Who knew strawmen were being served for breakfast today? I thought this thread was just delivering whine and cheese.
It seems unlikely that your own behaviour isn’t, in some way, exacerbating the situation, till everyone is frustrated.
Since you are into reading books, consider a book called, “How to behave, so your kids will!”. It’s not a condemnation of your parenting, just a primer on how some of your actions/reactions make be negatively affecting things, in ways you hadn’t considered. I mean if you discovered, a couple of slight changes on your part could totally shift the dynamic, wouldn’t you want to know?
Just a suggestion. Good Luck!
Yes, this is definitely something I want to look into. Thanks for the recommendation.
My self-image has not been even remotely threatened here.
But yeah, of course there’s plenty of connections to be made between her parents’ personalities and her own. What I do relatively anonymously online sometimes, perhaps has something to do with what she does in the safety of her own home sometimes. No doubt!
Me changing how I behave sometimes online will have zip-all with any change in her behavior at home however.
You’re right of course.
So then maybe no one actually causes others to dislike them via their actual unlikeable behavior: they just behave unlikeably in reaction to their perception that they are disliked?
People are generally predisposed to like their own children, but being a parent does not automatically make one irrationally blind to a child’s flaws. The child’s behavior seems within the realm of normal for her age, but also quite unlikeable. There is a reason we expect to pay people to spend time with 8-year-olds rather than just enjoy their company. When a person screeches hysterically with little or no provocation, no reasonable person enjoys being around them. I agree that this relationship should be changed and that the adult is the one who should work on changing it, but blaming the parent for disliking someone who behaves so unpleasantly is useless and unnecessary. I’d rather see more parents uncharmed by their children’s appalling behavior and be moved to correct it for the sake of the child and everyone it encounters in life.
No man, just no. This is very wrong. It is not a reasonable or logical conclusion given the available information unlesss people make uncharitable assumptions.
Two facts:
- Kid was jumping on the couch
- I believed it reasonable to allow it in that instance.
For someone to leap from there to “you’re a bad parent” or even to “you exhibited poor parenting in that instance” requires huge assumptions about whatever else was going on in the room at the time.
Someone said it is natural to expect people to make those assumptions. But this doesn’t absolve those assumptions from being uncharitable. Even if it is natural to expect people to make those assumptions, this is to say nothing other than it is natural to expect people to be uncharitable.
If I see someone making the two claims listed above, my natural reaction is to think “something must have been going on that wasn’t mentioned.” Why isn’t that your reaction or everyone else’s?
Have you heard of “love bombing”? Cringeworthy name, great idea. Essentially it means spending focused one-on-one time with your child, doing whatever she would like to do (within reason, of course). Oliver James wrote a book about this technique.
I agree with others that it sounds as though your daughter really craves attention and she will accept negative attention when the positive sort isn’t forthcoming. It also sounds as though she has developed some habits (screaming, avoiding homework, etc.) that allow her to achieve that attention. Obviously, she isn’t doing any of this consciously. But because this behavior has become habitual for her, it might be more difficult to break out of.
It also sounds as though she is reacting to some stress in the home. Have you worked with her on stress reduction techniques (breathing exercises, squeezing a stress ball, whatever)?
I think I may have been a bit like your daughter when I was a child. I didn’t have screaming fits but I remember crying at the drop of a hat. I was kind of a “too much” child. A lot of things seemed “too much” for me to handle. Emotions were so big and scary, and I didn’t have the maturity to cope with them in any other way than bursting into tears. I did grow out of that and have a perfectly normal, successful life (good job, happy family). My inner 8-year-old still occasionally wants to burst into tears at the slightest provocation but she generally stays calm. 
How we behave online is an indicator of how we behave in real life.
Are you being honest with yourself, Frylock? (And isn’t this a question you often want to ask your daughter?) There would be no reason to react with name-calling unless your self-image was threatened. Defensive emotions drove that response, not rationality. There’s no shame in admitting that, so stop denying it! Your daughter does the same thing when she denies screaming, doesn’t she? To me, it seems like there is this big disconnect between how you judge your behavior and how others judge it. It’s quite possible your daughter inherited this disconnect from you, it just manifests itself in a different way.
This is not the first time I’ve noticed you going into this over-the-top defensive mode; I actually commented upon in this thread. There have been other instances.
I think therapy would be good for you because honestly, I don’t think you are able to connect enough dots together to help your daughter without outside assistance. Message board advice ain’t going to cut it this time.
Have heard of it, sort of did it yesterday (though it wasn’t one-on-one, it was me and all the kids but in any case it was a decisively and intentionally loving and happy set of interactions. Plan to continue with it…)
That is very, very far from true in my experience. I know people whom you would not recognize based on the the difference in their two modes of behavior.
No, seriously. Though it was a “threat” in the sense that it was an attempt to attack (evidence that it was an attempt to attack is the fact that it presumed a contrary to what I had already claimed, and in general in conversation such a presumption, when used directly in order to ask a question, is labeled an “attack”,) it was not a threat in any sense that implies any actual danger to anything, because the “threat” was so far off the mark. I called him what I did because I found what he said insulting. One’s self- image need not be threatened in order for one to find a remark insulting.
Because the notion that an eight year old having tantrums and not performing to genius level in school is something a mental health professional needs to deal with is a bizarre exaggeration. One needs some evidence it is more than a bad cold before one schedules a consult with a pulmonologist.
Regards,
Shodan
[quote=“chaika, post:128, topic:718683”]
Have you heard of “love bombing”? Cringeworthy name, great idea. Essentially it means spending focused one-on-one time with your child, doing whatever she would like to do (within reason, of course). Oliver James wrote a book about this technique.
This, my ex wife appeared to be a miracle worker when it came to dealing with problem children. She baby sat mostly for single mothers and it seemed every case she got was because no one else would put up with the kids. She just gave them real one on one time. She was very strict with a zero tolerance for bullshit from kids but it seemed all kids loved her and seemed to transform bad behavior almost overnight. Whatever she did she just did it naturally and 40 years later she is still doing it with the same results. She also works with recovering addicts and has similar results with them.
…nevermind
But you never explained why you believed it reasonable; you just insisted that it was reasonable. So like I said before, this mindset suggests you think that just because you believe your motivations are good and justifiable, that means no one has any room to criticize you.
In that thread, for some reason you didn’t think your critics deserved to know about the full circumstances so you withheld that information from them. But at the same time, you wanted them to stop judging you for apparently breaking the social contract of “thou shall not put your dirty shoes/feet on the couch”. This is just as unreasonable as your daughter expecting people to not judge her for screaming her head off for apparently trivial reasons. To her, the reasons are justified not trivial, and that is the only truth that matters. But to everyone else, this just crazy obstinacy.
When your daughter overreacts to seemingly minor issues, people will make uncharitable assumptions about her as a person. For you it is temptingly easy to see her lack of perspective as a character flaw, right? Is this fair? Maybe, maybe not. If she were to start a thread about her latest kerfluffle, posters would probably be calling her a drama queen and a brat. Because her reality is calibrated much differently than everyone else, she would not be able to receive this feedback without deeming it uncharitable and unfair. But that doesn’t mean that their feedback is without merit, and it would be wise of her to see that.
Barring some wildly unusual circumstance, wailing because a broom taps you on the face is inappropriate. Likewise, allowing a kid to jump up on down on a couch that doesn’t belong to you. Whether you attach the “drama queen” label to the former or the “bad parent” label to the latter ultimately is besides the point. The real point is that other people find these behaviors problematic and obnoxious, and change is prudent unless you want to be judged harshly.
If the kid’s behaving in a way that makes a parent not like them, the family can likely benefit from some kind of intervention, IMO. Doesn’t mean there’s a mental illness but on the other hand it might. No harm in getting it checked out. My daughter’s life has improved exponentially with some mild interventions and an IEP at school.
Sorry, but that’s bullshit. If you can’t suck it up an help this kid, you need someone to do that for you. Good lord.
Because the vast majority of the time when there is a circumstance that would mitigate a particular offense, that information is freely volunteered in the beginning rather than kept hidden.
If I recounted a story about how I was once chided for taking off my top at the beach, I wouldn’t expect much sympathy. In fact, I would expect people to criticize my judgment, particularly if I complained about how my actions caused me to be ogled by unsavory types. It would be stupid for me to expect people to refrain from judgment because “something must have been going on that wasn’t mentioned.”
Like, maybe I was 4 when all of this happened. That’s certainly a game-changer. But I wouldn’t expect people to entertain that possibility when interpreting my story. That’s just not how the human mind works.
It doesn’t feel like bullshit.
It seems, though, like some people here think of seeing a behavior therapist as a bigger deal than others. To me it’s like a huge deal likely to affect the kid’s self-understanding for life, even if it’s only a few visits or something. Is that exaggerated in your view?
Like, to me, going to a professional in that field is what you do after all other options are exhauste, and only after doing a bunch of your own research. But it’s looking like a lot of others are regarding it as a first step, the first thing you should do at the first sign of trouble.
Which should it be, and why?