Am I messing up parenting or is this normal?

[Badbadboris]

My 9 year old has always been ‘spirited’. She had completely explosive and out of control tantrums until the age of 5 or 6. She has now calmed down somewhat and is 90% great. At school she is 100% great and never, ever misbehaves but at home she seems to really struggle to deal with frustration or anxiety. So if her sister annoys her she goes straight into shouting mode. If she’s stressed about getting ready for school or dance lessons, again it’s from ok to frustrated to shouting in about 5 seconds. She gets particularly stressed about things being right for school and fitting in socially.

My response has always been to either walk away myself or ask her to go and calm down because I don’t want to tolerate being shouted at and tbh if I didn’t I might start shouting back.

How can I help her learn to manage herself? She is quite touchy about it even when calm and in the moment is generally too cross to hear reason.

The answer is yes. She's being 'school good' which is very common. She feels comfortable at home so is able to let her anxiety out. Look into 'Solihull' parenting. There will be lots of tips and info there that should help

Thanks for replying. I have done parenting courses before which has helped us get to where we are (90% ok), but I think I was expecting it to ‘fix’ the issue completely. When I was 9 I would not have dared shout at my parents. But is it naive to think it is going to be fixed? Will she always be like this to an extent?

No. Seems achievable with tools to manage stress/frustration. She'd need to learn to recognise she's starting to feel that way then have tools to use. Using sand timers during the calm down might also help. Instead of shouting come tell mummy '...' etc and agree what you will do when she does that. Sounds like you're doing great keeping calm which is key. You will like need to repeat and model what she needs to do when she gets upset for quite a while and consider visual cues such as posters you make together to remind her what to do before she gets to the shouty stage / when she's starting to feel the frustration AND when she makes a 'mistake' that's ok but how to fix it. Recovery is as important as prevention for these kiddos because they WILL have mistake days and need to feel safe to be forgiven and move on

She gets particularly stressed about things being right for school and fitting in socially.

What can you do to mitigate trigger points like this? Extra checks she can do herself about getting things ready before she needs them, checking letters from school etc? Do you take her worries seriously? (I am inclined to a ‘you don’t need to stress about that it’ll be fine’ response which my DC finds infuriating and a bit dismissive so I remind myself not to do it!)

Have you considered any degree of additional need? Struggling with social expectations/fitting in, explosive meltdowns could be indicators of masking neurodiversity, or might be within average ‘typical child’ stuff, it’s hard to say from words on a screen.

At 9, a very difficult age with hormones and and school getting harder and friendship dynamics changing, I presumed some degree of angst was normal tbh.

My 9 year old, who is different as she’s not been like this previously, has suddenly become quite shouty and started worrying about things. I’m just removing myself from the situation and letting her calm down. I’m also trying to be the voice of reason when she’s worried about non issues. It’s hard but I anticipate it will get worse and go on for a few years!

I would not leave her or send her away, I would sit with her when upset. I had a child who needed some support in this area and this was the advice I was given - stay alongside, model how to do it rather than abandon them. Worked for us.

Nine is still quite young - be careful your expectations are not overly high.

Thanks for the great tips. I have considered ASD/ADHD but the fact that she is fine everywhere else makes me unsure. I thought as well that kids with ASD struggle with understanding social norms, whereas for her it’s the opposite problem - it’s almost like she is hyper-aware of what others might think about her. In practice she is shy but has plenty of friends and fits in well at school.

You’re right I am probably a bit dismissive about her concerns. I think this is because I don’t want to get sucked in to trying to sort everything out for her but perhaps go too far the other way…!

@Arthursmom this is good advice thanks, especially regarding recovery. Maybe I am a bit too blamey. @carefullycourageous i send her away because otherwise she goes on and on and on at me. I think she needs that space to calm down. There is often a desire to suck me into an argument! I am reassured if it’s partly a problem of my expectations - I don’t know other kids who are like this so wondered if there was something wrong (though maybe other kids are like this behind closed doors!)

I don’t know other kids who are like this so wondered if there was something wrong (though maybe other kids are like this behind closed doors!) @Badbadboris
Your daughter does not do this in front of others and does at home - that is normal.

i send her away because otherwise she goes on and on and on at me. I think she needs that space to calm down. There is often a desire to suck me into an argument! She will try to suck you into an argument, but your job is to model and teach her how to calm down. By abandoning her in a difficult time you are making it harder for her to feel safe. We learn to self soothe by being soothed - people have to show us how.

There is a book called Raising your Spirited child by Mary Kurcinka

It is excellent and might give you some new strategies

www.amazon.co.uk/Raising-Your-Spirited-Child-Third/dp/0062403060/ref=sr_1_2?crid=AM6LB9OGFVFN&keywords=Spirited+child&qid=1657278624&sprefix=spirited+child%2Caps%2C145&sr=8-2

You sound as if you're parenting her very thoughtfully. Re ASD - for girls in particular there can be a very effective level of masking outside the home, and her anxiety about fitting in and hyper-awareness of what others might think of her are worth looking at through the lense of "does she feel she needs to work hard to fit in?" (which girls with ASD often put huge effort into). I'm obviously not doing an internet diagnosis, but wouldn't dismiss the possibility of ASD for the reasons you've given.

This is really interesting @BabycakesMatlala . When I have raised neurodiversity with the teachers before they have been very dismissive so I concluded that she probably doesn’t cross the line from spirited personality to ‘disorder’, but maybe I’m wrong. In some ways it might fit with ASD-type thinking in that it’s quite rigid: ‘either I’m exactly like all the other kids or I’m doing it wrong’. It doesn’t help that we are a bit alternative so are often quite different from her friends’ families

Re the sending her away - if you're able to stay calm, it's better to stay with her and reflect back to her by naming the underlying feelings she's maybe expressing, without getting drawn into the argument. That may well help model to her how to recognise what the underlying problem is. I really recommend How To Talk So Kids Will Listen, and also resources on therapeutic parenting (eg Sarah Naish).

If you're not able to stay calm and you feel triggered, it's better to separate yourself, but you can still phrase it as, eg "I can see you're feeling really upset, but right now this behaviour is making me feel stressed and cross and I'm not in the right state to help you, so I'm going to take a couple of minutes out to calm myself down."

This is all FAR easier said than done, but does work really, really well for children who are quickly overwhelmed emotionally, for whatever reason.

Sorry, @Badbadboris (good name!) - I cross posted.

The teachers are not qualified to rule a diagnosis in or out (and especially not if there's masking going on).

Not am I qualified, either....it may anxiety over fitting in, or sensory stuff, or whatever, but yes, you're clearly thinking carefully about it for her, and I agree with what you're saying about a certain rigidity and black and white thinking around social "rules". X

Agree with others that girls with ASD present differently to boys and are more aware that they are different and try to mimic others which they find exhausting (so don't have the energy to do this at home). Speak to gp if you're concerned. Hard for us as we haven't met your DD BUT would say I know plenty of 9 year olds like this. My niece for one. Her parents often struggle but I manage by when I'm with her by talking to her calmly about what I think she's feeling and that that's ok... even if I secretly think she's being nuts 😅 helping her to identify the emotion, name it and accept it rather than trying to fix it as we mummies tend to want to do.

'I bet you're really missing mummy. I think it's making your head sore and tummy fuzzy. I bet that's really rough. I'm sorry you feel that way. I'm not sure how we can make it better. Sometimes we just need to feel sad for a little bit. Can you tell me what it feels like for you? When I'm sad it feels like...does it feel like that for you...' etc etc

I was reading through about to say something and then @BabycakesMatlala said exactly what I was thinking - perfect school behaviour is very much in line with masking habits common in autistic girls. Not that it is necessarily the case but it’s possible - and also that lots of things that work for helping autistic kids can help spirited kids too.

As a former teacher, I can confirm many educators are working with outdated info for ND children, and masking is a habit that actually makes life easier when managing a classroom, so it is rare for it being discussed there. You’ll find some teachers will know more because it’s their own special interest, rather than training delivered to the full teaching staff. (Obviously each school will be different and some will be stellar. And others not.)

Whether is is autistic masking or not, the good bit is she feels safe enough at home to let this energy out. At school she is spending a significant amount of energy on being ‘a good student’ and it may well be depleting her reserve for later. We can’t all be our very best all the time, so our moments of WAHHH come out where we feel safe and secure. The work you’ve already put in must have done a lot here - well done.

Modelling and narrating frustration is probably useful for her. Can you manage to narrate aloud the sort of normal boring frustrations of life, just so she starts to hear how you work it through? Not directing it at her, just saying it so she hears it. Like getting the timings wrong on cooking dinner - ‘Oh, the main is going to be done before the vegetables. Let me see if I can take it out of the oven but put a lid on top to keep it warm and then it won’t burn.’ It will feel a little ridiculous probably!! But just stuff where yep, something is wrong, but no one needs to lose their cool. There’s a way to problem solve. She may really benefit from hearing thought processes like that quite a lot. It won’t be instant, but as it becomes normal to hear, it can become more normal to think.

(On a personal level, I know the other extreme is true - if you live with someone who is always shouting about simple stuff, it is easy to become someone who always shouts about simple stuff! I relearned when I had a uni housemate who was calm as a cucumber.)

Sorry, I’ve written an essay here. You’re doing a great job. Best of luck to you both.

@CatatonicLadybug can you tell I have my own perfect developmental trauma masker? 🤣 (And one with ADHD whose behaviour in school was the opposite of masking 😬)

Thank you all so much. Lots of sage advice which I will try to act on. I was brought up in the school of ‘let’s pretend everything is always FINE’ so probably a bit of that narrating would help me :)

Final question: what do you do when naming their feelings for them is met with more rage? Back off or persevere?

@Badbadboris you will need to gauge when they are in the right frame of mind for you to 'chat' and when not. It's absolutely fine to say 'I'm here to listen when you are ready to talk' calmly and let them join you later. I sometimes sit and do an activity I know they like and wait for them to join me e.g. drawing. But make sure you have a 'chat' about what happened even if it's hours later.

^^ I'd entirely echo that sage advice!