My manipulative, aggressive 6 y o dd - how can I help her?

[Clockface]

This may be long.

My 6 y o dd has always had a very headstrong streak in her, and it has got more so as she has got older. Here is one tiny but sadly everyday example:

I picked her up from Beavers at 7 tonight. Her friends were walking home in one direction and we were going in the other. She knows this; she knows where we live relative to the scout hut. We said goodbye to her friends and left, but she was cross that we couldn't walk home with her friends and started hitting me. I said "That hurts, stop it please" and she replied "That's the point, you deserve it".

This was just one of so many little incidents when she has lashed out and hit either me or ds. When we got home, dh asked me if I were okay (I wasn't; I had gone quiet as I had just had enough of dd) and then asked dd if she had done anything naughty. She told dh that she'd been playing with me and had patted my hand as part of the game and that I had told her off because of it. He said "Oh well, you mustn't hit muumy even in playing" and she went off to bed.

I feel that she behaved appallingly towards me and manipluatively towards dh. If this were an isolatd example I could let it go, but these things are happenig most days. I am geeting headaches and so stressed about her behaviour but don't know how to takle it. I tend to tackle it head-on which makes her resent me more and turns me into the enemy.

She is really harsh towards other children as well and has "fallen out" with most of the children in her class, and treats ds (4 y o) dreadfully sometimes and deliberately upsets him then shows no remorse at all.

I am thinking atht I need help with this, and am thinkking about contacting the school nurse next week. Do you think that is the right person? Do you think a counsellor would help? Anyone else "been there" with their dc?

Oh I can sympathise entirely, dd3 is a twin aged 9 and has been like yors since about the age of 6 although she doesn't hit adults she will be quite aggressive towards her siblings and verbally agressive towards anyone that she feels deserves it

I have made the mistake of trying to ignore the bad and praise the good but If I am honest that would mean I would be ignoring her 95% of the time

We have been through CAHMS who say she's fine Will watch this thread with intrest and take any tips going

Yes Magnolia I have done the "positive parenting" all along but obviously it's not working!

What is CAHMS?

www.camhs.org.uk/

It is support for children and young adults who may have psychological needs. I thought Dd3 really did have some serious issues going on and I still do but after an assesment and a classroom observation they decided she was fine.

thanks Magnolia. I will have a good look at that later. Am getting ready for a dinner party tonight - wonderful food smells wafting through ther house!

Consistency indeed. Lots of working together with DH & lots of VERY firm boundaries. I thought Bloss' post was spot on & I thought the post about "household rules" was excellent. Reintroducing sticker charts is good also. This behaviour needs to stop. You and DH are the adults and she is the child and trying to reverse these roles is just plain insolent imho. You need to be very very firm, especially about the hitting - You also need to give her lots and lots of praise too

Sounds like a lot of her bahaviour is bourne out of frustration because she is so bright. Perhaps she needs to channel some of this .... thought the extra "big girl" responsibilities were great - laying the table, hoovering etc .... perhaps some "special" workbooks she can go through with you & DH to stimulate her might help.

She sounds exhausting & I really feel for you, CF. I think you need to go to her school & speak to her class teacher / TA etc too. HTH Love & prayers. xxxx

Clockface - I have the same with my DS, also six. Like your DD, he is very, very bright (reading age of about 14, with intelligence to match - except when it comes to dealing with his family, when he acts like a toddler). His behaviour at school is excellent. However, he is rude, uncooperative and aggressive to DH and me, and is often very vicious towards DD (4). When he is being delightful, I should add, he really is lovely! Sadly, he's horrid more often than he's delightful at the moment.

It is totally exhausting, and very, very demoralising. After a hitting episode, I feel as if I have no energy for anything else. What makes it even worse is that I'm an appeaser; I don't shout and I am never aggressive. My parents weren't aggressive or shouty, and this kind of behaviour comes as a complete shock to me.

It's been interesting to read this thread. I am still giving DS warnings, but maybe I need to ditch them. I will also tend to make excuses (tiredness, hunger and so on) for his behaviour. Withdrawing privileges is difficult, as he doesn't have many! Maybe I should introduce them in order to withdraw them?

Clockface - you are not alone!

Dotteressa I am glad I'm not the only one!

After a weekend of constantly re-inforcing the rules, dd has been as sweet as pie today - and she knows it. She asked dh to ask me if she has been "10 out of 10 good" today, and she knew darn well that the answer would be yes - she wouldn't have got him to ask me otherwise!

One nice thing - ds is going to a party after school tomorrow so I am talking dd out to dinner on our own for a good bonding time. I don't think I have ever taken dd out to dinner on her own so this is very grown up and privileged. Hopefully it will reinforce the "if you are good, we can have a lovely time" message.

Dotteressa what is working well for your ds? Are there any strategies that have worked? Can you play on his intelligence to jolt him out of an irrational episode? I am not shouty or aggressive either and I too was brought up in a v. peaceful home, so this has come as quite a shock to me, and personally painful in a way that it isn't to dh who grew up in a much more rough and tumble family.

Clockface - I am so glad you have had a better day!

If only I knew what works for DS, I would gladly share it. At the moment, I'm a bit at a loss. It seems that if he really, really wants something enough, he can behave for long enough to earn it (a trip to a cathedral will normally swing it - he's obsessed with them - but we've run out of local ones!!)

When he's in full temper mode, his intelligence just seems to switch off. It's as if someone has thrown a switch in his head, which wipes out anything resembling reasonable or intelligent behaviour.

Today was average, in that he came home from school and kicked DD before kicking all her My Little Ponies over (and that was after she'd offered to carry his school bag - she is another appeaser!!) His punishment was losing his ten minutes of computer time, which he squawked about.

My DH is much more shouty and prone to get cross, which doesn't help much (he gets cross with DS, who in turn becomes even crosser). Argh!

If I have any solutions, I will let you know. Good luck meanwhile!

Is his behaviour at its worst after school? It is with my dd and I wonder if it's to do with behaving well all day / frustration. My counsellor friend suggested an immediate snack after school as it might be to do with low sugar levels as well.

Trips to cathedrals? Wow! I love cathedrals too!

Clock - yes, we have an after-school meltdown problem. I started a thread about this, and various people suggested a high-sugar snack, so we are now having bread and Nutella. I'm not sure what effect it has, but it can't harm. He does seem to be starving all the time at the moment!

I do think it's stressful being nice all day at school. I used to find it very stressful being nice to horrible colleagues when I had a job, and I'm sure I took it out on DH at home!

dottoressa, clock, your situations are v familiar to me! esp the after-school meltdowns, man oh MAN do i know all about those. i have to arrive at the school gates clutching heavy-duty calories in the form of dark chocolate and a roll or bread of some sort and more or less shove it down her throat on sight!!absolutely essential i reckon. not that it's fool-proof, exactly! but does help. sleep and blood sugar are really big factors in my DD's behaviour.

i think like you clock it's a whole day of keeping it together in the school situation (my DS is always perfectly well behaved at school and saves her monstrous side for us!) and letting go abruptly upon seeing mummy's face. i too am an appeaser, girls, and it took me YEARS to find my inner confronter! (i think i made that word up). it was only by the time she was 4 (when things were at their worst, and i went on a parenting course) that i started to be much clearer, firmer and zero-tolerance about certain behaviours.

she's never been physically aggressive, i should add, but is verbally very spiky and is incredibly frustration- and rage-prone (like someone else commented - where does all that anger come from in kids so young eh?!) she like your kids is very bright and has a reading age of way beyond her years (7). in fact books are our saviour - when she kicks off (much less often now than when she was, say, 4 or 5) she is sent straight to her room to calm down where a pile of constantly-replenished library books await her.

she responds very well to clarity and extreme firmness and that, along with time passing and her maturing, has made life loads better THANK GOD.

i do fail to be consistent with punishments though and i must work on this. i also often make excuses along the 'she's tired' lines which, while true, don't mean she can behave in any way she likes, as you said clockface.
i'll read the previous posts with more attention later when i've more time - i reckon i could do with revising some of our house rules and i need to be better at enforcing proper, appropriate punishments, this thread makes me realise!

Katiek, sounds like you have got some good strategies in place there. It is hard work though, eh?

We had a bumpy morning - dd's ezcema has flared up quite badly and she's itchy and irritable because of that. She shouted at me really loudly at one point because she was unhappy about something or other, and I immediately sent her to her room, where I could her her still yeling and ranting to herself "Mummy doesn't understand...I was just trying to tell her etc etc etc" - probably sub-consciously rehearsing what she as going to say to me when she came downstairs.

When I called her down I said "Come here and don't say anything at all until I say you can" - this is becaues she would come bcak into the room still in full rant mode and by forcing her to be silent I was able to tell her clearly and calmly that you simply don't shout at me like that. She didn't like me taking that control away from her and sat ther crying but afterwards I got her to leave the room and come back in again and gave her a big hug and said "Right, that's over now, that's finished. Let's start again, eh?" The only downside was all this zero-tolerance took 20 mins out of our getting ready for school routine - which meant I had to rush!

Oh well. Maybe our strong-willed children will end up as the Prime Minister, or CEO of some huge company, or some such job...!

LOL re 20 minutes extra time being built into the old morning routine - like there's 20 mins to spare eh - if only!! v good clear calm parenting though, am v proud of you!

my daughter's biggest flare-ups in the mornings come from being interrupted - if she and her bro get involved in one of their v complex imaginary games and i remind them they have to get dressed for school then all hell breaks loose and it's fireworks time! we've had to work hard on our mornings - getting dressed straight after eating THEN allowed to play for 15 mins before going out the door. (i can't get them dressed before breakfast bcs of hideous consequences of delaying calorie load after a night's fasting for DD!) for a while we had a chart on the wall with clockfaces drawn on it explaining the morning plan of action! now and again i get distracted and slip up and they start playing and it's hell all over again. but things are definitely improving.

now i need to encourage more independence in their actual getting dressed - massive amounts of dragging their heels prevails at the moment, there is always something to work on isn't there!!

Oh I have these problems with my DD1 as well! She is 7, and her behaviour is just like the OP described - hitting, rudeness, grabbing toys of DD2 (3), selfishness (refusing to share toys). She is under CAMHS because she has selective mutism, and we are waiting for a psychologist referral to come through to help with both the SM and this terrible behaviour.

The 'holding it all in for a long day at school' reason doesn't apply here, though, as we home-educate. She just sometimes seems to go through spells where she is absolutely vile, and I don't know why. At other times she can be delightful and gorgeous, but still very prone to hitting and hurting DD2, or her best friend from next door who is 8.

I'll be studying this thread closely and sending it to DH, too, and see if we can be more consistent (sooooo hard!).

I am just so glad that we're not the only ones!

I daren't watch Supernanny any more, for fear that my DS will be on it...

blessthismess - 'we home-educate'? blimey - hats off to you. i am seriously impressed. i mean that. i could no more home-educate my DD than climb everest. even doing homework with her degenerates into a warzone within, ooh, 3 minutes! good luck with the selective mutism - my friend had the same with her little girl but it all settled down spontaneously, forunately. hope it's the same for you. good luck.

Thanks katiek. Although I was always planning to HE, in the end I feel I didn't really have any choice - she would be desperately unhappy at school and I can't do that to her. I do find it very tough at times and have had to find very subtle ways to lead her into education!!!

But seeing as her bad behaviour is based on insecurity and low self-esteem (not saying anyone else's is!) I am glad that I can adjust things to her speed and interest and not have to make her do things on someone else's timetable. I think the time together while DD2 is at playschool is very valuable to DD1 too.

Oh but how I long for days all to myself!

School nurses in my experience don't really have the chance to get to know individual children well. Their job is more managing the health needs of large numbers of children in a few different schools. Perhaps having a meeting with her teacher and/or TA would be a better starting point, so that you can get a clearer picture of how she behaves for other people and how you might be able to all adopt the same approach.

If the teacher agrees with your concerns, s/he might help with a referral to a child psychologist or family therapist, but that will be quite a long way down the line, I would think. You and your DH need first to work out a united strategy so that your daughter cannot play you off against each other. She might get a feeling of power from doing this, but it will not be making her happy. It is, quite simply, wrong for a six year old to hit their mum and say she deserves it and she sounds quite confused about boundaries if she feels she can do that and get away with it.

I think it's about being able to develop in yourself a very strong sense of calm authority. You don't have to get into pitched battles or scream and shout. You just have to know very very strongly, that you are the parent and you are in charge and to not be shaken from that.

Janni, thanks for that. The thing is, I have observed dd at school and I know that she is "one of the best ones" - i.e. an utter perfectionist! Both in terms of her behaviour at school and her learning. Her school report from yr 1 was amazingly good both in terms of behaviour and academically. So the teacher may or may not be able to help with this.

This is partly why I think she loses it when she gets home. It's like the classic thing of teachers coming down with a rotten cold the first day of the holidays - you've kept going because you have to, and then when you get the chance to stop, all hell breaks loose. In our dd this is her behaviour pattern.

One of the things I've noticed about her over this wek (I've been thinking about her more than usual!) is that she gets very anxious about things and gets herself in a panic; she kind of builds up t oa frenzy over something that started off quite small. She panics about getting into trouble at school, getting told off, about ds saying mean things to her etc etc...

So I think I need to work on this business of "panic management" as well as "anger management" which is a biggie. I have no clue where to start though...

totally agree with janni's post. I think professional help probably won't be needed - she does just need you to take charge and you and DH to not allow her to manipulate, and be consistent with boundaries. From what you say I'm sure this will help.

Janni is so right that she might have little 'victories' like the hitting but it will as she says really NOT make her happy in the long term.

You sound a very peaceable person and I sympathise because I'm like that too; and having to be really strong with DS at times has made me feel horrible; it's not a nice feeling. But kids this age NEED that so it is worth going out of your comfort zone.

Don't allow her to tell your DH how things went, and don't allow her to 'get him' to ask you things; she needs to communicate directly with each of you and to learn that manipulation gets her absolutely nowhere. Be strong; you will be turning her into a nice grown up. Manipulators are not nice people.

i think when you pick up from school, take a snack for her to eat on the way home. I do this with ds (no, not keen on eating walking along but needs must!) and it sets him up for a more calm time at home.

Do you still read to her at night? I would use that as good time to talk through things in a calm and conversational way. Also get lullaby CDs to calm her at night. Watch out for signs that she is winding herself up, and step in to diffuse/take her away from the situation

Also don't expect too much of her; she is only 6 and is making HUGE efforts at school, it is quite normal that she would have a meltdown now and again, or get annoyed with sibling etc

HTH

Clockface - your most recent post could have been written by me!

DS's school reports are exemplary across the board, and the teachers can't praise him enough at parents' evenings and informal chats. He is very anxious about getting told off at school (I sometimes wish he'd just do something a bit naughty at school, rather than store up all his horrible behaviour for me!) On the couple of occasions he's been told off, he's come home in a real paddy. He also loses the plot if DD tries to wind him up (which she can do just by looking at him!!)

The girl on Supernanny last night reminded me rather of my DS, to my shame. I am going to try harder to nip his outbursts in the bud - though that is easier said than done, as they so often arise from absolutely nowhere!!

clockface, dottoressa - snap (again!). my daughter is always praised by her teachers. she does lack confidence a little at school, but she is great academically, bright and inquisitive and conscientious - and no trouble behaviourally. so when i have literally SOBBED on teachers' shoulders in the past (yikes! done this twice now...) asking for help, they've kind of looked at me askance as if to say 'er...what's with the freaky outburst here?!'so i tend to agree with janni - school educational psychologists, nurses etc really only get involved if there is a major problem and if it's readily apparent in the school setting itself. while the problem was bloody-well-major to me, i could see it wasn't of an order that justified referral and indeed as the years have gone by that's been proved correct. (i haven't sobbed over a teacher in two years - result, eh?!)instead, i even got a private psychologist to come round our house to see us in action, just once, out of desperation, but that proved of little use too, i have to be honest - well i suppose it helped bcs at least i could tell she didn't think there was anything majorly wrong with DD ( i have occasionally wondered about a mood disorder or god knows what else, to explain her volatility and FROM NOWHERE sudden rages!) but her advice i could easily have garnered from a book or from MN, supernanny etc.

anxiety is a huge part of my daughter's make-up and while i was an anxious child, i didn't have the negativity and rage that she harbours, and i've struggled with the latter aspects of her behaviour a lot.

my daughter used to greet me (after a day of perfect behaviour all day as far as i knew) at the school gates with a face like thunder, and go into immediate meltdown mode as soon as i opened my mouth to greet her. every day for month after month. i'm the type who loves to see my friends at the school gates and at least exchange a few words...no chance of that. i used to feel so embarrassed as i dragged my wailing DD away mouthing 'sorry...speak to you another time...' to fellow (bemused) mums! what helped was 1/ time! she is SO much better now she is 7, 2/ feeling more secure - she moved schools (and countries) 3 times in 3 years, poor love - no more of that for years to come - what were we DOING?!!, 3/ an immediate snack was ESSENTIAl as honoria wisely says.

it is SO nice to know i am not the only one dealing with this sort of thing. i just wish i'd known about this site back when things were at their worst, two years or so ago, when i was on my friggin' knees. at least i am in a position to say things can and DO get better!!

Thank you Katie! At least there may be some hope for us, then...

DS has been anxious ever since he could express anxiety. I was an anxious child, but didn't go in for rages - I was more of the worrying type (I drove my own mum mad with my "but what if..." imaginary disaster scenarios!!)

I do feel for my DS - being anxious and angry can't be much fun for him either.

I so recognise the face like thunder greeting you at the school gate. We're in that phase at the moment...

I've repeatedly wondered if he's got something wrong with him, and have contemplated asking psychologists, cranial osteopaths, teachers - but keep coming back to the conclusion that he's difficult but normal, and that I need to change the way I deal with him. DH needs to stop losing his temper, too!!

yes dottoressa - exactly - i know all about the anxiety bit from personal experience, but it's the anxiety combined with micro-fuse whirlwind RAGES that's such an, er, interesting combination!!! argh.

difficult but on the normal spectrum is where these kids are, i reckon. but believe me i have searched for answers everywhere too! i even took up homeopathy (i'm a gp) in the hope of finding some magical cure for her - guess what - still looking!! just gave her the latest remedy this morning though - will keep you posted

Please do!!!

If it works, I will be trying it too...