ADHD almost 5 yr old is violent at home
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Anonymous
. Any therapist who suggests the sticker thing needs to be fired. A child lashing out in anger cannot stop herself by thinking, “but wait! If I kick my brother, I’m not going to get a sticker! So I’d better not kick him.” That’s not how it works. She’s not making a rational decision to kick. She’s dysregulated. Stickers won’t work. |
Anonymous
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My daughter has autism, anxiety, and ADHD, and she does these things. Once she started taking medication for anxiety, all of the aggressive behaviors went away, so I do think it’s from anxiety.
But also, I think you need to better manage her schedule and environment to set her up for success. If she can’t handle games where there is a winner and loser right now, then don’t play those types of card games. My daughter wouldn’t be able to play that card game. For bedtime, you could probably have organized that differently to avoid the conflict (one parent with each child, or whatever it takes). If you know these things are hard for her, stop expecting her to do them the way a neurotypical child would and then punishing her when she fails. That’s…kind of awful. |
Anonymous
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Hi Op, I'm so sorry. This was me last year with my 5 year old, it was so hard! We got an ADHD diagnosis around this time and medication for us has been a game changer, so I do feel like I should share that. Therapy, neurofeedback, diet changes, all didn't help much (therapy was still worthwhile for parent coaching, not saying drop it but it didn't solve the violence problem at all). The other thing that helped us was parent coaching -- doing the live parent child journey course with Dan Shapiro was healthy for my husband and I during this time. It isn't because you are causing it or it is your parenting, it is because when you have a child with these additional needs and this type of dysregulation you have to be basically SUPER parents. You have to learn extra skills because the regular basic ones don't tend to work.
https://www.parentchildjourney.com/ Taking the course together was good for our parenting relationship together, and good to build some tools. And methylphenidate was the right medication for my son that really helped him not get to this state of dysregulation most of the time. He still has moments but they are wayyyy fewer and farther in between. A couple concrete things - try not to teach in the moment of dysregulation. Trying to teach and say you can't do this, you can't do that in the moment just escalates things for us and they don't learn anything at all when their brains and nervous systems are in that space. keep your other kids safe, remove child if necessary but if you can at all not use physical ways to do this in our case we ended up realizing that was wildly escalating things. And if we could let the feeling pass without letting our own feelings about it get intwined it passed much quicker. And then we could talk about what is safe, practice strategies for the next time etc when more calm. |
Anonymous
| Also pp here. What works for my son around positive reinforcement is more things like hey, we are working towards signing up for karate and we know it is really important to be safe with others if we are going to do karate. So we are going to work towards two weeks of being safe with your body with our family, and then we'll sign up. once we get to two weeks straight of being safe we can sign up. We would give him a warning, so if he started to get a little physical - sweetie I know you're frustrated remember we are working towards karate, you got this. And try to give alternatives. Working towards something does seem to help him. |
Anonymous
| You guys are really medicating your five year olds? |
Anonymous
Is your 5 year physically violent? If not, what do you know? |
Anonymous
just join the crowd who thinks drinking raw milk will protect them from bird flu and leave those of us in the science world alone |
Anonymous
I mean I'm smart enough to not see a link between those two statements. |
Anonymous
Yes plenty of us are medicating five year olds under the medical supervision of doctors. But good to know some anonymous poster trolling a special needs forum on dcum disagrees. |
Anonymous
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Ditto the recommendation for a Dan Shapiro course.
We have walked this road for a long time with both our ADHD/autism/anxiety boys. If I could go back and give one piece of advice to myself when my oldest was 5, it would be this: you cannot help your dysregulated child if you are dysregulated yourself. Invest whatever time and resources you need in learning to manage your own anxiety, fear, anger, and dysregulation so that you can respond to your child calmly. Two other things: Let go of how you thing your life/child/family dynamic SHOULD be, and work on seeing your child for who she is right now - both her strengths and lagging skills. Then set up your home life, routines, activities to help everyone be successful in this current reality. Learn the science of how brains and emotional regulation work. This is a good resource: https://www.thebehaviorhub.com/blog/2020/9/17/emotional-brain-prefrontal-cortex-wise-owl. This will help you develop empathy for yourself and your child, and help you understand when and how to respond to help your child grow. |
Anonymous
| Positive reinforcement is when you reward her for when she's being being good. Doing any expected things, saying nice things to people, using her hands and legs appropriately etc. It does not need to relate to the negative behaviors. A chat can help. Just Google a chart, Amazon sells some. |
Anonymous
+1 so nice to be living a life where this isn't something you have to have knowledge and experience in already. |