Smart, kind, helpful 7 year old DESTROYING home

[cassielb]

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

Im not disputing that at all but I would assume it was based on more than chewing a bed frame though!

OP your post about it being bad manners to correct others’ mistakes seems to have gone, along with my apology, so I’ll apologise again. As I said before, I’m turning into my Mum!

Cancelling seeing her Grandma I really don’t agree with it. I understand you need to disapline her but cutting off love which children need is not the way.

I have a 7 year old daughter and she has a bad attitude, can be rude and cheeky but I suspect the behaviour is something deeper and I would self refer to the local children’s centre who can help with things like this.

These are ADHD traits - the stealing etc, the fidgeting, the fiddling (which is essentially what she’s doing, she’s not maliciously carving holes in walls). If your husband has it, it was always very likely she would too.

Please don’t punish her, work with her to replace the input she’s getting from these behaviours with less destructive things.

It is with ADHD, for sure.

I think something has happened here, a trauma or even the birth of her sibling? But something more is going on and I'd say it's time for the GP or some counselling. It rings alarm bells for me.

Could she have some chalks for in the garden, or those colouring pens that only work on a special mat and are mess free? Very strange comments on here of parents letting their kids destroy the house with pens, that's just feral behaviour and teaching them it's okay to destroy and not respect their home.

Please please please do not stop her from seeing Nana. I was withheld from grandparents and extended family as a child and it's caused me so much harm and pain now as an adult, it's really effected me. Sounds like she feels safe and comforted with her Nana and might open up to what's going on in her head.

I partially agree as my ADHD 8 year old has never done anything like this and wouldn’t.

But I don’t think this is brattish behaviour from the OP’s DD, I also don’t think it’s normal at all, it’s quite worrying.

OP definitely seek medical help, perhaps a therapist? Its compulsive behaviour and as she has already been through a phase of stealing, I would guess that even after the drawing phase passes, another will start and that could be worse, it could lead to your DD harming herself in some way.

You say she’s amazing and perfect in other ways, I would guess that it’s linked and she either feels unable to step a foot wrong to the point she’s having compulsive behaviour, or the perfection is a mask/front and the compulsions are a result of that.

Some of these responses are really shocking. None of this behaviour is Ok at any age, but at 7 this is really not typical behaviour at all.

Colouring on a brand new Tony is not personalising it as one poster said. Goodness me.

OP I really feel for you, you must be concerned and worried all wrapped into one. You sound really caring and trying to figure this out is hard. I would personally think if it were my son it was some form of coping mechanism and visit the GP to discuss the behaviour to see if anything underlying.

You touched on ADHD. My friends child is under diagnosis for this and whilst her behaviours aren’t as extreme as yours, certainly some similarities. Worth getting a review, if nothing then great, if it is then she will be supported the best way possible. she doesn’t gouge walls or any such like.

The process will be lengthy, can you do anything privately like play therapy?

Good luck - you’re definitely doing the right thing considering how to address it to support you and the whole family.

I really disagree that this is impulsive, it goes beyond it to compulsive. Both my DH and DS have ADHD. My DS has broken/damaged things accidentally on impulse, but it’s not repetitive. My DH told a story of getting in trouble as a primary child for colouring on a classroom display - again impulsive. But it wasn’t repeated behaviour.

Do you spend one on one time with her? Maybe it's a cry for attention. Bad attention is better than no attention. Why not take her out just the two of you for the day.

In what way is she questioning you. Is she being rude and challenging you. Or asking why. Adult reasoning isn't comprehensible to children and explanations are part of communication..

If your daughter does have ADHD, the difference in her behaviour at school could be explained, by the fact that girls are very good at masking.
The poor girl will be putting such intense effort into behaving "normally" at school, that when she's at home, she cannot help but release it.

@cassielb I will agree with you that something is going on. And also about the ADHD possibility. Both because your dh recognises it in her abd because I’ve learnt that, in most cases, mum ‘having a hunch’ is usually what’s happening.

I know you are thinking about the private diagnostic route already. I would probably do it earlier than later because it will help you clarify what’s going on.

In the mean time, what I’ve learnt from having a ND child is that ‘consequences’ don’t work. Rather I would concentrate on supporting her developing ways to control her impulses as if she had ADHD. If it’s confirmed she has, then great. If she hasn’t, she’ll still have learnt useful tools.
Same with how to deal with the drawing in walls etc… If her issue is very poor impulse control, then punishing her isn’t going to help but will only reinforce the shame for something she can’t control yet. And shame is not going to help.

If your dh has ADHD himself, what does he suggest to teach her to control her impulsivity? That might help too.

i had the same issue with dc2 who is on the spectrum.

When he was around 6~8yo, his ‘release’ was hitting dc1… up to the point I was wondering if I could leave them together alone in the same room.

The answer, for us, was to teach him to step away when he was feeling angry/ready to explode. I never punished him. But I ask him how he felt about hitting dc1 and asked him to stay in his room until he was calm again. I let him decide when it was. And tbh it worked quite well. Yes it wasn’t instant but then it wouldn’t be if it was an adult either.

There's something going on in thst little girl's head that needs an outlet and this is how it's coming out. It sounds as though there have been some very big changes in her life relatively recently (new baby, new house) and perhaps, as others have said, she needs to feel she has some control. Definitely feel professional help is needed to get to the bottom of this.

Assessment is definitely the way to go imo, at her age this is beyond the usual whether the behaviour is a need she has to express, whether she's masking elsewhere and it all explodes at home or whether its is poor impulse control.
I would really push for it as if this isn't just something she grows out of she may well need support and home life become more difficult as she hits puberty and enters secondary school.

Kids do this so it is normal, albeit frustrating! Didn't you ever cut the hair on your barbies (they literally have a weird barbie in the film, it's so normal) or stick stickers on your walls? I would suggest making some things ok for crafting/personalising and some not so she has an outlet. She's probably just very creative. Buy some paintable pottery, chalk boards and white boards, you can paint wholewalls in chalkboardpaints, let her personalise her toys if she wants. Ultimately, my view is if something is there's, it's there's- if it gets damaged or broken, I'm not buying new ones, it's a natural consequence. My daughter has crayoned and stickered all over her bed, it's hers and that's how she likes it. She hasn't "damaged" it because it still works as a bed. I suspect if she has a positive outlet for the creativity she won't want to crayon on her sisters toys anymore. I'd just set clear boundaries of "this crayon/sticker/paint is yours and ok, this is ours/your sisters and not ok". I think carving the walls is a bit different, that's genuinely destructive- so I'd maybe have a grown up discussion about what is creative/personalising and what is destructive and set a consequence in advance that is more natural than punitive (maybe she can clean the toys, do jobs to earn money to buy new ones for her sister, spend her weekend filling the holes instead of playing)

Hello, I’ve been reading your thread after seeing on Facebook and read all the responses on here & Facebook. After seeing it only happened when you moved house - could there possibly be some sort of spirit or voice telling her to do these things ?? This hasn’t been mentioned surprisingly but it’s definitely something that could be happening. Or like a voice telling them to do these things, as I agree there is something strange about it all!

Out of all the ridiculous suggestions on here ... this one takes the cake!

It sounds like something is going on with her like someone is bothering her.

I think suddenly having a baby in the house at that age is half the cause of it. She’s not destroying her toys, she’s colouring in. Just leave her to get on with it, set a hard and fast rule of no carving stuff into the walls but a bit of pen and pencil is hardly wrecking the place and removing all her privileges and banning her from family members homes is rather an overreaction

I wouldn't battle it. I would think about decorating it with plain walls including a chalk wall. Give her all the crayons etc back - tell her to crack on with the drawing.

Some great suggestions to leaning in to it. Lots of people use colouring and crafts as a way of self soothing/distracting behaviours. Why don't you also offer up half an hour to an hour of your time per day to do an activity. A bit of painting or baking or clay modelling/messy play being involved. Also with the weather getting better you could also buy her some big chalks to do some drawing outside. Any breaking of outside the designated colouring places and she will loose that mummy and her time doing the thing she likes and instead will have to make effort to clean/fix. I wouldn't be waking her up though. If she's a great kid she just needs an outlet and she's just doing what kids do. But at the end of the day she will get tired of destroying all her pretty things when she grows and will learn the value of keeping them nice. It's only temporary also it's annoying. I say this as someone who has recently had a fabric pen taken to the couch. Completely my own fault but annoying nonetheless.

It does seem like compulsive poor impulse control behaviour.
I would ask her what she is feeling and where she is feeling it in her body before she starts to draw. People with adhd can often doodle - not on walks usually obviously but we do use it as a way to distract our busy minds. I am guessing she is doing it after being out all day and perhaps sensory overload and is using it as a coping mechanism.
my suggestion is take her to art classes - she’s likely got an amazing talent help them focus this onto paper

It happens!!! It’s a genuine thing