Advice Needed

[MammaB]

My younger daughter has a few very difficult behaviors. They are difficult not because they are severe, but very persistent and a constant through the day. I am wondering if anyone has advice on how to verbally redirect my 7 yo.

Here is the problem: When I request for her to do something-she ALWAYS interrupts me, talking over me. It is either talking back, being defensive or yelling "I am!!!" (when clearly she is NOT, which is why I make the request). My usual tactic is to stop the directive, tell her it is my turn to talk and that she needs to listen. She complies but with a non-verbal attitude. When I finish she sometimes argues but always is ****** off and storms off. I'm exhausted in doing this repeatedly through the day-she needs lots of direction to complete tasks and its just exhausting.

How can anybody enjoy life spending so much time being angry/unhappy? This same daughter also pouts alot for no explicable reason and has crying jags, sometimes for a good reason and sometimes won't say why.

 

[1 Day At a Time]

MammaB,

Welcome to the Board, and while I'm sorry to hear that your daughters' issues have brought you here, this is a good place to be.

I know that your daughter's behavior sounds very similar to my easy child's behavior during his teen years. Is it possible that she is experiencing some depression? How are things going at school? It sounds like she is not really enjoying life, as you say. Irritability is often a key sign of depression. Maybe her therapist can work with her regarding her moodiness.

I found with my son that sometimes I needed to withdraw and give him some space when his hormones were raging. I know that many times you cannot do that, but it helps to pick and choose those times. A silent presence of a loved one can often help me when I feeling blue. For some reason, this time of year is like that for me - I think that the change of seasons intensifies the problem.

Valerie

 

[LittleDudesMom]

MammaB,

I was thinking along the same lines as Valerie insofar as depression. The crying jags, the anger - it's not an uncommon sign of depression in children.

Have you read "The Explosive Child" by Ross Greene yet? It has some great suggestions for dealing with these type of issues as well as some great insight into what makes our difficult children tick.

Sharon

 

[Bunny]

Can you ask her, during a time when she is not telling back at you, if she know why she gets so upset when you ask her to do something? My difficult child can be the same way and I try to back off when he's screaming, or I remind him that there is no need to scream because no one is screaming at him. If I can get him to think about it when he's calm he usually is able to tell me what the real problem is and then we try to figure out a solution that makes everyone happy. It's still a new method here in our house and I'm still trying to implement it fully, but when I have been able to do it, I have found a little success.

Pam

 

[BusynMember]

Was she exposed to drugs/alcohol in utero? If so, that can cause everything from fetal alcohol problems to unstable moods. The poor kids deal with the bad choices of their birthmothers. You may want to do a neuropsychologist on her to see what you can find out although it may be impossible to find out everything...and she may not respond to normal interventions, depending on what is wrong. I'm the adoptive mom of four. We actually adopted six, but one was too damaged/dangerous to live in a family and another one was in foster care after the dangerous one left, bonded to that family, and we hadn't had him for very long so we allowed the other family to adopt him (long story). Suffice to say, we've had experience with these very puzzling children and since we don't know their histories or their genetic backgrounds or the kind of care they got in utero, they are hard to figure out. I can tell you right now that, no matter how much information you were given, it's probably not the whole story. That's how we adopted Dangerous. Even his psychiatrists didn't know about his dark life behind the smile. Most of the info we received on our older adopted kids turned out to be pretty useless in the end. That's why I always get my own intensive, private testing.

 

[MammaB]

Not a good night for 7yo difficult child but ended well. She cried on and off from pick up @ 6:30pm till 8pm in between time outs. Ate very little dinner. Cried continually from after dinner 8pm to 9pm, sobbing loudly at times. At 8:50 I went in and quietly asked her if she needed anything from me or wanted to tell me what wrong. She continued to cry. I patted her back and "shsh'd" her (like I did when she was 2) for fifteen minutes, the crying tapered off a little. I switched to back and arm rub and within 5 minutes she stopped crying and fell asleep. I just checked on her and she is sound asleep and looks like an angel

 

[susiestar]

Has she ever been given a sleep deprived EEG to check for seizures? The pouting for no reason and other things that she does with-o provocation (meaning when you are not telling her something) sound like they could be seizure related. To test for this the doctor will attach wires to her head with a special glue designed for this. Then they will look to see what her brain is doing. There is still a lot we don't know about seizures, but they CAN create many different types of behavior problems. The kind of behavior depends largely on where the seizures are happening in the brain.

WHile this may not be seizure related, I would want an EEG done to rule it out and to give a baseline in case anything happened down the road. You will need to see a pediatrician neurologist to get the test done, though sometimes a pediatrician can order the test - it largely depends on the pediatrician.

Years ago no one was diagnosis'd with ADHD until after this test was done. Nor were they put on medications for adhd, because those medications can make seizures worse. It is impossible to know if the behaviors are related to seizures or something else unless this test is done (and it only catches a certain amt of seizures - if they are deep in the brain an EEG cannot catch them). A member who was here a few years ago had a son diagnosis'd with about every disorder that is represented by capital letters and about every medication had been tried twice with-o helping him. His mom finally got the docs to order an EEG and it was shown that he had some pretty severe seizures. He was then taken OFF of the psychiatric medications and put on anti-seizure medications and his behavior changed a LOT. She encouraged ALL of us to have EEG's done before we medicated our kids.

I will always be glad I paid attention and followed her advice. While neither Wiz nor thank you nor Jess showed what the neuro thought were real signs of seizures, he did agree to do the EEGs on the older 2 (thank you was really little and it wasn't something we spoke about). Wiz' results were fine, and I got those results over the phone. We were asked to come in for Jessie's results, so we knew something had been found. If we had gone ahead and given her the strattera that the psychiatrist and his nurse-practitioner had rx'd to help what they called inattentive adhd, it likely would have made things a LOT worse as far as seizures were concerned. It took quite a while to get her to the right level of the right medication, but it has made a HUGE difference.

Falling asleep after an outburst or rage is very very common if it was caused by a seizure. Many people who have seizures are tired right afterward.

There are MANY types of seizures and it is very common to not know seizures are causing the behaviors. For Jess, her seizures are mostly unnoticeably by anyone. She just stares blankly and has no idea what happened during the seizure. Sounds like no big deal, but at first she was having several seizures a minute and missing about half of everything that happened in her world. We knew we FINALLY had the right medication because she remarked that the days seems a whole lot longer than they ever did before!!!