7 year old screams, worries neighbours and lodgers

[Glittercloud17]

I don’t know how to handle my child sometimes. She is wonderful and loving - I know it’s me who can’t handle the responsibilities of parenting .

she whines and moans *a lot. She has 10 minute homework to do but will prefer to whine and cry for an hour, instead of 10 minutes doing it. Then when she has worked herself into a fizz, she will shout the house down. This is becoming an impossible situation. We have lodgers that help pay the house bills but I worry they think I am abusing her (the lodgers never come out of their rooms so we don’t have a relationship with them). I have occasionally had to apologise about the noise. She will also scream and shout in the garden when the neighbours are out.

I want her to have freedom to go crazy in her house but I’ve asked my daughter so many times not to shout, it’s a house rule, but I cannot stop her unless she has no pressure to do homework. Of course we’ve had a whole month of relaxing and taking it easy over summer, so 10 minutes of homework is not a lot in my opinion (& according to the school).

I am in an impossible situation as I have pressure to earn money to pay the bills - I am a single parent with zero outside help and having lodgers is part of my hussle but I am always worried incase they or neighbours get the wrong impression about us. I’ve tried to explain this to my daughter to not scream the house down, but I think she thinks it’s a fun game to stop doing her homework.

to add to the pressure, by child needs me around her all the time, won’t leave me alone to work, wants story time, back scratches, water in the night, crafts after school, after dinner, hold her hand, I am exhausted. Being a parent is literally driving me potty.

I feel desperately stuck in a continuous loop of parenthood drudgery.

I know it’s unlikely anyone has tips on how to handle screaming child while trying to remain a calm and centrered parent but I’m hoping

I think you both need to break the cycle of this behaviour.
I'd let the teacher know she's struggling to settle and it's causing upset so you're taking a few days out to reset.
All behaviour is communication with children and you say yourself she is very needy of your attention.
Does she respond well to incentives? You could use short term rewards and something like a chart that is she does her homework without any fuss for a week you do something nice with her at the weekend.
Do you stay with her while she does her homework? If you don't, maybe use the time to have a little break, make a coffee and chat/ask about what she's doing?
When do you try and get homework done? Is she tired, hungry or maybe needs a bit more time to decompress from school?
At primary age, we always had quite a long breakfast time so my DD would often do homework in the morning.
High school age DD preferred to get in from school and do it then.
My DD used to hate feeling as if school time was overlapping with home time.

I know what you mean, OP, when I moved out from their dad's house, I felt awful that my financial situation meant we had no choice but to live somewhere not really suitable. And if a child was having a meltdown, I felt pressure to worry about ndn rather than actually deal with my child's situation. That pressure I felt could escalate the situation because you end up primarily trying to get the child to stfu, rather than actually engage with and help them manage their distress. And your own anxiety adds to the tension.

I don't know what you are saying to your child about her reluctance to do the homework but what I know and you know is whatever it is, it isn't helping the situation. So if you really feel you need her to do it, she needs a different form of support from you in that moment that helps her manage her distress around it.

You may also meed to discuss homework and what would be the best way to manage it, time to do it, way to approach it etc. outside of the actual moment where it is happening. Maybe and agreed timetable up on the fridge eg get home at x time, snack, free time/ something she enjoys, 5.30 sit at the table while I make dinner and do either homework or some reading or drawing or whatever. So you have established a half hour of calm, concentrated time that homework can slip into, rather than have the instance of homework disrupt the usual evening.
I'd focus on the problem of homework rather than the issues you have with her response to this. One of my children is basically compulsive around what he knows he really shouldn't do and putting a lot of spotlight on negative behaviours just means that under stress he will go to the one behaviour that he knows will cause you to flip out. This I think is just because that is how he is feeling (like he is being pushed to flip out) so he just gives it back. He feels an emergency and tries to push you into one.

Good luck OP and bloody well done pulling yourself and your DD through such a challenging financial situation.