the car and was fine with the dr. They sent us away with ‘it’s behaviour, there’s nothing wrong with her’.
As I said, she’s no angel and has had the occasional temper tantrum in the past, she was also quite a sick child; constant tonsillitis (had those removed in March this year and all seemed well after). If there was a cold going round she always caught it. Shes always been a bit more whiny than her sister - she was allergic to dairy until 4yo and we probably mollycoddled her a little more than her sister as she was sometimes in pain from dairy trialling.
Another weird trait - she’s become really materialistic all of a sudden. She wants us to buy her something all the time, to the point we can’t go to the shops with her at all because she throws a fit in the shop when we say no. She wasn’t like this before.
She has also become defiant at school - they obviously take the path of least resistance and offer her something that engages her. But she’s been kicking doors and refusing to go inside after lunchtime, that sort of thing. They also agree with us that her eyes change when she’s in these episodes - her pupils stop changing dilation. It’s actually quite scary to watch her.
We saw the GP multiple times and they say there’s nothing they can do. Can’t even refer to CAMHS as she’s not 7yo. Tried to do a blood test at the GP to see if she has an underlying infection and she trashed the room in a rage so couldn’t get it done.
I’ve ended up in trouble at work because I’m exhausted all the time and so stressed. DH is trying but he also seems to prefer path of least resistance (He’s completely non confrontational having grown up with mum and sister with severe mental health issues), and she’s just getting worse every time it happens.
I’m struggling with this so much I think about leaving the family altogether. I don’t know what to do to help her and I just can’t cope with how dangerous and frankly, scary, she is. Our once happy little family is falling apart.
Thanks for reading this far.