bossy and voilent

[hedi02]

My daughter is 5 and although she is pretty mature in her behavior with her peers, she tends to be bossy at times. With one specific friend (a girl of 6) they get into fights over power and it ends with my daughter hurting her. This happens every time after they have played for about 2 hours. She used to do this with one of her school friends too, but it stopped after a while when her teachers reacted (which led to months of hating school and anxiety and low self esteem). this kind of aggressiveness only happens with her best friends, and everyone knows how she loves them.
She doesn't like talking about it, and if asked, she immediately blames herself. when I speak to her about it later, she tells me they treat her unfair. How can I teach her not to act voilently? and not be bossy so that there would be no power struggle between her and her friends.
also, I am pregnant with my second child but haven't told her yet. I am afraid a new baby would make matters worse for her. She has been asking for a sibling everyday, for years. But still I am not sure how to tell her so that she wont feel there would be competition in the house, or she would be treated unfair.
Thanks
Hedi

[margypops]

Your Daughter does not need anything other than some help with her behavior I doubt for one moment you need to take it to any extremes ,children need better Parent/child interaction. Children often get into this Bossy phase and you could act before it gets out of control, separate them and make sure they are busy with activities, you could also explain to your daughter that if she is not "nicer' to her friends you will not have them over to play, and mean it. Next time she is mean send the friend home and tell your daughter she can come back when she is "nice' to her .

[Ione]

Hi there.  I have a bipolar kid (boy age seven).  For all he has going on, he is pretty well behaved most of the time.  He can get aggressive (only at home) but bossy with friends.  Explaining how to deal with friends usually helps (we are still trying to work on the mood swings at home).  However--we always hear about everything being "unfair."  The thing about this is that when a kid showing this kind of behavior (bipolar, normal or not) they use the words like "unfair " and "stupid" to excuse themselves from following the rules the rest of us live by.  We fight this constantly, and you must nip it in the bud. Defiant children have this sort of behavior--they may have deeper problems or not--but you still have to make them accountable for their actions in every way--whether they have a a disorder or not.  We have used Dr. Kadzin's book Parenting the Defiant Child, which I mentioned in anothe post tonight  It i a very good book and I have read dozens.  Another we tried was called You Can't Make Me.  Helpful when he was younger, but we needed a program for more serious problems.  Right now we are working thru James Lehman's Total Transformation program.  This is expensive (you can find it on Ebay for less than $300.00--but boy his this helped me understand the mind of a dysfunctional kid.  It focuses on controlling disrespectful, obnoxious and abusive behavior.  He is a social worker and I find clinical social workers are more in the "real world" about behavior than the psychologist we tried.  In any event--you need to get help right away.  If you can see a clinical social worker with your health insurance, then please do.  However, even if you don't have mental health coverage--clinical social workers (find one that works with kids) charge $40-$50 per hour.  That's far cheaper than our (former) psychologist who racked up $125 a visit, and told me over and over that there was nothing wrong with our son...The psychiatrist was wrong, etc...kids can't be psychotic or have bipolar disorder when the are so young.  Yeah--okay.  

Good luck.  Please get help before you have your  baby.  After the baby is born, do not leave it alone with your daughter.  She may be a wonderful child, but she may have impulses she can not control right now and may hurt her sibling without meaning to.