Don't know what to do about my violent child

[Anonymous]

I'm at my wit's end... spent the morning sobbing in my car.

I have an almost 5 year old son (also recently had a second child in December, and that's when things REALLY took a turn - not that things weren't extremely difficult before) who does not know how to control his anger. We haven't gotten a diagnosis yet - we are dealing with more than just lashing out and I think ADHD is at least part of what we are dealing with. My son just cannot control his impulses, the most problematic being his hitting/physical aggression. For a long time I took a little bit of solace in the fact that (I thought) he was just lashing out like this at home with us, but I'm hearing more and more about him doing so in school. He is in his last year of preschool and I'm sure this will only become a larger problem if it continues in K, which at this rate, I'm sure it will to some degree. This morning his teacher came to me and said he's been hitting pretty much daily, and that students and parents are complaining. I had no idea it had gotten so bad. His teacher is sweet and feel bad telling me these things on a daily basis but this is something I NEED to know on a daily basis so I can discipline my child appropriately.

I'm not sure if this goes on in school but he has also taken to calling us stupid pretty regularly and saying things like "I want you to die." Also unacceptable, but right now I want to focus on the hitting.

Anyway, I just don't have any idea what to do. I'm looking for advice. I know we could also be better as parents... there is a lot of yelling in the house lately. He has gotten spanked before for major transgressions but I 100% realize this sends the wrong message and really try to not let things go there. Our main go-to is taking toys away, but he has so much crap that it doesn't really make an impact beyond the first 5 minutes of being without the toy. Time outs don't really help much. Sometimes he just laughs as we are trying to implement some punishment, or continues to try to push buttons.

We are on the waiting list for a center for behavior and anxiety but we have as much as 2 more months before we will get an appt.

In the meantime, I need help. What would you do?

[Anonymous]

Any tics or obsessions? Look into PANS/PANDAS - and best of luck. I know you're in a tough spot.

[Anonymous]

Call your pediatrician and see if they can help get you into a child psychologist before then.

In the meantime, read the Explosive Child by Ross Greene this weekend, and start to revamp your approach. Your partner / spouse needs to be 100% on board with this.

You need to get away from "discipline" for misbehavior and start to incentive positive behavior. It's hard, but what you've been doing is not working.

What happens at school when he hits?

[Anonymous]

Agree with the two previous posters, you need professional help immediately. Your pediatrician is a good place to start.
I have pretty average kids, but I’ve found that these cycles of anger and frustration can start building on each other. Sometimes instead of punishing, I will hold my child tight and tell him everything’s ok.

[MDjunebug]

I agree with PP. Get in to see your pediatrician as soon as possible for an assessment. This sounds just like my DS when he was 5. Hitting, punching, kicking. No form of discipline worked at all. No self regulation of frustration. Kindergarten was a nightmare. We got calls from the school multiple times a week. He was on the verge of being suspended. He was diagnosed with ADHD by the pediatrician right before he turned 6. We put him on meds which helped tremendously. A year later, we got him in with a psychiatrist/psychologist team to better regulate his meds and start therapy for him and us. The therapy was a tremendous help to us as it gave us advice on prevention of his outbursts as well as what we could do to minimize them when they happened. DS is 9 now and is doing well. We still have our challenging days but he doesn’t get in trouble at school anymore and is more self-aware of his ADHD and is able to advocate for himself at school.

Good luck to you and hang in there!

[Anonymous]

You admitted your parenting techniques are not that strong (spanking, ineffective toy taking away, etc.). Please consider enrolling in a PEP class. http://pepparent.org/classes-programs/class-schedule/

But, with an ADHD child, inappropriate behavior is not all about parenting skill. I have an ADHD kid, and I found that along with ADHD came significant weaknesses in both receptive/expressive language and social pragmatic language. It is very common for ADHD kids to have other issues in addition to ADHD. For example, a big part of why my kid had difficult getting along with teachers and peers is that he didn't always understand what they were saying and/or he couldn't really make himself understood. It was a subtle problem because he talked, but if you listened carefully to what he said, he was often off topic or not responding on point to questions, which frustrated his listeners. Because of his language weaknesses, he had great difficulty negotiating conflict in even the simplest verbal way, so he used other techniques like interrupting, being imperious, getting emotionally upset or angry, refusing to cooperate, and, sometimes, getting physical.

Speech therapy for both oral and pragmatic language was helpful. If you haven't already done it, I encourage you to get a speech and language assessment from a qualified SLP. IME, speech/language assessment from the neuropsych isn't as good. Even though they may use the same tests, their analysis of the error patterns is not as good as that of an SLP.

A full neuropsych evaluation is also helpful to see if there are any other issues. My DS has slow processing in addition to a diagnosed language disorder. This slow processing means that he has a difficult time keeping up conversationally, which is a root cause of what appears to be "impulsivity". He impulsively interrupts because he is often late processing in a conversation, so while everyone else has moved on a topic or two, he has only just figured out how to respond to what was said 3 points ago. He also knows if he doesn't blurt it out, he will forget it. He can't remember what he wants to say, and also process the ongoing conversation, and also figure out when or how to bring the conversation back to what he wanted to say 5 minutes ago.

[Anonymous]

I'm sorry OP. It sounds like you are dealing with a lot. while you wait, and I agree it's a good idea to get your ped involved to try you to get an eval more quickly, can you read the Kadzin Method? It's basically about lots and lots of positive reinforcement. My oldest quite like this for a while after his sibling was born. It's so hard. Try to give him as much 1:1 time and love and encouragement as you can even if it feels like the last thing her deserves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm at my wit's end... spent the morning sobbing in my car.

I have an almost 5 year old son (also recently had a second child in December, and that's when things REALLY took a turn - not that things weren't extremely difficult before) who does not know how to control his anger. We haven't gotten a diagnosis yet - we are dealing with more than just lashing out and I think ADHD is at least part of what we are dealing with. My son just cannot control his impulses, the most problematic being his hitting/physical aggression. For a long time I took a little bit of solace in the fact that (I thought) he was just lashing out like this at home with us, but I'm hearing more and more about him doing so in school. He is in his last year of preschool and I'm sure this will only become a larger problem if it continues in K, which at this rate, I'm sure it will to some degree. This morning his teacher came to me and said he's been hitting pretty much daily, and that students and parents are complaining. I had no idea it had gotten so bad. His teacher is sweet and feel bad telling me these things on a daily basis but this is something I NEED to know on a daily basis so I can discipline my child appropriately.

I'm not sure if this goes on in school but he has also taken to calling us stupid pretty regularly and saying things like "I want you to die." Also unacceptable, but right now I want to focus on the hitting.

Anyway, I just don't have any idea what to do. I'm looking for advice. I know we could also be better as parents... there is a lot of yelling in the house lately. He has gotten spanked before for major transgressions but I 100% realize this sends the wrong message and really try to not let things go there. Our main go-to is taking toys away, but he has so much crap that it doesn't really make an impact beyond the first 5 minutes of being without the toy. Time outs don't really help much. Sometimes he just laughs as we are trying to implement some punishment, or continues to try to push buttons.

We are on the waiting list for a center for behavior and anxiety but we have as much as 2 more months before we will get an appt.

In the meantime, I need help. What would you do?

Are you in public school? If your child does have ADHD or some other issue that is "adversely impacting his education," you may be able to get support via an IEP or 504 plan. By definition, a kid who is hitting other kids on the regular is "adversely impacting" his own education - he is probably being regularly pulled away for school work or sent to the principal or another teacher's room for discipline. The school is obliged to do an assessment if you make a request for an IEP in writing. Part of that assessment should be an FBA -- functional behavioral assessment - where somebody observes him and tries to identify what the triggers for disruptive behavior are so they can be addressed.

You may instead want to get a private assessment with a neuropsych. 5 is a bit young for the kind of ADHD testing that is computerized, usually 6 is the lowest age. But, a neuropsychologist assessment would probably identify some attention issues if they are there, just by observation. It would also rule out other causes of disruption (emotional issues like anxiety or academic problems that may be the root of acting out.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Any tics or obsessions? Look into PANS/PANDAS - and best of luck. I know you're in a tough spot.

Yes. Definitely. We have seen the Children's neurology team and they weren't terribly concerned but this was about a year ago now and his tics hadn't gone on for that long. He used to have an ear tugging thing... that passed but now lately he has to constantly lick his fingers and even other things, and we are approaching a health crisis with the licking. A lot of it is to get our attention since he knows we are quite opposed to this habit ("Mommy I licked the bottom of my shoe!") but you can tell that most of it is involuntary. Probably about time we revisited the neurologist. He was actually assessed by a nurse on the team but not sure that makes a huge difference. The doctor had a months-long wait.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Call your pediatrician and see if they can help get you into a child psychologist before then.

In the meantime, read the Explosive Child by Ross Greene this weekend, and start to revamp your approach. Your partner / spouse needs to be 100% on board with this.

You need to get away from "discipline" for misbehavior and start to incentive positive behavior. It's hard, but what you've been doing is not working.

What happens at school when he hits?

My pediatrician wasn't a whole lot of help, although she did give me some names. I can call around to them. My spouse found an in-network psychologist who also works with kids, but he was clearly not the right fit. We would tell him stories about our kid and his eyes would kind of widen like he obviously had no idea what to tell us. It was a joke. Obviously I would LOVE to find someone who takes insurance. We don't make a lot of money (teacher & freelancer) and both kids are from a gazillion cycles of IVF, a hole we are still digging ourselves out of financially, but I am starting to think you have to come out of the pocket for anyone worthwhile.

I do have the book and I started it but admittedly life got in the way. I will finish it this weekend. I agree that our approaches are not working. I like your suggestion.

At school, he has been sent to the office a couple times, separated from the class (made to sit in a chair somewhere), but that's about it. Remember this is still preschool. I think they are afraid to call me and have me come get him, but I just emailed them and told them to please do so if his behavior warrants it. Their disciplinary actions are obviously also not working. There might be more that I don't know - I just found out this morning that the hitting was becoming a daily occurrence.

[Anonymous]

OP, I strongly recommend seeing a psychologist, even if you have to pay out of pocket.

I really liked the Ross Greene book but I think it is extremely helpful to have the professional guidance/

Also has he been evaluated by the county? I think you need to start the IEP process right now to have something in place for next year.

[Anonymous]

PCIT is evidenced based for both Adhd and ODD. If it was my child I would do a simultaneous rule out an underlying medical condition while scheduling an intake for a child psychologist that specialized in this. Do not go to a therapist that will utilize ‘play therapy.’

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Any tics or obsessions? Look into PANS/PANDAS - and best of luck. I know you're in a tough spot.

Yes. Definitely. We have seen the Children's neurology team and they weren't terribly concerned but this was about a year ago now and his tics hadn't gone on for that long. He used to have an ear tugging thing... that passed but now lately he has to constantly lick his fingers and even other things, and we are approaching a health crisis with the licking. A lot of it is to get our attention since he knows we are quite opposed to this habit ("Mommy I licked the bottom of my shoe!") but you can tell that most of it is involuntary. Probably about time we revisited the neurologist. He was actually assessed by a nurse on the team but not sure that makes a huge difference. The doctor had a months-long wait.

I don't think this sounds like ADHD, OP. I'm sorry you're dealing with this, but (facing a potential ADHD situation with my kid, and others I know of) hitting at that age and the licking is not in line with ADHD symptoms, for the most part.

[Anonymous]

MDjunebug wrote:I agree with PP. Get in to see your pediatrician as soon as possible for an assessment. This sounds just like my DS when he was 5. Hitting, punching, kicking. No form of discipline worked at all. No self regulation of frustration. Kindergarten was a nightmare. We got calls from the school multiple times a week. He was on the verge of being suspended. He was diagnosed with ADHD by the pediatrician right before he turned 6. We put him on meds which helped tremendously. A year later, we got him in with a psychiatrist/psychologist team to better regulate his meds and start therapy for him and us. The therapy was a tremendous help to us as it gave us advice on prevention of his outbursts as well as what we could do to minimize them when they happened. DS is 9 now and is doing well. We still have our challenging days but he doesn’t get in trouble at school anymore and is more self-aware of his ADHD and is able to advocate for himself at school.

Good luck to you and hang in there!

Thank you. Yes, sounds familiar - no self regulation whatsoever. I admit that meds scare me a lot but I would rather have a happy kid who's on meds than a depressed, angry one who isn't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Any tics or obsessions? Look into PANS/PANDAS - and best of luck. I know you're in a tough spot.

Yes. Definitely. We have seen the Children's neurology team and they weren't terribly concerned but this was about a year ago now and his tics hadn't gone on for that long. He used to have an ear tugging thing... that passed but now lately he has to constantly lick his fingers and even other things, and we are approaching a health crisis with the licking. A lot of it is to get our attention since he knows we are quite opposed to this habit ("Mommy I licked the bottom of my shoe!") but you can tell that most of it is involuntary. Probably about time we revisited the neurologist. He was actually assessed by a nurse on the team but not sure that makes a huge difference. The doctor had a months-long wait.

I don't think this sounds like ADHD, OP. I'm sorry you're dealing with this, but (facing a potential ADHD situation with my kid, and others I know of) hitting at that age and the licking is not in line with ADHD symptoms, for the most part.

I disagree with you, PP. First of all a lot of kids with ADHD have sensory-related issues and licking, besides being impulsive, is pretty classic. Hitting is also not only an impulse control issue but a sign of frustration, which is commonly caused by attention issues. In sum, it sounds very much like ADHD, which doesn't mean there are not other things going on as well.