7 year old girl is hitting me

[Ingrid444]

I have a very bright 7 year old daughter and she can be the sweetiest girl in the world. But if she hears No, or Stop or I don't like that, or if you just ask her to do something she flies into a rage. Sometimes it seems to come out of nowhere. It can arise from a simple question of please brush your teeth. Her face and eyes change into a crazed person, she starts screaming and physically throwing and hitting. She says very disturbing things, like I am going to kill you, I am going to scratch your eyes out. I try to hold her to calm her down which makes her scream even louder but I'm afraid that she will her herself, her brother who is 5 or me if I let her go. When I do let her go she hits and punches me and completely flips out. Yesterday she punched me right in the nose and I thought she broke it. After 10 t0 15 minutes she seems to come out of it and is so apologetic and sad it breaks my heart. I hug her, but sit in amazment at what has transpired as I really don't understand why simple requests sets her off. I worry about my son, because she says such nasty things to him, lately he has been saying that he hates himself, and that he wants to die.
I am very distraught as I worry about what I should do to stop this now! We have moved about a year ago to a new house, far from where we were before. Life in the home has been stressed, but I manage to keep it together and not lose my patience with them. I just need to know what and how to stop this behaivor before it gets any worst.

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

Because of her age and the severity of the reaction, you should arrange an evaluation with a pediatric mental health/behavioral health clinician. Do the episodes occur only within the family? Does she display this absence of frustration tolerance in school or other settings? If this is a matter of developmental lag in the capacity to manage the anger associated with frustration of her wishes, you will be safe to rely on a systematic method of behavior management. But it is important to rule out that the behavior is symptomatic of a mood disorder or other form of emotional disturbance. From the behavior management perspective, adopt the approach in LynnClark's book about managing childhood behavior. The book is SOS Help for Parents.

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

You are doing sensible things, and do go ahead with the evaluation, even if things are improving. One of the areas that deserves evaluation is the possibility of attentional problems, particularly in light of the behaviors at school.

[Ingrid444]

Thank you for the post. Yes I am going to have her assessed. I don't believe there is any sexual or emotional abuse at school or elsewhere, as I am very cautious about where she goes, with whom etc, as I was abuse as a child. I don't think that I am over protective, but lets just say, they have rarely had childcare other than Granny or myself.I have talked to both of them about stranger danger and what is appropriate touch. I do volunteering at the school and keep my ear to the grindstone to see whats going on around them. I say them as I have a younger son who is 5. We have moved several times in the past year, and losing friends is hard on her. She has lost 3 best friends in 1 year. It is heartbreaking to see her so upset. I comfort her and try to do the best I can,  hoping we don't have to move again for awhile. But these things are sometimes out of my control. She does have trouble at school with the girls and boys, one boy kissed her the other day, and her one friend is trying to steal another boy friend away. He is just a good friend to her, but feels very protective of their friendship due to previous loses. We talk about things together, and I discuss strategies to work things out at school, but she is very sensitive to everything and it worries me that her feelings get so easily brusied, and she doesn't let things go for days.


I try to love her the best I can, it is scary when she blows as most of her hostility is directed at me. I love so much, but feel that I have failed her in everyway. I  

[drakamal]

Yes, I would agree with Dr. Kennedy that a complete physical and developmental evaluation is necessary to rule out problems. many kids, who are very bright go into such behaviors, (and even grown ups) when they have failure succeding. Check for the following things:

a) Any possibility of physical, emotional or sexual abuse at the school (or elsewhere) (strictness from the teacher, teqasing from a classmate (girl), bullying from a boy, etc.). I come up with such cases where bullying from a boy (and you have to probe it) has caused behavior modification.

b) Is she growing properly (any abuse would cause growth failure)? Look at our method of generating a complete growth profile of a child at http://ngds-ku.org.

Best of luck,

Professor Dr. Syed Arif Kamal
Project Director
The NGDS Pilot Project
University of Karachi

[Ingrid444]

Thank you for taking the time to answer. The episodes occur mostly with family, and mostly me and her father. She is very bright and has always succeeded in everything, so when things don't go quite her way with more challenging things, she does get frustrated. She is easily distracted with a given task, at school and at home. Her teacher says that she is very willing to please at school, but does not get her work finished in classas she is easily distracted there. I worry that she does have some kind of emotional disturbance as I have just been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. I am on medication and am seeing councillors, but worry that she has inheritated something from me. Things have been getting better in the last 2 weeks, but this morning she had another episode where she just wouldn't get ready for school. She refused to put her clothes on, so I helped he while she
battled me all the way. My husband and I have been reading several books about spirited children and how to raise them. Disappline wise, we use the 1 2 3 magic method, which works for my son, but not my daughter. We also use the stove method, where when someone is getting upset, we ask what colour is the stove, grey - cool, pink - getting upset, red- mad, and red hot - about to blow. This seems to help identify what is triggering the frustration and then we try to help the child solve the problem. We say that anger is not bad, it identifies that there is a problem to solve. My father has a friend who is a child psycolgists so if things don't settle soon, we will be contacting her for an appointment.
Thanks again, I have to run, but I'll check to see if you have responded in the next few days