6 year old screaming at us

[Kimya]

My 6 year old daughter is thoroughly unpleasant and I'm at the end of my tether.

There are a number of things but the number one thing I'm really struggling with is how she screams and shouts at us on a daily basis. Any minor frustration, she loses her rag. We don't hear what she says so ask her to repeat, we're shouted at. Her fringe gets in her face, screaming rant. The smart speaker doesn't understand what she's asked for, loses her temper. Anything minor that isn't exactly to her liking or expectation she's shouting and snapping. We've modelled how to react to frustration, we've asked her not to shout, we've told her we're only trying to help (met with screeches of "I don't want YOUR help" usually with some rudeness like how we are a "stinky mummy/daddy") but there's absolutely no let up. She's worse at the moment because school has finished and we are going on holiday (she's always a nightmare behaviour wise on holiday - we're not going again after this year, not with her anyway)

We're at a loss why she's like this, its way beyond what I would expect of a kid her age.

This sounds very similar to my DD at that age so you have my sympathy, hard isn't it?

One of the things we've found with DD is that whilst she can talk very well, she can't express her emotions at all. I'd start by doing this SLT progress checker. If it says "you have answered no to some important questions", give their helpline a call.

A Mighty Girl has some suggestions of books on anger here and I'd also suggest getting hold of a copy of The Explosive Child.

How is she coping at school?

My dd was a bit like this. She was later diagnosed ASD. Very frustrated about lots of things.

Every time she shouts say I can't understand what you are saying as you're shouting at me. Then if she still continues to shout just walk away and carry on with something else and ignore her, she won't have an audience then.

Is she like this at school? if not, then she can control it, and you can train her out of it

If she has ASD she could still mask at school. One of my DC masked so well they were 16 before requesting an ASD assessment for themselves - they were right, they are on the spectrum.

3dogs advice is good, I used that when my DC were whining. 'I don't speak Whinese you'll have to say it again in English' made them take a deep breath and ask for what they wanted more clearly.

I do remember being 5 and getting so mad I would stamp my feet in frustration much to the amusement of my mother - which really didn't help. I didn't call my mother stinky though but only because that didn't occur to me rather than inherently being well behaved.

As I said my DD was like this at 6. She's currently being assessed for ASD.

Whilst I agree that this would be a great technique for a NT child, for a girl with ASD it very likely will just add to her frustration.

Or she could just be masking at school and be utterly drained and frustrated when she's home.

Terrible advice. She's not a dog. The needs help to regulate her emotions not just to control her behaviour so it's more acceptable to the people around her meanwhile she looses touch with her own needs.

ASd girls hold it in at school and it bursts out at home. It is a classic marker.

It's really interesting that ASD has been mentioned. She has a lot of other traits but I just assumed I was being a paranoid mother and it was similar to when you google a headache and diagnose yourself with a brain tumour, if you see what I mean.

I don't know if school have noticed her being snappy, I need to ask, but I know there are probably other things there, like impulse control, loss of concentration. According to one staff member she makes very intense eye contact which can be a sign as well (I always thought it was just lack of eye contact, every day is a school day)

Probably worth looking into a little more.

Thanks everyone for your replies and for not piling on. I realise how negative my OP was. I was just out the back of a screaming fit and I felt worn out.

Mine made eye contact, talked early was friendly and sociable.

But we were on the verge of going to the doctors so many times. She was just difficult. Tantrums ( meltdowns really) irritable, awkward ( anxiety) couldn’t cope with transitions. Bad sleeper. Point blank refused to ever wear hats or gloves. Won’t wear coats.

Shes 17 now and just lovely. But I’m glad l got the diagnosis because she struggles in school.

https://autisticgirlsnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Keeping-it-all-inside.pdf

Have a look at this.

If she's showing other signs I'd definitely book an appointment to talk to school. Our schools didn't listen though as she masked so beautifully whilst there.

Do push for an assessment as waiting lists can be long and you could really do with a diagnosis before she starts High School and starts puberty.

I don't know if Caudwell Children will be of any use? They normally assess within 3 months and offer 12 months of support

Just going through similar. We had a big talk the other day about how it was impacting everyone and what dc could do instead with frustration or anger. It has been surprisingly transformative.

Same here

just contact the school. emotional intelligence is highly practiced terminology these days

I also thought PDA?

You can start looking into these things, but in the mean time, you can deal with her using PDA or ASD parenting techniques, and see how that works out.

I think it's an age thing in part, DD is 9 now and has new things now that are difficult sometimes it she also went through a stage at 6ish when she would get very quickly frustrated and either burst into tears or get angry. It was mostly now really understanding or being able to express her feelings. We also discovered that she would have her own plan of how something was going to happen, not share that plan then get frustrated when it didn't happen.

So we'd say 'we're going into town today', she'd plan what she wanted to wear, when she thought we'd go, which shops, where we'd be eating......

We would then go off that plan because we didn't know it, she'd get angry, couldn't explain why, we'd get frustrated and the day would turn to shit.

Once we realised we could be more clear about what was going to happen, get her input, progress check throughout the day that we were on track or explain why we were going off track.

My 4 nearly 5yo can be a bit like this.

I do think that he has poor emotional regulation and we are working on this. There is also a query speech delay although he understands well and we have an appointment but not until November.

But.... the more I read about emotional regulation I realised that this is something I struggle with as well. And I started to notice and realise that I am also pretty quick to raise my voice and respond in an irritated tone/shout, in response to the slightest frustration. DH is a bit more patient than me, but also has this tendency to some extent and I think we unintentionally model what we don't want.

For example, we will often ask him nicely to do something, but if he doesn't do it, then we revert to an annoyed tone. Or if he is already doing something that he isn't supposed to be doing, I've noticed that we tend to reprimand him with a harsher tone, and I think this is actually what he's reproducing when we hear him speaking in a way that we don't like.

So I've been using a few different resources.

Zones of regulation - helpful to contextualise red zone (shouting, tantrums etc), green zone (calm) and that it's not REALLY a sudden change from one to the other, there are signs in between (yellow zone). I feel like for me I go from green to red with no warning signs, but there are. I just have to learn to notice them. This is a helpful skill for DC to learn too.

Conscious Discipline Becky A Bailey. I haven't got too far with this yet but it's really good because it starts from a foundation of learning about your own emotional regulation. Using mirror neurons to help DC calm down - get down to their level and take a big, obvious, deep breath - their mirror neurons should then trigger them to breathe more slowly too (this may not work with children on the autism spectrum). But doing that also helps ME remember to breathe which helps me react in a calmer way. This is conscious in terms of not just repeating whatever patterns our parents modelled to us, and discipline in terms of training yourself (e.g. discipline in martial arts, meditation, dedication etc). There are also some breathing excersises that I have printed the icons and put them around the house - you can find the exercises on youtube. We do them randomly just for fun, as they are modelled like young kids' action games/songs, but that has also meant that the DC have started pointing to them and want to do them at times of stress as well.

Lastly there is a positive parenting course on Coursera called The ABCs of Everyday Parenting, from Yale University. There are some parts which I don't particularly agree with, and some of it seems totally obvious and even patronising, but I've been using some of the tips from it specifically:

• The wording/suggested way to "prompt" a preferred behaviour (even when I'm annoyed, I try to stick to this, rather than saying "Leave your brother ALONE!" across the room in an annoyed tone).
• The wording/suggested way to praise the wanted behaviour (asking for something nicely) - this comes across as way OTT but actually, he responds well to it.
• Looking for/identifying the specific opposite behaviour that I'm trying to encourage and being able to see the difference.
• Shaping ie rewarding/praising a slight improvement.

So to put this all together, when DS is being screamy and demanding, I take a deep breath myself, or even step away for a moment (help me bring my conscious brain "back online" rather than being drawn into fight-or-flight through irritation), go to him and take a deep breath for him to hopefully copy (does not always work), then touch his arm and remind him to ask nicely. Sometimes I'll also give him the exact phrase that he is supposed to say. Then when/if he does ask properly, or reduce the tone of irritation, then the specific praise again.

It does seem to be helping a bit.

Is she still tired from school? Mine is almost 6 and the youngest in her class. She isn't coping well with the end of term and has been shouting at myself and her dad plus her teacher. Hoping it will improve soon.