Dd1 - 7 - agressive behaviour - what to do now?

[littlerach]

Dd1 is 7.
She is becoming more and more agressive towrds dd2, almost 4, and occassionaly to me.

I am really despairing now.

It is beginning ot affect whole family.

Advice welcome

Please

She has been particularly aggressibe for the last 18 months I would say.

She becomes agressive if she doesn't get her own way, be it with something I ask her to do, or if dd2 won't play as dd1 wants her to.

What do I do?
Depends. I try and be calm and "nice" about it. I try and ignore it. More recently I have sent her to her romm and told her to come back down when she can be kind again.

But it is constant.

And the irony is, her report says how wonderful she is in school. Which is of course, brilliant. But I wish she would be kind and thoughtful here.

hi there

what part of the country are you in. Schools tend to get the best of a kid behaviour why? more down to routine and peer pressure,
what woud happen if your dd1 was nasty to dd2, lets just imagine that you picked up dd2 and took her off for some 1:1 attention and completely ignored the behaviour of dd2 (Im not saying ignore her) just the behaviour. My guess is that the behaviour would increase, at least thats what i would expect to happen. Fistly you need to analyse why she is performing the behaviour, then treat the behaviour to change it. If you continually punish the behaviour you will need to up the pnishment every time as the older dd gets the less the punishment will be effective. lets look at changing or stopping the behaviour then you have no need to worry about punishing dd. get incontact with me via www.littleissues.co.uk will give you some help and a contact addy. If no help then nothing lost

Have you asked her why she behaves like this?

Might she be having problems at school (bullying or problems with work) which she is 'taking out' on you? DD (6) went through a period of being really hard to live with when she had a lot of changes of class teacher due to illness, and at the same time was finding the work in school very hard.
Now things have calmed down at school - and she is a different child at home.

Juuule, yes, I have.
She usually replies that it is because she either doesn't want ot do what she has been asked - ie tidy her room.
Or, if it is dd2, then because she wouldn't do as dd1 said, so she's punched her, or because she is in her way (this is a new thing. Dd2 will be playing and dd1 will push her over as she walks past).

We have thought about school, but the teacher isn't aware of anything going on.
Dd1 says that she likes school, though she has had friendship problems with one of the girls.
I know one of the MDSAs and she says dd1 is fine at school.

Just at home

I think you need to talk to her again and ask if she's happy that she's upsetting everyone. How would she like it if everyone was nasty to her. And that you all need to help each other. Ask her if she needs any help with anything. See what happens then.

Littlerach we need to do an excercise called the motivational assessment scale, 20 simple questions which will establish what is motivating the behaviour, once we know what motivates the behaviour we can look at fun programmes to reduce the offending behaviour and give you ur happy little girl back

Does your school have a behavioural counsellor that you could ask to see? When DD was struggling that was mentioned to us as an option - we didn't pursue it because things settled down for us, but I would definitely try it if she has another bad period, the woman concerned covers our whole council area, and I think you can ask to be referred.

I asked her this evening if it made her feel nice inside when she made dd2 cry.

She replied no (phew!!).

Then I did the same about when she gets told off - she said no, she doesn't like being told off.

Then we turned it to if so and so at school was mean to her, would that feel nice - again, no.

Sorry of I am going on, I just feel so down about this now.

Takver, I'm not sure, but I could ask tomorrow.
Thanks.

Glen32 do you own littleissues? I've just looked at the website and there is no contact address or detailed explanation of who runs it.
P.S I think you might need to pay mn if you are advertising your services, too.

Well that's something, littlerach. If your dd doesn't like feeling like that then how does she feel you could help her. Or how does she think you could all do something differently to make the situation better.

I will try and sit her down tomorrow and chat.

thats cool, forget the advertising, (never thought twice about it, will get in touch with mumsnet regarding that), there is a contact link on the page, click and come via that and then we can chat re behaviours. without specifics we unable to do much, free help available if you want it

so is the aggressive behaviour mostly hitting and pushing, littlerach?

it sounds very hard

I am always wary of courses or programmes that claim to change the behaviour of your child but I do like these books very much
if there was a course near you I would advise giving it a try, or you can just order the books to work through at home
they tend to work on improving family relationships in general which of course improves virtually any situation
and they do give specific tactics (usually child centred) to use with challenging behaviours

oh I think the "what can a parent do?" book would be the most useful in this situation

Hi F&Z.
Yes, with dd2, dd1 hits her, pushes her, and threatens ot hit her, if she does something that dd1 doesn't want her to do.

With us, she shouts, very loudly, and stamps her foot. Which kind of sounds funny, but it isn't.

It is wearing me out.

Will check out the link.

Am just marking thread - will be back later.

The implementation of a positive incentive programme is very often all that is required however until you can identify specifically what motivated the behaviour you cannot put a programme in place, a child will perform a behaviour for five specific reasons
*Sesory
*Escape
attentiontangible reward or
*social avoidance

Once we know what is rewarding the behaviour we can remove that reward and replace with a much more pleasnant and acceptable reward, a Reward that your daughter will want to show positive behaviour for.
Allows for a positive non aversive response to positive behaviour (In other words, without using punishment the ability to show the child how to behave and gain positive attention etc from care givers) Do not pay for a copy there are free copies out there.

Glen your posts sound to me like you are talking about how to fix a car or train a dog

have you children yourself?

you also seem a little confused as to whether littleissues.co.uk is your website or one that your 'mate' recommended

am a behavioural nrse and also have two step children, two years ago I was the horrid step mum saga, We now get on fabulously and work through behaviours together to solve the problem rather than treat the behaviour children were 7 and 2 when i met their dad. fair to say that the children now respect me as much as they do thier mum and mum has adopted incentive programmes to work through at home and has also noticed drastic improvement in behaviour, and more important that how i am treated is the fact that the kids are happy, well behaved and strive to behave and achieve through praise rather than artificial praise such as ket/ toys etc

LittleRach, does your dd1 get very angry? Is it a lashing out in the heat of the moment sort of thing?

I ask because my ds1 (9) is v. aggressive toward ds2 (6) and sometimes to me and a lot of his problem is temper. He doesn't know how to control his anger.
However, I think there is also a certain amount of jealousy/battling for attention. Which is a difficult one to solve.

I am starting to combat the aggression specifically but really I should have done something positive years ago. I kept thinking/hoping it was just a phase that would sort itself out. Anyway, my dcs get a certain amount of money per month, a pound for each year of their age. Any aggressive act automatically loses a pound. I don't know how "good" this is, but it seems to make them stop and think a bit more.

What I failed to instill in them from the start is that hurting people is not on and it mustn't happen. But I was a non-aggressive only child, so rather unprepared.

Not sure how much help any of this is....