How can I prevent my child’s punishment from escalating

[Wetwashing00]

I’ll try to keep it short...
DD is 10, she has had an after school detention today for disrupting the class and refusing to enter the classroom after homework club.
This happens regularly due to ‘low level but constant disruption’

Everything was fine when I picked her up, but as soon as we got home she started talking over me & her stepdad and would not let us finish what we were saying. She was asked to go to her room, and she refused.
She chose to scream & shout at me downstairs instead. So I started confiscating items from her room, she was shouting and screaming for her stuff back and was told she can get it back when her attitude & behaviour improves. She then threw a purse at my head and repeatedly hit me with a bag for life.
I left the room, she then started throwing toys around her room and kicking the door. I entered again and removed the toys.
She then followed me downstairs trying to take the bag of stuff back.
For 35 mins she screamed in face, ripped up a book and was trying to push me out of the way to get to the bag.
During this time she said she hated me & that she wanted to go to her dads as it was much better there.

I’d had enough by this point so I left the house and walked around the block.
I came back and she had taken the bag of stuff back to her room.
I stayed in my room For a bit until my DH came back. He asked why she was allowed to watch YouTube on the tv. I wasn’t aware she had gone back downstairs, so I went down and turned the tv off.

She is now playing very nicely with her brother, which is very rare for her.
This kind of episode doesn’t happen regularly but when it does I don’t know what to do. How can I continue with the punishment when this starts happening? Should I just let it slide that she’s taken the stuff back? Or take it back again?
What should I do when she’s being violent? I have pushed her off of me a lot and she has said that I’ve hurt her when I’ve done this, so how can I explain to her that I’m not intentionally hurting her?
How can I prevent things from getting this far? There is always a struggle of control between us, she doesn’t let me discipline without a fight.
😭

Why didn't you let her talk? It all escalated as you ramped it up telling her off for talking.

Perhaps learn some de-escalation techniques so it doesn't get there in the first place.

Sounds hard OP so sending you hugs.

Firstly you need to take the stuff back or your daughter will learn that she can push you and she will win.

Be persistent and don't let her win. Though you do need to get to the bottom of why she turns violent.

Do you know why she would not enter the class? Was it a sensory issue eg too many noisy people already in the classroom?

The reason she wasn’t allowed to talk over us is because it’s rude and disrespectful. It was borderline an argument then and she does it so she doesn’t has to listen to why she can’t do/say what she wants.

Teacher said...She wouldn’t enter the class because she didn’t want to end her time on the computer.
DD said... she wanted to save her Work before leaving the computers.

I’m sure the teacher would’ve let her save her work first. She is queen of excuses

That sounds tough. Personally I think I would deal with calming her separately from any punishment. If you tell her her punishment while she is so frustrated it’s likely to escalate. Give her space; either by sending her to her room and ignore any behaviour in there, or remove yourself if safe to. Then much later when she is calm you can talk about what happened and the consequences. Hopefully that would mean one, fair and reasonable punishment rather than lots of escalating ones. It also may give you a chance to discuss with her techniques for if she feels that angry ie teaching her to remove herself or go for a walk etc. Best of luck.

I have a child with some challenging behaviors so huge sympathy.

Something I’ve found very effective is to have a calm chat later and puzzle out what happened from the child’s point of view. When I really listen to what is going on for my DS it can completely change my perspective. And I can share my point of view with him too “when this happens I feel xxx” is a great sentence.

I’m not suggesting abdicating parental responsibility to a child. I’m very clear that some things are non negotiable. And we have consequences in place. But listening to the child makes them part of the solution, instead of always the problem.

For disrespectful talk, I find it very effective to pause, and model a better way. e.g.
DS: [screaming] Give me that NOW
Me: pause [Quietly] May I have it please?

Or to let him know that I will listen to him but I will not tolerate disrespect,
“I can hear you’re very frustrated but we don’t speak to each other like that in this family. Do you want to try again ?”

It works well most of the time.

Try to break out of the punishment cycle because it really doesn’t lead anywhere good. If you do punish (because obviously you have to sometimes) just stick with the first offense and don’t get distracted from it. And pick a consequence that you have total control over rather than something that could be decided by a battle of strength.

Transitions are hugely challenging for my DS, who needs to have them flagged clearly (we’ll be leaving in 2 minutes.... ok, you need to save your work now...) maybe your Dd might benefit from that too?

Wait until she had calmed down and can talk about her behaviour and tell him her what her punishment is when she is calm.

Throwing punishment after punishment when you can see it is making the situation worse is counter productive.

She probably needed to talk the issues of the day out. I imagine she was very tense after being disciplined at school. Best listen and acknowledge her feelings to deescalate before she starts misbehaving

We had already discussed the detention on the way home and she was in a fine mood.

We spoke when she had calmed down but most of her replies were

‘I don’t know’
We spent the evening doing yoga after dinner.

Everything seems to be back to normal today.
Thank you for your replies