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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I know a child like this. He hits himself/calls himself “bad” when he’s broken another child’s toy, misbehaved, been scolded, etc. IME he does this to to redirect adults into sympathy, as his parents’ immediate response is to console and tell him he’s a good boy. [/quote]

Yes this is another theory and it is the theory that makes me angry because I feel manipulated. He does this exactly, calls himself bad when he does something wrong or he thinks we might possibly blame him. Also when we make him do things he doesn't want to do at the moment (random swim classes, practicing reading etc). Makes me feel like my options are either to have no expectations of him or end up with the self harm.[/quote]

Is this OP? The OP who says her reaction to her self-hitting child is "extreme anger" in her first post?

The OP who says when he hits himself hercanger is "all consuming" because she feels put upon "walking on eggshells" or "manipulated.?

This is NT child self hitter #1.

Honest to God, those are certainly not unconditional love reactions. You have baggage of some sort.  The kid is acting out his pain and fear of displeasing you and you are enraged because he is either a loser you have to,tiptoe around or a scheming manipulator?

Wherever this stuff originally came from, it's probably long before the kid was around. 
You need therapy, too. Seriously. You need anxiety and resentment management before the kid's therapy stands a chance. You are one scary mommy. And there's a second disappointing kid in development?

Please get help. My mother didn't.

[/quote]
I’m sorry you hit yourself in pain and fear of displeasing your parents, seriously. But some children learn quite quickly to become victims as a form of unconscious control, and the solution is not to play into this dynamic with rage or sympathy, but to make them stronger with the truth: “you are not bad, Larlo, but you did a bad thing by breaking John’s nerf gun.” (“I’m soooo bad, I can’t believe I did something so bad, I should kill myself!”) “huh, that’s not the correct response to breaking John’s nerf gun. Here is a better one: how about you try apologizing to John, see if you can fix it with him or perhaps we can offer to buy him a new one? Let’s try that and see how it goes.”

Children like this need a mirror, they need a trustworthy adult to describe to them as precisely as possible the events as they occurred, what was done wrong, and what response *should* happen. Believe it or not, taking responsibility for his own misbehavior instead of hitting or victimizing himself will make the child much stronger into adulthood than sympathy.[/quote]

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