Tell me your kid (or you) turned out okay after this kind of atrocious behavior

In My Humble Opinion
1

It sounds really horrible for me to say the following, but I’ma say it.

I have a kid who I don’t actually like very much.

I don’t like how she behaves, and I’m not very impressed by anything she does.

This isn’t about love. This is about enjoying a person’s company and enjoying hearing things about her. On those fronts… yeah no. I don’t like her.

I’m sure that the kinds of things she does which make me not even want to be in the same room with her at times are, in the end, just the petty and normal stuff of plenty of childhoods. But I need some reassurance on that front because I sure as fuck never exhibited these behaviors and neither did any of my siblings.

It’s probably relevant that she’s eight. (Just turned eight last month.)

She is melodramatic. No that’s not the word. It’s something more extreme than that. This morning a light plastic broom fell over–was not knocked over, did not have any force behind it other than gravity, just kind of lightly fell over–and tapped, I swear, tapped her head, and she fell collapsed to the floor screaming bloody murder as though she’d broken an arm. She does this shit all the time.

She treats people trying to help her like they are garbage. Earlier today her brother was trying to hold some things for her (which she did not actually need held–more on that in a second) and when he didn’t understand exactly how she wanted these things held or something (it was hard to make out exactly what the problem was) she began screaming, ear-splitting screams, out there in our driveway, so loudly neighbors looked out their window to see in what way I was abusing her.

When I talked to her about it afterwards, she maintained, without flinching, that everyone was yelling at her for no reason. No, she said, she hadn’t raised her voice at all. The screaming? Nope. Didn’t happen.

That brings me to another thing. She is either a very stubborn liar (and pretty damned good actor if I can try to sort of say something good about how she behaves) or she is utterly unaware of her own actions as she is performing those very actions. She will report to me that I myself said things (for example, giving permissions for exceptions to rules) whichI did not say, and will maintain it with utter resolve–to my very face. Again, it’s not her telling her mom that I said something, it’s even worse: She’s telling me I said it.

She does not do her homework. We have to micromanage it to the point of actively watching to make sure she does each problem.

She acts as helpless as possible at all times.

She does not respond to negative incentives in any way I can discern. Indeed, as far as I can tell, she enjoys the drama of it all and likes to pretend she’s being martyred.

There are other things I could put here probably but I am feeling really bad just typing this out. I’m going to stop.

Does she turn out okay in the end? What role do I have in that story, if any?

2

How old is she?

3

Eight–just turned eight a month ago. I mentioned that in the OP but it is indeed important info so I’m happy to highlight it here.

4

Histrionic seems to fit, don’t you think? It sounds like she is very emotionally needy.

I know people are going to tell you not to give in to her fits because it will just encourage her. But the way I see it, a needy person is, well, needy. They actually need something they aren’t getting. You and your wife are probably giving it your all, but for whatever reason, it’s not enough. Some kids need nutritional supplements because they have problems absorbing normal doses of minerals and vitamins. It sounds like your kid needs extra attention because she has problems absorbing normal doses of love and attention.

Does your budget allow for some therapy?

5

Dude she is <8>, even ten years from now she is going to have you rolling your eyes.

Can you remember what you were like at age 8? She has a shitload of growing, learning, and mental maturing to go yet before she is even close to a functioning adult.

6

By “negative incentives”, do you mean punishment, or withholding of rewards? Whichever, if it’s backfiring and she enjoys her martyrdom, it’s time to switch gears.

Figure out the pattern in what you’re doing, and do the opposite. As a small example, I found my 3 year old was intentionally making messes because I would make her clean them up, and she loved cleaning. So, as weird as it sounds, her punishment became NOT cleaning up her own mess. She had to stand there with her hands at her side and watch me do it. It went against everything I believe about natural consequences and fixing our own mistakes, but it also stopped her from making messes.

If your natural reaction is to yell, try speaking very softly, or not at all. If your natural reaction is to help, try holding back and see if she comes to you.

I agree with **monstro **that when a kid obviously needs extra love, you give them extra love. But I’d encourage you to try to catch her in her “good” moments and give the extra love then, while ignoring the fits as much as is safe. Also, create a safe space (her bedroom, maybe?) where she can work out her fit in peace. Rather than a punishing, “go to your room!” try, “I will be happy to help you when you can ask politely. If you need to scream, please take it to your room where you won’t hurt my ears.” Then just put it on a broken record.

How is she at school? Can she hold it together there? If so, talking to her teacher about her struggles at home and how her teacher manages her in the classroom might give you some new strategies.

This is the only parenting book I bother recommending anymore. I have a shelf full of them, and this was the only one that ever worked: Parenting With Love and Logic. Fair warning, it’s written by a minister and there’s a little bit of Bibley stuff in it, but I was able to consider that metaphor and get through it. The actual advice is excellent.

It’s pretty cliche, but I find it’s mostly true…kids are at their worst where they feel safest. So while I’m sure it’s small comfort, try to remember that she feels safe with you, so safe that she can act out and not lose the safety and love of her family. (Love /= like, I get it.)

But yes, this sounds exactly like one of my brothers. The bad news is that his teen years were hell. The good news is that he’s a survivor, and while his lifestyle is unconventional, he’s a reasonably well adjusted father and husband now. She’ll be okay eventually, but you clearly need some help in the meantime.

7

Gotta be pretty tough being 8 and being disliked by the person who is supposed to love you unconditionally. She’s not a red-headed stepchild, is she?

8

I don’t mean to pick on you, grude, but you just happen to be the first person who rolled into this thread with this type of advice.

Ignore this type of advice, always and forever. You are a parent and you know your child, you see your child every day. If you have a sense that something is not quite right, something is probably not quite right. Other people will always tell you, “meh, kids will be kids, she/he will grow out of it.” Maybe, but maybe not, and regardless of which it is, this is a problem for your family and you need to address it. Saying “meh, kids will be kids” for the next ??? years while you wait for her to magically grow out of it is not a workable solution.

WhyNot had some really good advice. I took a parenting class once, offered through the local children’s hospital, on parenting kids with behavioral issues. One great piece of advice from that class that really stuck with me is: Kids crave attention. If they are not getting enough positive attention, they will get negative attention, through some means or another. So like WhyNot said, try to catch the good moments and give her lots of positive attention for it, even if you feel like an idiot praising her for something she “should” just be doing naturally. I swear to god it helps. And as much as possible, ignore the negative behavior, or minimize the attention you pay to it.

My daughter went through a “shriek at the top of your lungs when something goes wrong” phase and something that eventually had success was saying, “that’s an inappropriate tone of voice, please speak to us in a normal tone of voice if you need something” and then saying nothing else, no matter how wronged she felt or even actually was, until she talked to us in a normal tone of voice about whatever it was. And if she did come to us with some problem and spoke normally, I made sure to say, “Hey, thank you for speaking in a normal tone of voice” even if whatever issue she was having was otherwise dumb or annoying.

Good luck. And don’t beat yourself up too much about not particularly liking your kid at the moment. A lot of parents have times like that. The important thing is to not a) think you are a terrible parent for having this thought, or b) think it’s no big deal and let it continue. It’s definitely a problem and you need to address it, but it’s almost certainly temporary.

9

It sounds like you ended up with a kid that takes more work than an average kid. That sucks, and I don’t envy you.

You still have to remember your job is to create an adult that functions in society. This kid isn’t functioning well right now, and no one is happy, especially her.

What you’re doing isn’t working, and unless you change things dramatically ASAP, it will only get worse, and odds are, you will wreck this kid. Eight is salvageable. Eighteen gets a lot harder.

Get her checked out physically first, then it’s behavioral therapy for her and you and your wife. If it’s not working, change it. Keep changing it. Change it again, until it gets better.

This is your kid. She needs to feel like you love her, care about her, and are going to do every single possible to make her life better. This probably means making her life worse in the short term, and probably being an asshole.

You are the captain of the ship, act like it.

10

She wants attention. Ignore her when she acts out.

11

I suggest you and your daughter seek counseling.

When your emotions are running so high that you openly admit you don’t like your child, I can’t imagine you have it with in you to parent fairly and rationally with out help.

You need an unbiased player in this arena to help everyone to square their emotions and set some ground rules not only for the child, but the parent(s) too.

12

My advice was NOT to ignore the beahviour or just accept it, but the attitude in his first sentences well it stinks. And he has a totally unrealistic attitude about the maturity of the average 8 year old. He doesn’t like her and is impressed by NOTHING she does? NOTHING?!

Frylock you’re going down a dark path man, you need to work on your own attitude and your daughters behaviour or you’re on a fast track to estrangement as a teen and adult.

13

I noticed in your OP you said you and your siblings(and I assume your other child/ren) never acted like this or had issues like her.

She might be the oddball drama queen in a family of emotional stoics, and you’re unfairly comparing her to a personality type she doesn’t have.

A lot of parenting is thinking outside of the box, and picking your battles and knowing when to accept something. Every kid has their own issues, strengths, weaknesses, etc. And you really need to judge her by her own metric.

I don’t think you’re a horrible person or parent, but I do think you might be stuck in a narrow POV and it isn’t working,

14

Two books that helped us:

Nurture By Nature

Raising Your Spirited Child

Children require different parenting, especially when their personalities are very different. Don’t be afraid to parent each child differently, as long as your family core values are the same for all the kids. My kids learned early on that fair isn’t everyone being treated the same, but everyone getting what they need. These books helped us a lot.

The second book, in particular, helped us reframe challenging behaviors as positives. He wasn’t stubborn, he was persistent. That will help him later in life. Now how we do temper his persistence so he can function at home and school better etc. I think that reframing and renaming of her behavior will help you immensely.

15

I also agree with the counseling – you need people who have expertise and who will take time to know your daughter and see how you function as a family.

16

One last thing- it was so tempting to fantasize that everything would be better if he would just chnage x y or z. It was his behavior and his job to change. The reality was we had to do most of the changing first, and slowly but surely his behavior changed in response to us. He didn’t have to better behaved before we responded to him differently. We had to respond to him differently before his behavior improved.

Most important change? Less judgement and more open mindedness to accepting who he really is, while making sure to socialize him so he can function as an adult.

He’s 20 now, doing great in college and has a bright future in front of him. He’s not perfect and neither are we- we still clash at times- but we like and love him and he likes and loves us and he’s a good kid.

17

If I could “like” this a thousand times I totally would. This weekend was the last time I’ll ever visit my family. There will be short phone calls and skyping with my daughter most likely, but I don’t want to be in their presence for even a moment more of my life. I won’t go into specifics, but I sat in the car with my husband today and just sobbed because my family so obviously doesn’t like me. They hate everything I believe in, all the choices I’ve made in my life and tell me all the time that I am such a drama queen and attention whore. While I will admit I’m more emotional than they are I am significantly less emotional than most of the people I interact with on a daily basis and am considered quite reserved by most of my husband’s family so either my parents bring out the absolute worst in who I am or they have incredibly unrealistic expectations of what should be considered reasonable behavior.

Find something to like about your daughter and figure out a way to guide her towards being the best version of herself that she can be or be. I promise you she knows that you think she is awful and being disliked by her closest loved ones will damage her far more than being a bit melodramatic ever could.

18

Families and upbringings differ, so yes there is the aspect that if you were raised in a low drama household you might be making too big a deal of an 8 year old who is behaving like an annoying asshole, but on the other hand all the traits you are describing re the screaming, and lying etc. despite being told over and over again that they are not acceptable are indicators that she may have some kind of issues that are going to have serious negative consequences unless they are somehow corralled.

I’m the parent of an adult daughter with some personality and maturity issues that were evident early on and did not “go away”. She struggles with overcoming them to this day, but has become wiser as she has gotten into her late 20’s and realized the world is not going to reward her for dysfunctional attitudes, but I won’t kid you, it’s been a slog to get here. On the other hand I should be grateful it was mainly maturity issues and not drugs or more dangerous habits. In retrospect there was no “solution” it was just the way she was wired and it took time and getting beat on by life for her to change.

The only advice I can give you is not to be viscerally angry at an 8 year old for being an asshole. You have to adopt the attitude that this is going to be a very long march to maturity with this kid and your example is going to be the one she patterns. If you are on a low boil seething with anger at her all the time your ability to instruct her will be compromised. You have to be a “super adult” and control your situational anger and work toward long term change.

The odd thing about my daughter was that my opinions and her mothers counted for almost nothing, but her peers opinions were vitally important to her and mediated her behavior. Some sort of organized group activity with other girls her age and adult oversight (sports, girl scouts, dance etc) might see some positive results.

19

Quit wasting effort. Let her fail her homework and suffer every possible natural consequence to her behavior that comes her way. The more you micromanage her and cater to her “helplessness,” the more helpless she will actually become and the more frustrated you will become by your failed efforts to improve her.

20

But young kids don’t suffer natural consequences for bad decisions like doing poorly in school, at least not until they enter the workforce years later. All the factors that motivate a young kid to do well, like school or parental punishment, are artificial actions created to make present distant harms that kids are unable to conceptualize due to their youth. It seems if you just give up on an eight year old, especially one with the difficulties mentioned in the OP, that you will undoubtedly wind up with a dysfunctional adult. Perhaps at the best case you wind up with someone who eventually has the proper mindset needed for success but lacks to skills to do so, because for ten years no one cared how she did in school.