sj, good on you!

Thanks, Erin! I've had a really hard time going the last couple of times because of pain issues not related to the PT, but it's good to know that forcing myself to go has been worth it.

Awesome Shir! That is so exciting and validating of all your efforts. You will be great and the audience will, no doubt, enraptured.

Will there be an English translation of your comments that we might read?

Oh, I meant to say, yay Shir! You rock!

I have a serious resource/ideas hivemind request for a family I worked with today.

When the father called, speaking of some pretty severe problems they have been having with their 4 year old daughter, I made it clear that my cutoff age for kids is 7. I know some about early childhood development, but not enough about aberrant behavior to be of use.

The parents still wanted me to see the little girl with them, so that I could get a sense of what they are dealing with.

After a two hour session today, I'm exhausted, and a bit shaky from the effort of it. It really was the Mount Everest of therapy sessions.

The parents are coming back on Friday and I know I can help them with their communication/coping skills but what I really want for them is a set of practical resources for understanding their little girl's behavior.

The child looks like an angel and spent more than an hour screaming, biting, hitting, flailing and basically negotiating her parents into the ground.

The thing that most concerns me is the level of threatening. "I'm going to poke your eyes out. I'm going to [fill in the blank damage], if you don't give me what I want." But when she gets what she wants, another demand is right on its heels. And I do mean demand. She honestly sounds like a middle-aged diva with the insatiable pushing around.

I'm going to find them a good child psychologist, but in the meanwhile, what can I tell them about resources for addressing that language?

My approach is very Super Nanny in terms of setting a boundary, sticking to a consequence and limiting negotiation. But, these well meaning parents are such incessant negotiators, I'm afraid they are driving their child crazy. It's easy for me to point out how negotiation isn't working, but I want to give them concrete examples of how they can do it differently.

Thoughts?

Thoughts?

Do they not punish or give her timeouts? Are they just afraid of her? Because they need to be the boss, unless this kid is just an evil seed.

Did she think anything into the cornfield?

Wow, bonny. I have zero knowledge on that. But good luck!

And thanks, everyone. And sure, I'll make an English version of it.

And that means I can use Fay's joke, right?

I'm going to poke your eyes out. I'm going to [fill in the blank damage], if you don't give me what I want." But when she gets what she wants, another demand is right on its heels. And I do mean demand. She honestly sounds like a middle-aged diva with the insatiable pushing around.

Why wouldn't she? She gets exactly what she wants with that behavior.

It seems like a tangle of behavior. Parents willing to negotiate. I've no idea if she cares that/if her parents are disappointed or hurt by how she acts, but that was what always kept me from being a brat. I was a total negotiator, but having my parents disappointed in me crushed me.

Do you think it's ODD, or is it that the parents need to stop negotiating and set and enforce consequences for boundaries?

ODD I have a little familiarity with, but that's definitely something that needs to be worked out through therapy.

From the little you shared, it sounds like they have ceded control to the child: no needs to mean no, and sometimes negotiation is not the way to go with children. So if they are trying to gain lost ground with a headstrong child who is used to displaying acting out behaviors until they give in, then they need to accept that things will get worse until they get better.

But a kid with ODD will have rage issues with any show of authority (I'm not up on the theories behind this) and it can be incredibly exhausting and difficult to treat. It's often exacerbated by something like ADHD.

I don't know. But it sounds like they are trying to reason with a child, and that CAN be good -- but sometimes no is going to be NO and they need to mark that line in the sand and stick with it. Or else, kids are smart. She will play them if they don't say firm and follow-through.

Is she their first/only child? If not, and the other kid(s) don't exhibit this behaviour it's more likely to be medical.

If she is, I'd guess they're in for a combination of medical and behavioral therapy. One of my good friends adopted a girl from Russia who has been an evil demonchild her whole life (she's 6). She's actually really smart and can be a good kid, but she's dealing with a combination of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, PTSD, and early childhood development that taught her only the most violent survive.

Her parents aren't authoritarian by nature, so they've had to be counseled that sometimes the only way to teach empathy and manners is by strict rules and zero tolerance.

In short, the whole family's had to be re-trained. But it's working.