I can't cope with DD anymore

[DepthsUnknown]

I don't even know where to start because my life feels like a giant mess but one of my biggest issues is my 8yo DD.

These are the problems:

• she is angry, what feels like all the time. Once she is in the throws of a tantrum, it is very hard to calm her down. We usually put her in her room and it will take upto half an hour for her to calm down but often she will lose it again quite quickly and this can go on all day
• she is violent and will hit, kick and throw things in the house (this is everyday). She's broken so many things. Often the violence starts when she gets frustrated at herself or when she can't have something she wants immediately or if she can't do something she wants to do (either if I say no or she finds it difficult or it doesn't go how she wants it to - failing at computer games and her drawings 'going wrong')
• she is constantly screaming, shouting and swearing at me. Every other word is 'fuck'
• she is incredibly unkind and nasty to her younger DSis. She seems to get pleasure from upsetting people and will smile or laugh if we tell her she is being unkind. She is often rude to my friends and their DC.
• she is anxious a lot, worries about things
• she is generally unhappy and when I talk to her about it she will say that nobody loves or likes her and she is rubbish at everything. She often complains that she has no friends but her school say this isn't the case? Other times she will tell me everybody is her friend. She goes through phases where she threatens suicide and I once found her in her room with a belt around her neck
• she is constantly complaining about being in pain, her foot hurts, her legs hurt, her back hurts. Even paper cuts seem to cause a lot of distress
• she's very particular about clothes and the way they feel. Socks annoy her and her trousers have to be tight fitting but her tops have to be loose
• she is overweight and no longer fits most of her school uniform. She may even be obese at this point (I haven't weighed her)
• she's an incredibly fussy eater and is gradually eliminating entire food groups. She has refused to eat potatoes or potato products for years but now will no longer eat rice or pasta. She only seems to like bread.
• she's decided she doesn't like certain people. Refuses to see her dad (although I think some of her reasons are genuine), no longer likes my DP, now she tells me she hates me
• she is incredibly black and white about things, refuses to compromise, see things from another perspective or humour in things (she's quite literal). Her version of events is often very different from reality but you can't persuade her that things aren't quite the way she thinks of them

I have asked for help on a few occasions. We've had two CAHMS referrals from my GP but both times I was told her issues are behavioural and I should read a parenting book (specific one suggested) or get a family support worker. After that we paid for private counselling but I can't afford it abd she hated going. Only once has she lost it at school and she's doing quite well academically so they don't have concerns. After the incident at school (which included her throwing rocks at classmates) we were referred to a play therapy place for one term. I was self employed at the time so was able to take her (during school hours) but my employment has changed now. It was helpful in that it seemed to improve her self esteem but her behaviour was still poor. I believe we can ask for her to be sent for one more term but then that's it.

I don't know what to do. I'm ill and struggling anyway and I'm totally out of my depth. I often resort to just screaming at her because I can't cope with her behaviour but I know this is wrong and isn't helping. What can I do? Nobody wants to help me. I sometimes feel like telling her dad to have her full time but she hates him and I doubt he would be any better at helping her.

Can someone please suggest something? I'm at the end of my limited resources.

Big hugs. I've got an eight year old girl and she's lively but I'd say she doesn't sound typical. And I say this as I have a seven year old and four year both who have autism (seven year old has ADHD too). Thankfully we've not dealt with cahms as I've heard they're awful. Have the school helped? The anger is probably because the school day/world/her nervous system is in chaos. Slow processing also leads to anxiety and again can manifest as anger. People with autism are very black and white. They use logical thinking to control the scary world they live in.

The autism discussion page on fb is really good and he's really informative.

I'd make a list if you can of triggers. What she's reacting to and how then work on a solution to change the behaviour. If it's pda it's more about offering some form of choice and control and they need to be managed differently.

One thing I would say is maybe could you go privately to see a therapist who specialises in asd? Services I find are slim. My youngest is non verbal. Speech therapy barely see her (think once every other month despite begging for more).

Do feel free to pm me if you want to chat.

I know how you feel as it's really hard work x

Good luck with getting some resolution on the behaviour. Regarding the eating, I wouldn't be concerned about her not eating potato, rice or pasta. Does she eat healthy food stuffs vegetables, fruit and protein?

My dd is a fussy eater and had lot of difficulties with food textures when younger. She used to be obese. She's now overweight and we are working on her weight. She is also 8. She has some sensory issues with clothes and her hair. She doesn't fit into the full blown sensory processing disorder category either. What I find now that she's older with clothes and hair is the more anxious she is, the more prevalent the issues become. For example she thought she was late before school yesterday so she rolled around shouting and refusing to go to school because her hair wasn't perfect. It was a short lived effort though - unlike those of the past. The start of the school year is always hard as she is very anxious then and becomes stroppy, tantromy and her sensory issues really blow up. These are the times when she most needs a cuddle and to be told everything will be ok.

I know nothing about ASD if this is what she has. However I would be more concerned with your dds behaviour and let the sensory issues heal themselves as you find a solution for her to become less unhappy and less anxious.

We saw a child psychologist for about 5 months when dd was coming up 6 in yr1. I'm very poorly. Dd was totally out of control with me. She completely ordered me around and was shouty, tantromy, very immature. Because she suddenly realised just how ill I was. And she thought the best way to manage it was to be in charge of me, made me go everywhere with her, ordered me around, stopped me from leaving rooms. It was emotional blackmail. But because I was so ill, I didn't see it. I learnt from the child psychologist she basically stopped developing when she started school as I'd managed to hide just how ill I was from her till then.

You sound quite poorly too. Your dd may well have ASD. I'm just wondering if your dd is having issues with having a poorly mummy and this is making her symptoms worse or her anxiety about you is actually creating all the symptoms. Had I not seen the child psychologist, I think my dd could be acting in a similar fashion to yours by now.

My dd said she hated seeing the psychologist as well. This is entirely normal because it was bringing her out of her comfort zone. The woman we saw was brilliant. She came to our house for 2 hours once a week. Sometimes dd refused to work with her and the woman knew exactly what to do and how to work with her. And by the end of the two hours dd had done some kind of work with her. She bought her lovely stickers and did big sticker charts, and gave dd treats and certificates for working hard. Dd earnt points on the sticker chart and the points earned, she used to buy clothes, special outings or other stuff she wanted. She brought her a book, which they wrote and drew things together, which could be secret from dh and I. She involved us and picked apart how we were helping create the situation and got my dd to tell us how she wanted us to act. Does this sound like the child psychologist you've been using?

IME with DD and DGS (who I have custody of) it is very difficult to get children with SEN diagnosed by school services as I believe they are under pressure to not identify SEN children who will then need extra funding.
With DD went down the private route after being told by educational psychiatrist she was educationally subnormal.
DGS luckily had a very good GP who referred him to a paediatrician.
You need to be tough, very tough and push and push and push until you feel happy with the diagnosis.
I found the GP and private route better than going through the school who then retested and agreed with the diagnosis.
It is very hard I know, especially when you are unwell yourself and being made to feel that it is your fault.
You will need to find an understanding GP. The first one I saw basically threw me out as I was unable to control DGS. That was my reason for seeing her.
I changed surgeries and saw a lovely GP who sat down on the floor and played with him while she talked to me.

OP that sounds very hard for you all. Your poor girl sounds distressed and it must feel very worrying and stressful.

Here are a couple of links which you may find helpful.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/special_needs/2132906-Sensory-Processing-Disorder-support-thread

www.understood.org/en/learning-attention-issues/child-learning-disabilities/sensory-processing-issues/understanding-sensory-processing-issues

I would also recommend contacting an ASD charity/support organisation.

I think your daughter would benefit from seeing a paediatric occupational therapist to find strategies to help with foods and situations she finds challenging. My son only needed 4 sessions, and it may be possible to access publicly?

Most of all please know that you are not alone and it's nothing you have done wrong. Please don't SuperNanny her, that is terrible advice. Your daughter does not sound typical and you will need professional support to help her manage.

I would flag the school on your concerns and ask if they can refer for assessment or arrange an IEP? Sounds as though she is struggling socially and could do with a lot more support.

All the best.

Similar here. DD has damaged so many things in the house, bites and spits etc. Broken four TV's in two years. Never sleeps. Perfect at school, bright as a button.

CAMHS referral paediatrician said I just had to be stricter with her. A supernanny approach caused DD's violent behaviour to skyrocket, ended up having a new neighbour complaining at the back door that she'd hurt her daughter.

Since I've decided to go with my gut dd is much much calmer. I don't know how it will pan out long term but using standard discipline was slowly destroying her and our relationship.

Sorry not rtft but in our area ASD is dealt with by referral to community paediatrics not CAMHS so it may be worth asking for that instead ?

OP does your dd's behaviour seem to be centred around you? I'm just thinking that it sounds like she is doing everything in her power to maintain your attention on her, even if it's negative attention. If you are the person she can consistently rely on and her dad is not predictable or consistent it would make sense that she feels secure when you are focussed on her.

In my area it was either via GP or through school, it might be possible to bypass GP and go through school for you? Less stressful? If it's something you want to pursue. Also you would be very welcome in support groups, real life or online, with only suspected issues, you don't need a diagnosis. Many behaviours are common across a lot of conditions and circumstances and you may find a lifeline of support.

Pleáse dont takevthe supernanny approach.i think your daughter may have Asd .my son is 9 and has perfect behaviour at school but when he comes home he has meltdowns as he has held it together all day.he also has sensory processing and social phobias.eating disorder too.its not easy and i feel how desperate you are as i have been there.it took 2 years to get his diagnosis and for people to beleive me.my gp was fantastic so i suggest going to your gp explaining what is going on and ask for help.The camhs team are so busy in my area that i got diagnosed in another borough as there is no funding.please dont give up.there is help there for you.also i found a group for sn children at my local childrens centre and they have helped through the days when j was tearing my hair out.please message me if i can help at all.Stay strong its not easy being a parent .i have 5 children and some days are a battle just getting my youngest toschool .

I've been reading some stuff about PDA and it's ringing bells loudly.

A typical example is getting her to take a bath. If I tell her it's time to get a bath she might agree but negotiate a delay. Once the delay has elapsed she will refuse to get in or make herself busy doing something else and try to negotiate a further delay. If I insist, she gets angry and will stall. If I hurry her along she will shout 'I'm fucking doing it'. Other times she might outright refuse and say 'you can't make me' or she will cry and say she is too tired or has a headache. Once she's in the bath, we go through the same process trying to get her out of it.

Sometimes I'll give her a list of things she has to do so for example I'll say you need to get dressed, then go downstairs and put your shoes on then get your coat. Any list of instructions she takes as a demand and will screech that she 'can't fucking do everything'. Nothing I ask her to do is straight forward unless it's something she also wants to do.

Other things I've read that ring true for us:

• abnormal response to touch. She will often say that someone has tried to strangle her if they've maybe held her arm to stop her hitting
• her sleep pattern is all over the place. It's not unusual for her to wake up at 2 or 4 am and be up for the day. She's an early riser in general though.
• she likes to be in control. There's been a number of meltdowns over my other DC (usually DS as he's in the front passenger seat) having control of the radio
• I'm starting to think about her friendships. There's a couple of girls she plays with on our street but their relationship very much revolves on them doing activities that DD wants to do and if they refuse she will totally disengage, often absorbing herself in something else or will have a meltdown and I have to send the other child home. She's very inflexible when it comes to activities - it's her way or no way. She also seems to have little understanding that other DC might not want to play the same things as her or she might choose activities that are inappropriate for more than one person, like colouring the same picture or wanting the other DC to watch her play on the iPad.

The confusing thing for me is that on the surface she does have friends and manages social interactions and will sometimes be happy to join in with activities other DC are already engaged in but I'm starting to realise how superficial this all is and it only works if it's going DD's way.

If PDA is ringing bells then please read about parenting strategies for children with PDA and try these. They are very different to those usually suggested for children, esp wrt punishing bad behaviour, as they are centred around decreasing anxiety which is at the heart of PDA.

Good luck

X-posts with a few there.

I agree that my illness is probably a contributing factor to her anxiety. She says 'you are always ill' to me a lot but it's said as a criticism rather than a concern. Sometimes I feel like she might have narcissistic personality disorder because she so lacks empathy. She doesn't care about hurting or upsetting people, she says they deserve it for being annoying and I often feel like she enjoys other people's suffering. It's like she only cares about herself and of course she's the only victim in her world.

I remember reading The Little Match Girl to her once and I cried which she found both confusing and amusing despite me explaining why it was a sad story. It feels like she lacks a lot of emotions actually, except anger and sadness.

I also think the issues with XH are a contributing factor and I know she worries about being forced to visit him. I think I represent security for her but I'm not always her favourite person. Favourite person status is reserved for my mum and her youngest cousin who is the same age. He also has some behavioural problems though and at times they're terrible together.

She sounds like me as a child :(. Anger, control, inflexibility are ofter results of ASD. As are the issues with touch, food (I have a massive problem with feeling moving air over my skin. Air conditioning is pain to me; I'm sure most people don't feel this but as a child I would complain of a small breeze as "blizzard"- your mention of her overreaction to touch reminded me of this).

I think it's unlikely that she has PDA and SPD and much more likely that she is on the spectrum as a whole. At 24 I still have screaming meltdowns where I push or kick out at people trying to touch me. I am now much more able to regulate myself now but this state is usually a response to "overload". Autism is a processing disorder so if her brain is trying to process too many things and becomes overloaded then this loss of control is the result. I find that the solution is to retreat to somewhere I deem to be 'safe' (my car/home/bedroom), turn off all the lights and pull a heavy blanket over me. It allows my brain to decompress. If anyone tries to interfere (even try to calm me down) it makes it worse as any kind of interaction gives my already overloaded brain more to process.

Maybe next time it happens, take her somewhere calm. Work out how she reacts best to the setting (e.g, window closed to stop breeze, lights dim to avoid glare etc) and just be silent and show no reaction. It's incredibly stressful for an autistic person to be aware that they are supposed to behaving in a certain way yet are unable to work it out. Autistic people are usually hugely more sensory aware and may be reacting to small details that neurotypical people would not even notice so maybe try to pay attention to these things.

These are just my ideas as a recently diagnosed Aspie and all autistic people are different but I hope this helps you understand your daughter a little more and help her. I would have loved someone to be so aware of my unhappiness as a child so you sound like you have made a great start.

I have no advice but just wanted to send my best wishes. You have SUCH a lot on your plate and it sounds as though you're doing an amazing job of holding it all together for everyone else. Sometimes the real heroes in life are the people who just keep on going in the face of everyday adversity. What a great mother you sound.

I really hope some of the advice and links from other posters opens doors to a brighter future. Very best of luck. x

I've also just seen your update about the lack of empathy :(. I hope I don't have a lack of empathy as I do want others around me to be happy but I have little to no understanding of what causes this and how to create it.

Laughing inappropriately is common, as is failing to understand what is sad or funny, because people with autism struggle to read emotion. I know smile = happy as I was taught as a child. I can't distinguish a smile from a grimace, sarcasm from honesty and therefore often end up confused or reacting inappropriately.

I think something like 80% of all communication is non-verbal. Imagine only having 20% capacity to read other people or not being able to see people as you communicate i.e. Only knowing the literal meaning of what people are saying and this may help you understand some of her responses.

Sounds exactly like my dd similar age although my dd is even worse at school than at home. It sets off all her triggers.

As school were concerned, she had an assessment from an Ed psych which started the ball rolling. We were also referred to camhs who gave her a diagnosis and she has regular appointments but tbh they have offered NOTHING whatosever in the way of support or guidance. So a referral to camhs is not the be all and end all.

In your case as school is not the concern, you would have to go back to the gp. Can you be referred to pediatrics? We went there before camhs and told them everything and they made a few referrals eg occupational therapy and also did basic health tests to check nothing else was going on.

I found the resources on the PDA website www.pdasociety.org.uk/ incredibly helpful in dealing with my 6 year old who exhibits a lot of the behaviour your describe, particularly the constant (exhausting) negotiation, the need for everything to be on her terms and an apparent lack of empathy. We had tried various disciplinary approaches over the years and they all made her behaviour worse. I don't know if my daughter has PDA and we would never be able to get a referral as she is very effective at masking outside of the home, but once I accepted that anxiety and the need to be in control was at the root of her behaviour and focused on reducing the anxiety, things improved massively. I get really cross when I see people recommending the "super nanny" approach - I think it can be really damaging when children have anxiety.

Hi OP

We see you would like this moved, so we're sending it over to our SN board now.

It sounds like ASD to me as well. Can you afford a private educational psychologist assessment for the SEN side of things? That usually costs around £400 which is a lot, but it can unlock other doors.

Just seen your post about the bath, so very familiar! We used a whiteboard planner for the week, sat down together and went through day by day discussing all of the things which must be done, some at particular times, like school, others just at some point during spare time, like baths. Giving as much control as possible helped, so she could decide when she would have a bath, and then writing or using visual aids to indicate that bath would be at 3.00 on Sunday, for example, to be finished by 4.00. It wasn't perfect but seeing it all planned out and knowing that she had some control in the planning worked for us. There are lots of resources online for free visual aids to print out, our DD preferred to write out the plan but she was a little bit older when diagnosed.

She may not really lack empathy, just have difficulty expressing it. She'll be anxious about your health, because she is worried about you but also because it upsets her world, and that may come across as critical rather than concerned.

I agree with PPs that you should ask GP or Ed Psych for referral to community paediatrician and push hard for things to happen. Specialist OT will be able to help with the sensory issues.

Sorry for essay but one final point is that sleep is very important and lack of sleep can have a huge impact on behaviour so it might be worth asking for help with this anyway.

I havent read all the replies because some of them were plain daft! Please dont use super nanny approaches on your Dd, she sounds very stressed and anxious already.

The Explosive Child, My Daughters not naughty and articles about the female presentation of Asd would be my recommendations!

I have a couple of videos that might help too. I will attempt to link

elven awmconf16 youtube

Had to link the google page for this one ^^

vimeo.com/122940958

Good luck

Grrr the top one doesnt work! Hang on will try laptop!