Crazy freak outs.... what to do?
It's been ages since I posted.....
My SD 10 has been having ridiculous freak outs lately and over the tiniest things. You will tell her to go get dressed or it's time to do something besides watch TV, she will argue, you finally say I seriously mean it this time and then she will start screaming. Literally screaming like someone hurt her. Sometimes she will plant herself right where she is and refuse to move (she knows we won't physically make her because her mother has threatened us after we did once), which is bad because she scares her little brother, sometimes she will go to her room and scream. We tell her to stop, and then we start ignoring her. This weekend was by far the worst one, it went on for over 45 minutes at which point FDH went downstairs to her room and asked her if there was something wrong with her because he was worried about her. He should have just left her alone, because then for the next half hour it alternated between her screaming "There's nothing wrong with me" and "You hurt my feelings". You could hear her in our room which is two stories up and at the other end of the house. It finally calmed down right about when supper was ready and then she came up to eat like nothing was wrong and he took her home.
We are at a complete loss. I dread her visits now, and I feel bad about it, because when she's not acting like she's possessed, she's a really nice girl and enjoyable to have around. She has the same issues as most kids her age, she talks back and is a total snot to her little sister, but we can handle that. We want to take her to a therapist or counselor but he's worried her mother will flip out. We know she is doing it on purpose because FDH actually put her mother on speaker phone a few weeks ago to prove he wasn't crazy, it was actually as bad as he says and when her mom said to give her the phone she immediately stopped and became normal again. I do think that the counselor is a good idea, she has a seriously crappy life (hard to explain, but we are sure she is alone a lot at her Mom's) and I think she's angry and doesn't know how to deal with it, but that kind of behaviour is unaceptable.
Anyway, the point is, anyone else ever dealt with this? Anyone have any inkling of what to try to get her to stop this before we do push the counselor thing?
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SD12 used to do that. Your DH
SD12 used to do that. Your DH is the parent and needs to step up and stop this. Ignore her when she starts it. Leave the room, take the younger sibling and don't give her attention. That's what she wants is attention.
Have you thought about using
Have you thought about using a spray bottle of water? It would be hard to scream while trying to breath while getting a face full.
oh lord....if you did that to
oh lord....if you did that to a Skid, it would be considered child abuse... }:)
Hahaha I would love to dump
Hahaha I would love to dump water on her or spray her, but farting_glitter is right, we would totally get accused of child abuse!! I hate how our hands are so tied. Honestly if it were my own child she'd be locked in her room and have everything taken away until she smartened up!!
DH actually picked SD up and
DH actually picked SD up and put her in the shower and flipped the cold water on her ass. That pretty much put a stop to it.
The water thing was kinda of
The water thing was kinda of joke but not really. It's what you can do with toddlers when they get into a really bad tantrum. I've done it to my skids as needed. No, I don't think that a squirt or two from a spray bottle is going to get CPS called on you. I would hope that the agency would have better things to do.
As for actually dealing with her while she's screaming.... Water. Or if you want to get creative, everyone in the house should stand in front of her, maybe a foot or two away and stare at her. Then maybe start to whisper to each other. Point fingers if you must. Clearly she wants attention very badly. Enough so that once or twice, give her exactly what she wants. After that, send her to a corner. She wants to behave like a small child then she gets treated like one.
If her mother doesn't like it, tell her to call me.
Have you tried screaming at
Have you tried screaming at the top of your lungs when she starts? My Mom would do this to us when we were kids if we threw a tantrum. We'd scream our lungs out (7 years old) and she'd walk right into the bedroom and just start screaming...and boy! she could be loud! We would be shocked into silence..I remember this happening to me..exactly..once..I NEVER did it again.
Another things she did was when one of my sisters was behaving like a li'l shit in the shopping centre. She wanted something, and Mum said "no"..so she flung herself on the ground and threw the mother of a tantrum. Mum calmly put the shopping trolley to one side..and proceeded to do exactly the same thing.. needless to say my sis was also shocked into silence - and didn't do it again.
hahaha, I love all the
hahaha, I love all the suggestions. I agree that it is definitely an attention thing and it's why we try to ignore her, it's not the way to get attention, but as that clearly isn't working, I will give DH some of these suggestions.
The only way he has to discipline her really is to send her to her room or take away her stuff, which I agree is a little ridiculous and so far has not gotten us anywhere. You don't want to move when you’re told to? There is nothing wrong to me with picking a child up (as someone else said, act like a child I'll treat you like one) and moving them to wherever they were supposed to be. But he hurt her apparently when he did it the first time. Well yeah, she weighs 110 lbs, he picked her up under the armpits, of course it hurt a little, but she loves to blow things out of proportion.
She’s into this new thing too where she calls her Mom when she doesn’t like what happens at our house. She even put me on the phone with her one day and she tried to tell me how to deal with things at my house. I told BM, it’s my house, mind your own business and I told SD10 that she can talk to me if she has a problem with something in my home, not her Mom. Funny thing is, no one was even in trouble; her little sister didn’t want to play with her.
I'd suggest looking at the
I'd suggest looking at the big picture right now. If SD is doing this for attention, can you
1. find more appropriate ways for her to 'earn' positive attention
2. find a reasonable, immediate, consequence eg everyone leave the room when she does that
3. figure out the major trigger and help minimize that when she's around (like, if it happens when she's hungry or when she watches too much tv)
Good luck with this!
#1 is actually along the
#1 is actually along the lines of what one of my friends suggested last night, she was a stepchild and hated her Dad and stepmother (but that's a whole other topic). She said she thinks that she sounds like she is angry with FDH for lack of attention and needs positive attention as you said. We are going to try to come up with ways to give it to her.
Thanks for the advice, I'll let everyone know how it goes.