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Smart, kind, helpful 7 year old DESTROYING home

277 replies

cassielb · 10/04/2024 23:31

Hi fellow mums. First time poster long time viewer needing desperate help or advice.

My 7 year old daughter has been displaying quite destructive habits the last 1-2 years.

Quick summary on her though she is extremely smart, well behaved in school, very helpful, kind, polite everything is great other than her constantly destroying her room.

She has picked up an attitude the last few months as expected but she quickly apologises when she knows she is wrong. Now with the destroying her room. She has drawn on walls, toys, furniture, carpet so we took her desk out and had a rule of only pens and crafts downstairs. Great! This continued as she would either sneak pens home from nana's/school/downstairs so we started doing bag checks and made her clean up what she had ruined. Great! Christmas goes by and she got some stocking crafts and completely destroyed her tonies she had just gotten by drawing colouring all over them. My fault for not checking what family members had given her when passing by at Xmas. So we got more strict with checking her room, basically compromised and said you prove you can be responsible for your room we will fix up (fix it meaning repaint what she had destroyed and change her room a little).

Our last straw was her drawing on her infant sisters toys while I was upstairs changing her. We cancelled her school holiday activities and she was not allowed to see her nana (who she loves) that week. My last straw and why I'm writing this post was I just went to tuck her in while she was asleep and noticed she has carved out chunks of her wall and carved numbers letters into the wall with a hair clip.

I woke her up asked why and it's the usual, I don't know, I don't remember, it was an accident, I'm sorry! I'm at my wits end, she is such a good child in every other aspect other than this. When I say she is so so so kind loving smart she is an angle but this we cannot seem to budge. We tried back checks, reward coins, reward charts, grounding, no activities, no tv, only books in her room, everything. I don't know what else to do, it's been 2 years of her ruining her room in our first home we have bought and it's only getting worse. Any advice is much appreciated

P.s : she went through a phase of taking things from nana's house, cousins house and had even taken things from shops. This went on for around a year but after letting her know if it happened again we would have to tell the police this has stopped. For good hopefully!

Pss: he dad has adhd, I don't know much about it but he seems to think she had it. She is a bit fidgety and her school report is great other than her getting distracted! This aside as I said she is an amazing child which is why I get so frustrated punishing her.

I need help ShockWine

OP posts:
Are your children’s vaccines up to date?
SittingBackAndWatchingTheClowns · 21/04/2024 08:52

Skillest · 10/04/2024 23:55

Paint one wall with chalkboard paint and give her chalks

Paper the whole room with lining paper and let her doodle

I'd be inclined to lean into this, rather than battle it

It's the obvious solution

Magicmonday24 · 21/04/2024 17:15

Sounds like you’re more concerned about the “stuff” tbh. And yeah I wouldn’t continually punish my child with OTT punishments ( including isolating her from her beloved grandma?!) , see that punishments aren’t working but still carry on. If you’re that concerned maybe try getting your child some actual help through school or privately -she probably drew on her siblings toys because you made such a fuss about her bedroom 😂

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