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Parenting

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8 year old dd driving us to breaking point - please help

4 replies

Realitygf · 03/07/2012 15:51

Our 8 yr old dd has always been strong willed but recently this has got to the point where she is wrecking our family life and we feel we have no relationship with her. She is a middle child with an older and younger brother.
She is incredibly jealous of her brothers however hard we try to be fair. She is very rude to both me and my husband and will not cooperate with us. She argues over everything, lies to us and physically hurts her brothers and destroys property.
At school, she is very bright and is always well behaved.
We have all been through a difficult time over the last few years - she has moved school twice in this school year due to job moves, my husband was made redundant and my mum was diagnosed with cancer so this explains why she may be acting this way but we don't know how to handle the behaviour.
Have read loads of parenting books - which only make me feel like a rubbish parent - and are now considering therapy but wondered if collected wisdom of mumsnet could help first. All suggestions gratefully received.

OP posts:
Fizzylemonade · 03/07/2012 19:18

You have my deepest sympathies with your Mum being diagnosed with cancer, I really hope she responds to any treatment. I have been there myself.

With your daughter it could be a case of attention seeking, she just takes whatever she can get and if that is you being mad at her for hurting her brothers or not co-operating with you then she will take that.

I have a just 9yr old ds1 and he sometimes speaks to me appallingly so I shut down the conversation if he is mad and tell him when he is calm and he can then talk to me. If he is just being bloody minded then he goes in time out. Ds2 is 6 and gets very cross very quickly, again I just dis-engage.

I would turn my back and walk away from any rudeness and calmly tell her you are ready at any time she wants to talk to you in a civilised tone, give her heaps of praise for the smallest kind thing she does.

The fact that she can behave at school shows she is capable of the type of behaviour you want.

I know in your eyes everything you do seems fair but to children it never is. Do you ever spend any one on one time with her? Tell her how wonderful it is when she does X,Y,Z? It is too easy for us to dismiss children when we are busy cooking tea or taking an important phone call. They see that as we never have time for them.

Good luck.

PineappleBed · 04/07/2012 11:58

This sounds really really tough on you all. I think I would look into some counselling for her - don't freak out I don't think there's anything "wrong" with her it just seems to me she's lashing out quite specifically if she's behaving at school so another non family person like a counsellor could help her work through what's bothering her. There's an organisation called "the place 2b" which does primary counselling or look on WWW.counselling-directory.org.uk

Take care of yourself too!

PineappleBed · 04/07/2012 11:59

Primary age counselling

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iMoniker · 04/07/2012 12:05

Google Twice Exceptional.

Food for thought.

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