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I have been watching my neighbor's kids on weekends for the past couple of months. The older daughter is 6 years old, and her younger sister is 4.
I have a lot of childcare experience, and yet I've never encountered a child like this 6 year old. She has zero empathy, to the point where it's scary. She is sneaky, vindictive, and malicious in her actions. She's also bossy like I've never seen in a child her age.
As soon as I leave the room, I hear her say things to her sister like, "If you open your mouth I'll slap you in your face and shut you right up" and " Do what I say or else". The other night she hit her sister in the face right in front of me, and when I told the 4 year old "Don't worry, she's sorry and she won't do it again", the 6 year old turned to me and said, "How do YOU know I won't do it again?" and gave me this icy stare. When I don't let her get her way, even if it's the smallest thing, she FREAKS out and throws giant tantrums, to the point where she looks like a completely different person. It's scary.
She is very defiant with me and is especially nasty to her own mother. The mother says she's always been this way and is at a loss as to what to do. I'm also at a loss because I have never had a problem bonding with a child and building a strong rapport with them, but with this one, no such luck. She has warmed to me a little, but in terms of listening it's like we're always starting from square one.
Advice?
She might be on the spectrum with a "defiance disorder". A psychologist will be able to recognize this quickly. She was probably never taught to care about the little sister, or she is simply imitating parents behavior.
Why would you think beating a child for physically hurting another one is a good idea? Discipline yes, hitting them so they won't hit? Why would you think this would do anything more than drive her rage and abuse more?
Yeah yeah yeah. If a child smacked another child, it is considered anti-social behavior. I don't see the difference when it comes from the hand of an adult.
She might be on the spectrum with a "defiance disorder". A psychologist will be able to recognize this quickly. She was probably never taught to care about the little sister, or she is simply imitating parents behavior.
Best solved and counteracted by strong parental discipline! It should be recognizable to anyone with common sense. Obviously, she is in defiance of appropriate behavior. It really does not take an expert to recognize that. I knew that from the OP's thread.
She will have far more respect in the long run for a strong, sensible parent that disciplines her instead of a shrink that talks to her and tries to understand her. The shrink should be the last resort IMO.
Best solved and counteracted by strong parental discipline! It should be recognizable to anyone with common sense. Obviously, she is in defiance of appropriate behavior. It really does not take an expert to recognize that. I knew that from the OP's thread.
She will have far more respect in the long run for a strong, sensible parent that disciplines her instead of a shrink that talks to her and tries to understand her. The shrink should be the last resort IMO.
But how can she get that? Her mother isn't doing anything now to correct her behavior. A shrink is for those kids whose parents can't address the issues. You don't allow a child to go that long abusing a sibling if you are a capable parent. So I think now it's up to the shrinks --- and maybe even drugs to rein in this kid.
But how can she get that? Her mother isn't doing anything now to correct her behavior. A shrink is for those kids whose parents can't address the issues. You don't allow a child to go that long abusing a sibling if you are a capable parent. So I think now it's up to the shrinks --- and maybe even drugs to rein in this kid.
The mother should ideally be doing more. Stava, do you have any information on what the mother is doing discipline-wise? That is a glaring omission from your thread (as good as it was otherwise).
I would actually be more inclined to put the child up for adoption to a more disciplinary, responsible parent as a better alternative if the mother can't see the light.
Aside from that, I guess a shrink will have to get involved as a last resort as I stated earlier.
I have been watching my neighbor's kids on weekends for the past couple of months. The older daughter is 6 years old, and her younger sister is 4.
I have a lot of childcare experience, and yet I've never encountered a child like this 6 year old. She has zero empathy, to the point where it's scary. She is sneaky, vindictive, and malicious in her actions. She's also bossy like I've never seen in a child her age.
As soon as I leave the room, I hear her say things to her sister like, "If you open your mouth I'll slap you in your face and shut you right up" and " Do what I say or else". The other night she hit her sister in the face right in front of me, and when I told the 4 year old "Don't worry, she's sorry and she won't do it again", the 6 year old turned to me and said, "How do YOU know I won't do it again?" and gave me this icy stare. When I don't let her get her way, even if it's the smallest thing, she FREAKS out and throws giant tantrums, to the point where she looks like a completely different person. It's scary.
She is very defiant with me and is especially nasty to her own mother. The mother says she's always been this way and is at a loss as to what to do. I'm also at a loss because I have never had a problem bonding with a child and building a strong rapport with them, but with this one, no such luck. She has warmed to me a little, but in terms of listening it's like we're always starting from square one.
Advice?
Well, now we know how CEOs of large companies start off as
TotallyTam if I could give you a thousand rep points I would. I really like your approach. It's similar to mine. I'm in the school of thought that you just simply take the child away from conflict and distract them with something else. Although I'm sure you'll disagree that it's okay for a child to ever hit another child and will say im an awful parent for letting my children hurl pine cones at each other. That's fine, I find this forum to be mostly ultra-liberal urbanites and suburbanites, it's expected.
Some awesome points from your post.
He was very smart. They are very smart.To be manipulative these children have to be smart. Its almost like they are more intelligent emotionally than most of the adults put in charge of them.
He really loved the interaction and being spoken to like he had a brain. Adults don't give children enough credit. Their emotional intelligence rivals an adults and they have the same capacity as an adult to analyze information. Once a child is past the age of 2 stop with the baby talk and the condescending simple slow speech. My 7 and 8 year olds have in depth conversations with us about things you would never image a child caring about. My son was talking about Planteary Nebulas and Supernovas on the way home from school.
unruly, hyper behavior was less pronounced when he wasn't loaded up on sugar. Exactly! I would add to that children in general need an outlet for their energy, they are like little nuclear reactors and when they get a bunch of pent up energy they go on a path of destruction if there is no way for them to get that energy out constructively. It can also manifest its self as cranky irrational behavior. Yesterday, I watched my kids run around for 5 hours straight. Imagine if they had stayed inside all day what they could have gotten into. Here in Portland its especially hard because its always raining. Kids dont like to be all bottled up all day. It's amazing what 4 hours of play can do for the demeanor of a child.
I engaged him, giggled a little back when he made silly or shocking comments (did not overreact like so many of the adults did), and made him feel like he mattered.
Very nice! That's all they really want is a little bit of attention. Adults shouldn't overreact, that's key. The reason I didn't say what action I took is that I really didn't take a corrective action. My wife was quick to coddle my youngest and give an immature glare to my middle daughter, but I just simply didn't react. My middle daughter just continued what she was doing, even though I could tell she was mad and about to cry. 20 minutes later it was like nothing had happened. My youngest was bored, my youngest knew she'd get a reaction out of my middle and knew my wife would instantly feed her with the attention she wanted. My middle gets super tired of the antics of my youngest and so does my son. But since princess always gets mommy on her side she whether she is in the wrong or not. When my wife was on business, the house was extremely harmonious. I never had one problem, because my kids know they can not play me. No reaction, no reward.
- When he did have a tantrum or began acting unruly, I wouldn't fight fire with fire.
Never fight fire with fire with kids, they have too much leverage, and let's be honest they are kids. Fighting fire with fire seldomly achieves results. Distraction is the best policy.
Stava
Everything on this board is simply opinion. When you ask for advice, you are soliciting opinions. No one should base any life decisions on anything said on city-data. I don't think I have all the answers, I think I know what works best for my children then base others problems off of my own experiences. No one ever gives the full story, and it seems like people on here are mostly attention seekers with too much time on their hands. Let me rephrase my 'lack empathy' because no one completely lacks empathy. I have slightly less than others but it's well within social norms, and just because I slightly lack empathy makes me no more dangerous than anyone else. Same with a child that lacks empathy. Some people just don't have as much of a sense of empathy as others. Some people are over-empathetic and over-sympathetic.
One thing you never state is whether this child hits only her sister or other children as well. If its just the little sister, I don't think it's a big deal. However, if this child is making calculated random hits on other children, that's would be cause for further investigation but even that may turn out to be nothing. Does she hit you or your children? Is there anyone she is nice to? How long have you been her babysitter? Is it possible she is just acting out because her moms situation is less than ideal? How much do you really know about her home situation? Is it possible the mother ignores the oldest and coddles the youngest?
Just because a child is bossy or manipulative as a 6 year old doesn't mean they are scary or have any criminal tendencies or that the behavior will even continue.
For the most part I was responding to the NYT article on page 1 because I felt for the father of Michael's family, Miguel. He had more of a nonchalant, rational attitude when it came to Michael's behavior. Michael's mother seemingly had written Michael off as a bad seed and said the worst pessimistic things about her child. She felt pessimistic about his future and got him some "professional help", which will do nothing for him. It really angered me because these kids are being treated like lab rats instead of kids. I think all this modern psychology makes for awkward helicopter parents who alter their natural behaviors in favor of what some shrink says who is trying to sell a book. The more you twist their minds the more twisted their minds become. Good kids can go bad and bad kids and can turn out to be amazing. Are there just some humans that are bad from the get go? Sure there are. It would be ludicrous to say that all human behaviors are learned or that all human behaviors are a product of their environment.
I just think kids are just becoming wusses and parents are helping to turn kids into weird little hermit introverts that never take any risks at all. Let them be kids! When I was a kid we used to scrap and hit each other with all sorts of things. We used to shoot at each other with cap guns, and shoot pop cans and small rodents with BB guns. Nerf gun wars were pretty standard. None of us have ever shot any one, none of us have any criminal records, none of us go around looking for fights, none of us are unintelligent, we are all productive members of society, we all have great families. These days if some nosy teacher or school or nosy hover parent found a kid that exhibited those behaviors we had as kids he would be labeled as "at risk" and sent to therapy for "violent tendencies" his parents scrutinized as abusers or unfit parents. All of it is B.S.
This weekend my son had a friend over and my kids started their pine cone war/stick fighting phase. This horrified the kid that was visiting. He kept yelling "guys you might hit someone" "guys stop, we could get hurt", "Guys those sticks, could blind us if they got into our eye", "my parents wouldn't like this" This is a 12 year old BOY! So what does my youngest do? picks up a pine cone and throws it at him. " He comes to me in the garage and tells me "yd threw a pine cone at me, I told her to stop, but she threw it at me anyway, she violated my personal space." I don't even know how to react to this, I'm actually quite shocked. I go around back of the house and World War Pine Cone is in full swing. I tell them to halt for a second, then I tell them to "play something else, please." So what they play? NERF gun war. They all get their NERF guns and my son offers his friend the best one. but the kid he says "guys, we really shouldn't play with guns, my mom said you should never point a gun at anyone" My son dumbfouded goes "It's NERF, it's bright orange plastic and foam" Well, long story short, this kid dragged my son inside to play XBOX on a rare nice Saturday in Portland Oregon.
Playing with NERF guns does not in any way mean a child will use a real gun with malicious intent in later years.
My kids scrap and wrestle a little bit, I really don't see a problem with it, 99.8% the time they are laughing and smiling. They have a high old time playing pine cone war. Have there been injuries? Sure, if you count a reddened forehead and a little dirt an injury. When my middle daughter hit my youngest did she actually injure her in any way? No, it was all good theater on the part of my youngest, mommy bought into it, and that was the goal.
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When I don't let her get her way, even if it's the smallest thing, she FREAKS out and throws giant tantrums, to the point where she looks like a completely different person. It's scary. 
