My daughter is 6 and is going through a difficult time. Since returning to school after the Christmas holidays, her teacher has said that my DD is hitting other children.
We have had issues with her attacking her older brother (9). DS is not violent back usually, if he does retaliate, he holds back a lot and doesn't try to hurt her, just kind of shoves her off and shouts that he doesn’t like it. He is worn down by getting hurt, sometimes at random. He’s generally a good brother and doesn’t stay angry with his sister after an attack, though he winds her up sometimes.
I try to get to the root of the issue by talking with my daughter, to try and understand what she’s feeling before she wants to lash out, and this is where I’m struggling! She says she does it because she can. I know there must be deeper drivers at work. Ive explained that to solve a problem, we need to understand as much as possible to make sense of it, but we are missing the information about what’s going on in her head and body before she hurts someone.
She’s articulate, intelligent, and is very loving and affectionate with her family, including her brother when she’s not hating him. Both her dad and I have ADHD so are aware neurodivergence might be a factor.
one of the most distressing aspects is that she turns on herself, and says she hates herself and is a bad person. We have never said anything like that and are careful to specify that it’s the behaviour that we don’t like, but we love and like her, and nothing she could do could change how much we love her. Sometimes she will scratch her face or hit herself, to which we say we do not hurt ourselves no matter how bad we feel. We can break stuff if we need but not ourselves.
My daughter knows mindfulness, she sees me doing it daily, and is very gentle to animals, and is very caring, she is excellent with younger children. We have loads of fidget toys and sensory stimulation stuff.
Up until now, the violence was reserved only for her brother but now it’s happening at school too. I suspect that she is lonely as she doesn’t have a best friend in her class and her previous bestie has found someone else in the other class. They were quite well matched because they both have strong personalities so sparked off each other, and somehow managed to not dominate each other.
I’d really appreciate any advice on where to go with this, as I’m feeling very stuck.