Mummy, my tummy makes me do things?

[Enchantedlilypad]

My 4 year old DD struggles with emotional regulation and finds socialising with children her own age incredibly challenging. My DD can be unkind in social situations and become easily upset and angry. I remove her from the situation when she shows this behaviour and get her apologise to the other child before she can play again, I am firm with her. DD is currently waiting to be assessed for autism as our health visitor and nursery have concerns.

When I talk to her about why she gets angry, says unkind words and lashes out she says "my tummy made me do it, I don't want to do it but my tummy says do it and I have to do it" I am very confused by this, does anyone have any ideas what this could mean? I'm struggling to understand what she means by this statement.

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@Fifteenyearsinthetower I'm so sorry to hear about your struggles when you were younger and I'm glad your feeling better now your older. Thank you for sharing your story with me.

My daughter is older now but all her emotions were expressed through her tummy. She also had constipation and soiling, common in autism.
Take a look at the book my hidden chimp. Our occupational therapist recommended it this week. She might be young for it, but you can read it and adapt

Sometimes the hyperactivity is on the inside. Adhd can present differently in girls. It's hard to tell because girls often learn to mask earlier but your DD is still little. You can have autism and ADHD too. It's really the lashing out made me think ADHD, impulses are a big part of it and rejection sensitivity also, which can lead to being hypersensitive and angry. I suppose it's something to be aware of. Being impulsive is part of being a child too so it's really to look for anything that seems beyond what other children of a similar age are doing.

There's a book called The Explosive Child I see recommended sometimes.

This is all very helpful and Interesting, thank you.

My DD also reverts back to a baby voice a lot of the time even though she is an excellent speaker and I'd say hyperverbal. She also has an incredible memory and remembers most things from when she was around 18 months old, even places we only visited once or twice she will bring it up randomly or say "this reminds me of bla bla (the place we went to when she was a baby)

She does struggle with recognition of numbers and letters and still cannot recognise numbers 0-10 and is also incredibly clumsy, only just learnt to ride a bike with stabelisers, drops drinks and food etc.

I suspect she means her emotions. Think of where you feel anger, tends to be in your chest or anxiety is often in your tummy. A 4 year old is still learning about emotions and what they are/bow to express them and also manage them. Therefore her conclusion is the feeling is literally her tummy and that it is her tummy making her do it.

Sounds like anxiety, often presents as stomach pain in kids. My DS is autistic and when he was younger he had pains in his stomach a lot.

My dd is 21 and has HFA .. we had no clue when she was young because she presented very NT .. anyways she used to get tummy aches and in hindsight it was anxiety ..

My DD suffered with poo withholding for a long time. There is a very clear link between negative behaviours/general agitation and needing a poo. It is crystal clear and we have to manage by pro-actively encouraging a poo.

In times of heightened stress or anxiety, she will also become overwhelmed by very small physical pains. You have to teach that we all get twinges occasionally and they will generally pass. Working on resilience has worked for us (I don't mean being cruel and minimising, but sometimes just distracting and explaining it will go if we focus on something else).

My experience is that most kids will go through phases of exhibiting the odd symptom of autism/adhd. We shouldn't pathologise passing phases.

This sounds like a normal 4 year old to me.

Have a look at sensory intergration - specifically interception.

She's possibly trying to expalin how her body feels when she gets overwhelmed and cannot then manage her emotions and behaviour as a result.

@Missmarple87 thank you, I do often hope all this will be a passing phase and she will grow out of it, however this phase has been going on her whole life so far, not the tummy issues but there has always been very challenging emotions and behaviours of some sort.

I mean this gently because I have felt exactly the same way but I think this is just.....children! My DD is nearly 5 and really emerging from it. The challenging outbursts have diminished rapidly. I don't think you ever get to the point of smooth sailing, really. Being a kid is tough!

Never has one single external party (nursery, school) ever suggested that there was any issue with my child. It was entirely my anxiety pathologising normal, childhood behaviours. I used to marvel at other parents who just shrugged and said 'yeah, sometimes mine does that too'.

Of course, there may be an issue but, equally, there might not be. It really helped me to focus on all the ways my child was completely 'normal' (dont mean that to be in any way offensive to ND children, just an easy way to explain) and all of her good points.

Loads of young children jump on the spot by the way. Ever been to a kids birthday party? They're all at it!

But if you read the OP's posts, professionals have expressed concerns about her child, so it's a different scenario and not just 'kids'.

And sometimes those children are ND.

Other people have noticed which is why the OP is going down the route of an assessment etc…
And if other people have noticed age 5, it means those behaviours are specific and visible.

So yes your experience might have been that you were too anxious and your dc was fine.
Quite a lot of other parents have been anxious about their dc and have found that the child was indeed ND too.