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Child mental health

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9 year old sudden extreme stress and extreme anger

5 replies

abitworriedparent · 22/08/2023 15:31

Hi,
A few weeks ago I had a very happy, calm, obedient and charming 9 year old daughter. In the last 3 weeks or so this has completely changed. She had none of the following behaviours previously -

  • She now often struggles sleeping - and openly weeps for hours at night.
  • She has on 4 different occasions in the last few weeks become extremely angry - totally out of control - screaming as if she is possessed, saying horrible things - demanding things like no school, no homework and so on. But even if these requests are acquiesced it doesn't calm her and she demands new things. Or she will start screaming about something fairly incidental that happened weeks ago - like her sister stole her chocolate bar.
  • Angrily Shouts things like 'my brain hurts', 'im too tired to sleep'
  • refuses to listen to any attempt to calm her (take deep breaths, just lie down) in fact any talking just seems to inflame her anger.
  • even when not in a particularly bad mood, she starts sighing at everything - which she didnt do just a few weeks ago. .

She has plenty of friends and plays with them after school. There are no issues as yet when she is at school. She is very little for her age so it isn't puberty related.
We live in South Korea (my daughter is British/Korean) which for a rich developed country has a very underdeveloped attitude to mental health and few resources (there is also a language barrier for me). Her Korean mum can't cope well, and has issues controlling her own anger. She also just thinks its a simple behavioural problem, rather than something more deep rooted. I am quite stressed out about this now, and it is very disturbing to see my daughter like this.

Can anyone point me towards any possible resources (ideally online) dealing with this kind of thing. Thanks for reading!

OP posts:
LizzieWallace · 23/08/2023 17:58

Sorry op. No help from me but i hope someone else can help

minipie · 23/08/2023 18:03

If she is missing lots of sleep at night, tiredness could explain the behaviour or a lot of it.

The question is why she is struggling to sleep. Has she had nightmares perhaps? Some kind of physical discomfort keeping her awake (threadworms?)

When she is crying at night, do you ask her what is the problem? What does she say?

MerryPenopause · 23/08/2023 18:31

Has she seen or heard something upsetting that she’s struggling to process maybe? A movie or similar. Anything online?

Sounds like something is making her act out & she is simply doing so in a learned pattern (copying mum?) but the 2 may be separate - the trigger and the resulting behavior.

You need to try to get to root of the trigger (check online history, ask re upsetting things she’s maybe seen on tv etc) and from there try deal with behavior

Elvisrockstar · 07/09/2023 14:18

Has she been ill recently? If so, look into PANDAS / PANS / neuro inflammation.

Mayhemmumma · 07/09/2023 14:36

Over tired I'd guess

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