Please help me deal with DD's house trashing meltdowns.

[megletthesecond]

I'm not very good at this . When 8yr old DD starts throwing things around (plants, water, paperwork etc) or tipping furniture over I still feel like I have to tell her off. And there isn't any point, telling her off didn't work the first 100 times so it's not going to work now is it .

She has no diagnosis (the paed blamed me 3 years ago and said I need to be stricter).

Is the best way to deal with it to just pick her up and make her sit somewhere, even if its a battle and I have to hold her? Her brother is good at clearing up the mess, she will not do it, but I feel like I should be dealing with that too. It's like we have to clear up the mess before she will calm down.

I agree with Polter about staying calm and trying to find out what is causing the anxiety/ meltdown.

The other thing I have learned with my DS who has meltdowns without a diagnosis is to be clear that the behaviour (hitting/kicking etc is unacceptable) in an undramatic way.

Holding the child down or reacting is giving positive reinforcement to the behaviour. Once the child is calm try to focus on what they have done well in the situation not what has gone wrong. For example my DS seems to calm down quicker these days so we say something like.' I know you were upset about something but what we liked was that you calmed down quickly. Can you tell us what the matter is..... '

to be clear I don't tell DS that the behaviour is unacceptable during the meltdown as long as he is safe I leave him well alone. He can't process it.

Sometime after I tell him it is not acceptable to hit and kick. Which it isn't - we all need to be safe.

I do not hold him down when he is having a meltdown as it adds to the tension/ feeds the anxiety. And if, (bearing in mind there is no DX) there is an element of control it would be giving it, as it is showing that we are reacting to the behaviour.

and it's really really tricky Polter what works for one child doesn't necessarily work for another. My DS does need to understand his boundaries for other children that probably wouldn't work.

My understanding of my Ds's anxiety is that it causes him to want to have control in our house as that is calming to him.

We have had major ups and downs but fundamentally he is a good boy and wants to do the right thing. He responds well to being told what that is when he is not having a meltdown. He also responds well to agreeing what the issues are and what the limits are.

When we kept a record of the meltdowns they seem to be over similar issues such as bed times/ coming off the screen.

Hi Polter, I think there is a lot of PDA going on with my son but not been able to access all of the resources on that yet. Really sorry OP I haven't meant to hijack your post and I hope there is something useful in this for you to see.

Thanks all. Am reading and thinking .

Back later, got to go out shortly.