I don't think I can cope for much longer. :o(

[spongebobandpatrick]

Please can anyone offer me an insight into my DD's behaviour and some advice as to the best way to parent her, because to be quite honest, I am rapidly losing the will to carry on.
I'm not sure what the alternatives are, apart from to keep plodding along, but I'm not really getting anywhere, or at least, that's how it feels to me.
I have decided that the best thing is to be completely honest here, so I hope I don't get too much of a flaming.

DD is 4 and a half.

Most of the time, dd is lovely, she is chatty and funny and bright, but whenever she cannot get her own way, she throws the mother of all tantrums. She is very defiant and destructive and will hit, spit or scream at me. She will deliberately break/smash things too if at all possible. I do tell dd this is not acceptable in a firm voice and then where I am able to, I ignore. dd is not bothered if i ignore her, when she is naughty, she doesn't respond to any discipline whatsoever, nothing bothers her. No matter what priviledges I remove, she continues the bad behaviour. No matter how firmly I speak to her, she continues dribbling spit and screaming.
Short of physically picking dd up and moving her to a safe place, there is not much else that I haven't tried to discipline dd or to get control over the situation that has worked.
I can't adequately explain how defiant dd is.

As a baby, dd was fine, ate well, slept well, seemed perfectly fine, but once she was old enough to pull herself up to a kneeling position in her cot, she began headbanging. The headbanging was ferocious and continuous. I contacted my HV who advised me to ignore, said it was all attention seeking, and I was to ignore at all costs.
I tried this, but to be honest, the constant thud thud thud was beginning to annoy me, so I tried distracting dd. This was not effective for more than a few minutes at most but I continued distracting for years just to make the bloody noise stop. I live in quite a new house and the soundproofing is not good, which means that if dd headbangs over the other side of the house to me, it sounds like someone is hammering a nail into a wall. It has been like living with permanent DIY going on, day in and day out for years.
If I removed dd from the cot to stop her headbanging, she would headbang on any hard surface she could find.
Over the years, I have repeatedly sought advice from the HV, the GP, and have seen a consultant paediatrician. All of the advice was to ignore.
dd would headbang when she was tired or feeling any negative emotion. She would headbang on concrete floors, walls, cot bars, backs of chairs, doors, the back of her car seat whilst in the car and anywhere else she could. It is so violent that my car bounces around and I can feel it when I am driving.

My next door neighbours attempted to have me evicted on the grounds of noise nuisance and things are very strained between us even now.
Despite the advice to ignore, that dd would outgrow it, I tried distracting, or removing whenever she was doing it.
It took until dd was 4 before it has improved, and it doesn't happen much now.

Only now, it has been replaced with rocking and chanting. When I say chanting, I mean at the top of her voice. Usually when dd is tired or experiencing negative emotions.
dd rocks herself to self soothe I think, only it has torn apart my sofa, from grabbing hold of the edge and rocking back and forwards ferociously for months on end, every day, multiple times a day whilst rubbing her hair against the sofa, and chanting loudly.
Whenever dd begins rocking and chanting, I can feel my blood pressure rising!! I really really can't abide the sound, so usually cannot ignore for very long, as well as the sound of my sofa creaking and groaning with the force.
dd rocks in bed at night to go to sleep, and has a bald patch on her head from all of the head rubbing.
She also kneels facing backwards on my dining chairs and rocks back and forth, causing the legs to continuously bang onto the hard floor, and it is very loud. I can hear it at the end of my garden.

Nothing stops her. I don't want the noise of her doing it. I don't want my furniture broken to satisfy her incessant need to rock and bang.

My intense hatred of the rocking and banging effects the way I discipline dd. I have got to the point where I will do almost anything to make her stop, although I realise that is foolish.

When dd is naughty, I cannot give her a time out because she will start headbanging.
I cannot sit her on a dining chair for timeout because she will rock and bang the legs of the chair.
I usually remove toys, tv or something else she values to discipline her, and speak to her firmly. It has no effect.

I have tried seeking help for so many years and have asked for so much help, but I am only ever told to ignore the bad behaviour, use positive reinforcement and time outs. I cannot use timeouts because of the resulting banging. No one seemed to take me seriously, until dd started school. Now she has started school, at last someone else can see how defiant and uncontrollable dd can be, not all of the time I must say, but when she is annoyed/angry, which is obviously quite often.
She has bitten other children, and the school are concerned about dd's erratic mood swings. They say her behaviour can be extreme, that she kicks, punches, slaps and bites and can be unpredictable. She can be very defiant, using adult language in context aggressively. (no examples here)
School say she headbangs and kicks out, her moods are difficult to read and her responses are inconsistent.

School say her behaviour has improved slightly since starting school, and when her mood is 'read' correctly, they make progress but on some days, no approach works. Confrontation causes defiance.

I have been living with these behaviours for years, and have asked for help so many times that I am convinced no one knows what to do for dd, so they advise me to ignore, which clearly isn't getting control of the situation.
I have completely lost hope that someone somewhere can help dd, and help me to parent her effectively.

If you have any idea what I can do to help dd, without creating WW3 with my neighbours, or without having to listen to the same chant over and over for hours and hours and hours, or the incessant banging, please tell me.

I wonder if there is an underlying cause to dd's behaviour, or whether it is just shit parenting on my behalf. I have cut out all unnatural foods and drinks from her diet, it has made no difference to her behaviour.

I am dreading this half term holiday.

I am a single parent with no support from exp and very little support from family. I am now worried I am going to lose the few friends I have because of dd's behaviour. I'm sure they secretly blame my inadequate parenting. I tend not to take dd to friend's houses over the holidays because dd can be unpredictable and aggressive.

It seems that no matter what I ask dd to do, she always always does the opposite. Always!!

Sorry for the long post, but thank you for getting this far.

mareeyadolores is right that you would be better off getting an ASD diagnosis rather than PDA, as it is more readily understood by the profs and will access resources like autism outreach. Some children have ASD & PDA together and your dd might have enough ASD characteristics to warrant a diagnosis. But for you to understand how to handle her then you need to explore all the options.

Mareeya PDA is recognised as an autism spectrum disorder ,my son is diagnosed with PDA /asd, I felt it essential that PDA was in the diagnosis as the treatment of PDA needs to be so different to asd/as. He would deteriorate with usual asd techniques. Hope you don't mind me pointing that out. Of course a diagnosis of asd is better than nothing, or as a start to get her difficulties recognised , but ultimately she would need PDA methods used to help with improvement in the severe anxiety and need for control these children have.

OP, there is loads of info here for you to digest, just take your time though as it can be very overwhelming and you have dd at home for the next week too so not much time to think. First you need to get half term out of the way.
This week maybe try and line up a variety of sensory activities like the park/swings/roundabout or soft play centre which might help calm some of her behaviours and try pushing and pulling games. Ds is often calmed by me holding his hands and then he tries to push me back which gives sensory feedback. PDA children often like to pretend to be babies (no one demands anything of a baby so it's nice and safe) your dd might like to play this game and you can rock her lots. Wrapping her in blankets might be good too.
Another good tip is to play with her (dolls or whatever) and let her take complete control of the game. You participate and join in but don't try to influence the action whatsoever, let her be in complete control.
Letting dd choose what she wants to do from two or three options which will give her a feeling of control and might ease anxiety.

Hiya Walter, I know you're 100% right in theory. Just worried about the risks of combining the postcode lottery with a history of social services for a diagnosis lots and lots of professionals (incorrectly) still think isn't real.

Thank you for all of the advice and support you are giving me.
I hope this doesn't offend anyone, but I don't want dd to be this way, I have read up on PDA and although she fits so much of the description, I just don't want her to have to live with this disorder, and I keep asking myself if this is normal, I mean, she is 4 and a half. Don't lots of 4 and a half year olds behave this way?
I don't know what I am thinking, but your support and advice is invaluable.

If dd is PDA, what does that mean her future will be like? I have read that children with PDA tend not to do so well educationally, and struggle to form friendships and just live life and fit in.

To answer a few points you have made, dd loves to talk, but it is usually a one way conversation, where she talks about imagined scenarios as if they are real, and I reply with 'Oh ok, what happened next? Oh yes, that sounds nice' etc etc.
She is reasonably good at sharing and says things like good girls share, and she maintains eye contact too. In fact, she likes me to look at what she is doing constantly.
Mummy look, mummy you're not looking, and she doesn't seem to understand that I cannot always look, such as when I am driving. We have the same conversation virtually every time we are in the car and if I am being completely honest, I find dd's constant need for attention draining.

I honestly don't think dd can accept that adults have responsibilities or power that she doesn't have herself. She will argue with me, not in a 'I'm angry at mummy' way IYSWIM but in a 'I have every right' way. Sorry if that sounds confusing.

She doesn't seem to understand that I am in charge, and behaves like an adult in a childs body. She doesn't listen to the word 'No' very often and just continues what she is doing, ignoring my requests for her to stop.
I have told her the same thing so many times, like do not help yourself out of the fridge, yet she continues, and has done for the last few years.

There is much much more but I suppose I am so used to a lot of it that I see it as normal, so it is not easy to think of it all, although I am trying to do that now.

She will tell me the same thing over and over again, with different variations of the same theme, and it feels like she is trying to shock me, such as 'X was spitting at school today, and he spat all over the teacher and the classroom was full of spit and it turned into a swimming pool and we all had to swim in the spit. I am not going to school tomorrow, I don't like spit, but yesterday Y spitted in my face and I pulled his head off and there was lots of blood and the teacher put a plaster on the hole in his head and he hit the hole and the plaster flew off. It's not being good to spit is it?'
The next day she will have a whole new conversation about spit and on it goes.
Just lately, these conversations centre around the behaviours I have told her repeatedly are not acceptable, so she will tell me other children have been swearing or spitting and then embellish her tales, I think she just wants me to listen to her, which I do.

She likes to be treated like a baby, and wrapped up. She likes to lead the games and she enjoys telling me what to do.

She loves baths but only if the bubbles are in the right place.

She doesn't take much notice at all of anything I say, and continues regardless towards what she wants, as if I haven't spoken. If she runs off when we are out, and I shout 'Stop' she doesn't even hesitate, she just keeps going. If I say don't do something, she will almost always do it, so we have lots of wet shoes which fall apart, lots of muddy uniform before we get to school.
She rages if I don't give in to her demands, but you cannot make her see logical sense. As you can imagine, there is lots of rages in my house.

She doesn't bat an eyelid if she has hurt someone, and will continue doing whatever she is doing to hurt them, until she is physically removed.

She can be kind, she loves animals, and loves to stroke dogs and cats she sees when she is out, but at the turn of a sixpence she can go from gentle stroking to trying to stroke their eyes, and then poking their eyes.

We just seem to go through the same issues every single day, and I find myself saying the same things every day, for months and months on end. I am still saying the same things and the next day, it's almost as if I have never gone over it before.

I don't think I can claim DLA for dd because no one has diagnosed her with anything and I am on income support at the moment.

And after I have read what I have just written, I have made her out to be a complete horror, yet she is amazing and wonderful and not constantly tantrumming, she does lovely things completely out of the blue, such as drawing school office staff a nice picture, or bringing me my chocolates almost like she is sharing them even though she refers to them as mine, and she will pass me things when I ask if she wants to.
She is not a bad girl and if I have made her look bad, I have given you the wrong impressiion. She is a beautiful girl, who happens to be quite frustrating and full on sometimes.

I just want her to be happy although I am not sure if I have enough patience to make her happy, in fact I know I don't have enough patience with her.

She responds better to 'You can't eat your dinner nicely dd' 'Yes I can' and proceeds to eating her dinner straightaway etc

It's like she enjoys proving me wrong so I will let her do this to get her to do what I need her to do.

Most of all, I want dd to be happy for her whole life.

We know you dont want your Dd to have these problems sponge, none of do. I can relate to the wondering if the behaviours are normal for a child of her age. I used to swing between is she isnt she all the time with Dd3 which is why I didnt request an assessment before she was 5, despite the fact that she is very quirky.

My Dd3 doesnt realise she is a child either, she hates the word no and will scream and throw herself on the floor if she cant get her own way, it is all about control with her.

Dd3 also doesnt follow our house rules, she takes food without asking, usually sweet stuff, she knows we have a rule about asking first but she doesnt care, if she wants it, she takes it.

I dont know how to stop this, I had it with my older Dd aswell and I believe she has undiagnosed Asd. My middle child never did it and yet they all have the same rules. Who knows why.

Take some time to gather your thoughts, keep a diary and do some reading. And then make a decision about what you want to do. Only you can decide, all we do is share our experiences and knowledge.

Please be kind to yourself and good luck

I can hear how sad and frustrated you are sponge, I was in you're shoes exactly this time last year and its awful. You're post could have been written by me, I am no expert , but PDA sounds not unlikely, no one wants their child to be anything but happy , have a normal life and be able to cope with world. My son is also charming, loving and beautiful. He wants to cope, to be good and to comply.... but he can't . PDA methods helped us before diagnosis when life became almost intolerable , it took time to get used to and a change of mindset for us, traditional methods don't work, these children rarely learn from experience and defiantly for us punishing him makes things massively worse.
Things are not working for you at the moment, why not forget about the label and try just treating her as if she has PDA? If it works you're life and hers will improve and give you space and time to worry about diagnosis.
It's relentless parenting a child like ours, I know I could barely function before I found PDA , it doesn't fix things but it makes life a bit easier .

Mareea, yes I can see what you mean, we were lucky, but I do think trying to include demand avoidance somehow in the diagnosis can be a benefit. Eg Asd with avoidant behaviour ? Better than nothing. Some schools will not take parents views and just treat as aspergers or asd, not much good for PDA .

I'm sorry if I have offended anyone.

Has anyone got any strategies for parenting PDA children? I'm very interested to hear of them.

Ineedmorepatience, Your dd3 sounds just like my dd. Thank you for your insight, it is very helpful.

I just feel so bloody sad and angry about this right now.

Hi sponge

Your dd sounds like my dd, my dd is 7, I feel your pain it's draining,frustrating & upsetting because we just want the best for our children.

My dd has been assessed by a pead, has referrals to various different people now but I have just come across PDA tonight & am stunned cause it is my dd.

How well does your dd do at school academically?

Keep talking I am struggling & feel life is a battle but I wouldn't change dd for the world, well ask my again in the morning.

Sorry to hear how hard you are finding it. There is a book 'understanding pathological demand avoidance in children' by Phil Christie on amazon but you could ask for it at your library and they would get it for you. That has lots of info in it and some good strategies.
Also, there are guidelines on the PDA contact website that have a few pointers. Also google for ' norsaca publications helping your child with PDA to play' for more strategies.

I dont think you have offended anyone sponge, we are a pretty thick skinned bunch on here

I think you should do some reading around Pda and Asd, if you are yourself with knowledge you are less likely to be fobbed off.

Try to get out a bit over half term and do something nice. You will feel better for it. We go to soft play and the park early in the morning before most folk are out of bed, it is much quieter and less stressful.

Good luck

theres loads of information on here but my nephew has the same behaviors breaking things/lashing out/hurting himself and others especially his mum. we treat it as though he is having a panic attack. if he is put in time out this just seems to make matters worse, we try to remain as calm as possible, say we need to calm down never that he needs to calm down i should think that it can get a bit much when you constantly hear your own name for the wrong reasons, and breath after a couple of minutes he slowly starts to copy and you can see him start to relax again. this may sound like utter rubbish and i'm not sure if it would help but it would be worth a try.

You can claim DLA without a diagnosis. It's about care needs, not about medical labels. That said, it does help to attach few long letters from doctors / schools / whoever, if they mention the problems & the level of care needed it proves you're a)not making it up and b)even if there's no 'diagnosis ' and it might all go away later in life, right now there is 'something' going on that needs professional input

I am a specialist teacher and I would recommend you stuck to your goalposts. Make reasonable rules and stick to them. If you deviate the child will know how to manipulate you - they do it subconsciously - so keep to your rules about eating, behaviour and bed times.
Good luck

Hi everyone,

I am really struggling today.

DD has now been assessed by the EP, who has advised me to go down the route of seeing my GP and having DD referred to a paediatrician.
The SENCO has said she will compile a report and make a referral to a paediatrician for me, and will include a copy of her report in her referral.

EP said DD has anxiety issues, and I must think of her meltdowns as anxiety related rather than bad behaviour, although she didn't want to pass any opinion on a possible diagnosis.

I did tell the EP that I believe DD has PDA behaviours, but that I hadn't had DD diagnosed yet.

I am waiting for the report form the SENCO now which will hopefully explain what measures the school are going to implement to manage DD's behaviour.

On a slightly different note, I don't think anyone IRL has the slightest clue how desperate I am. This isn't because I don't speak of my problems with DD, but because the response I get is always the same, 'That's 4 year old's for you, my 4 year old is exactly the same, you just need to be firmer and show DD you are in control and wont tolerate the behaviour and tbh you need to stop making excuses for her.'

I wish it was as easy as lack of discipline, I really do.

I am finding DD intolerable lately, and I am not saying that lightly.

I love how everyone apart from you lovely people on here bloody judges me, and seems to think I'd prefer to live this life than actually discipline DD.

My life would be 1000,000 times easier if it was a question of discipline, or even if I could just accept DD's behaviours and not stress about them.

Today has been mostly awful.
I may not have mentioned this in my previous post, I can't remember, but DD has got the loudest voice I have ever heard on a child. She seems to reserve this voice for when we are at home.
She chants so loudly I really can't hear myself think. Sometimes, she chants for something she wants, sometimes it is just noise, but it is almost always extremely loud, to the point that nothing is louder.
I have resorted to going into the garden today when she has been chanting, because I honestly cannot stand the sound, and I can even hear it when I have wandered to the end of the garden with the back door shut!!

It is louder than the loudest volume setting on my tv, and louder than my cd player will go. I learnt that from past experience.

Why doesn't she get a hoarse voice from shouting so loudly??

Apart from chanting loudly, she has broken eggs today, tipped the laptop on the floor, smeared paints all over the wall and herself, and I am worried her rocking so violently has broken my bloody sofa!! She breaks things regularly.

I have heard DLA is very very hard to successfully claim, so am concerned about that. I may need it in the near future, if only for the heating bill. DD can sometimes be calmed down by sitting in front of the electric fan heater type fire. She likes the warm air blowing on her. I don't like the extra £15 a week it is costing me, but she turns it on every time my back is turned. It can be 30c in my house and she'll still switch the fire on. In fact, I am just waiting for my electric meter to run out (crap pay as you go meter) and DD has just turned the fire on again, and tbh, I don't think I can cope with another meltdown right now if I turn it off. Let's hope I can click 'post message' before the electric runs out.

If today was a fish, I would throw it back.

During school term time, I have to put £40 a week into my electric meter, no matter what the weather, and in holidays, that rises to £60 a week. That's probably because the longest holidays are in the summer, so I don't have the main heating on then, but obviously DD is home for many more hours.

I live in a very small house btw, and before DD, I put £25 a week in my meter every week, and there was leftover in the summer which meant I only had to continue putting £25 a week in the meter in the winter.

The waste in my house is phenomenal!! I am so dejected today. I hope I'll feel better tomorrow, but on days like this, it really feels as though DD's only mission in life is to punish me and make me suffer as much as is possible.
Obviously, my mission in life is to understand DD, and care for her when she is slowly destroying my life, my friendships, my belongings and my mind.

I'm not sure I can keep going if I am being totally honest and no one appears to understand my need for speed. I don't have months and months to wait for a paediatrician, I don't have weeks to wait for a report, I don't know if I can cope for the few days it will take to get a GP's appointment, yet I can't tell anyone I can't cope with DD, unless I am prepared to see her taken away and never see her again, so I plaster on a smile and then cry when I am on my own, because maybe, just maybe, the best thing for DD is someone with more understanding, someone with more patience, someone who can cope with her. I just don't think I can do it anymore. I really don't.

Sorry to all of you, I am just feeling like shit.

Hi sponge ,sorry you are having such a bad day

I have no advice for you and I dont know if you are in the right frame of mind for advice anyway.

Try to be kind to yourself and remember, you are a good mum. If you werent you wouldnt care about your Dd.

You need to go straight to the GP and get a referral to a paediatrician on monday. Make sure the GP realises how urgent it is.

Then go to your nearest childrens centre and tell them you need support and help to fill in the dla form.

Good luck

Thanks Ineedmorepatience for your lovely post. I hope am sure I will feel better in the morning.

How do I get it across to the GP how urgent it is without sounding like I am not capable of looking after DD, which tbh, I wonder myself.

As for the DLA, I haven't even got a form yet. I have no idea where to get one from, or what they will ask. I can google for my nearest childrens centre, but I keep worrying that people will think I am being money grabbing. I do think DD causes me to spend more money than I ever spent on my other DC, but all I ever hear is 'All 4 year old's are like that.'
I'm beginning to wonder if they are all the same and I am just a completely ineffective parent.

The EP said that DD's responses were unusual for a child of her age, she is hyper, unusually aware of her surroundings at all times, and very anxious, and she had been headbanging in school whilst being observed in class, and the EP says the headbanging has a calming effect on DD which was visible. EP described her a 'a very complex little girl'.

Won't the DLA people want some proof? An experts opinion? I am confused by the whole thing tbh.

I doubt that your GP will think you are not capable of looking after her sponge and even if he did have concerns nothing would come of it.

Social services dont just remove children from families if that is worrying you. They want to keep families together not split them up.

There is no doubt you need support with for Dd and the Ed Psych has obviously seen that too, proffs dont bandy around words like complex for no reason you know.

You just have to hang in there a bit longer until you can get in to see your GP. Dont worry about not knowing where to get the forms from, the children's centre will know all that.

Good luck