Many, many thanks for the answers. Since this is a meditation forum I was perhaps overly direct with the question, not giving any background at all; I didn’t want to use you guys like a therapy group. Perhaps some more info would have helped.
Matthew: Please don’t apologise, I appreciate that the intention was good and am grateful for the time you took to reply. The interesting thing about your reply is that I came to some of the same conclusions… about a year ago! I have been working on this problem for some time.
I realised that she had a problem then and that I had to change my priorities and did: she became centre stage. I have given her a lot of my time, most days, since then, and we have a wonderful relationship, I am not sure it can be much better (OK, everything can improve, but it is pretty good).
And it is not that she is difficult at school that concerns me, hell, I spent a considerable part of my early school days sat outside the headmaster’s office because I wouldn’t do what I was told, wouldn’t sit down, etc. What bothers me is that she is unhappy. It is glaringly obvious. Ok, I mustn’t dramatize, not all the time, but I would definitely say that her default state is one of unhappiness or irritation…
Examples: she cries a lot. She always wakes up in a bad mood, and if it is not at the breakfast table, then it is getting dressed, or whatever, but sooner or later she cries. I try to joke about it at home, taking importance away, and call it her “constitutional cry”: to get her going in the morning, but it’s not normal. A lot of the time it is a cry brought about by frustration and anger, not by self pity. She is fiercely independent and self sufficient and will not tolerate anyone helping her.
I also suspect a sleep problem as well, since it is impossible to share the bed with her, as young children love to do with their parents, since she twitches and fidgets in her sleep, she doesn’t seem to relax even when asleep.
Her general behaviour causes irritation in her elder brother and sister and often leads to fights and tension. Recently she has started to get very angry and violent with her siblings and cannot tolerate noises like sniffing and coughing (could it be
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misophonia). My wife and I have tried hard to get her to understand why one coughs or sneezes, using simplified language, and we play games like “who can say why daddy is coughing?”, and she loves to answer and receive praise for a correct answer, but later if her sister is sniffing (the poor thing has allergy problems), then she will go ballistic… If I ask her to tell me why her “poor” sister is sniffing she gets worse… To try and keep the peace at home, and not provoke her, we all end up treading on egg shells, and being very careful about what we say and do around her. We treat her like she is crazy :-O
Generally speaking she is reasonably articulate in English and Spanish (for a six year old), with a few words in French, but is completely unable to describe why she gets angry, what was going through her head when she was crying, etc. These states don’t seem to be cognitively penetrable to her. Introspection doesn’t help her.
We do have her in classes: she does ballet, music, tennis and swimming. She likes to cook as well.
Mpgkona: I have tried to do a causal analysis of her behaviour, but it is really hard since she can’t accurately describe what the cause was. I will work more on this – it is a great idea… And she can be furiously crying about some thing and then just stop, in a second, and then just make an innocuous comment or ask you for something, in a perfectly normal way, as if nothing had happened… It drives me crazy! E.g.: “Come on angel, brush your hair, we have to go out” … screams, crying, anger… then suddenly “Which hairbrush should I use?”
Her school does have a psychologist and we have had a few meetings. I can’t say that I’m overly impressed… You can’t get a home psychologist where I live but we have taken her to see one privately for most of the last academic year (September – June). She was in a small group of other children with similar behavioural problems. That worked well, she learned to interact better, to state what SHE wanted, respect others, etc., and generally be more social and also to relax.
She lies a lot and is incredibly manipulative. If I can detect her “building up pressure”, then I can say “deep breath baby, deep breath”, and she’ll take a long deep breath and you can see her relax, sometimes that is enough to stop the volcano from erupting!
It was really after this time and not seeing a great improvement that we decided to get a medical opinion (hence the paediatric neurologist) and also a full psychological profile (she was highlighted as having anxiety and depression and possible ADHD). So in desperation, as I plan the new strategies to start now, I came here, I have experienced some small fruits of the path, and if I just practiced more would get further, and would really like to help her to feel the same…
Great advice on diet, I would never have thought about it, I will definitely try that out and also the JKZ Web and book. It was thanks to his Full Catastrophe book that I first got interested in meditation…
I am also horrified by the use of meds and am pleased and relieved to see that you are too, that makes me feel better.
Once again, thanks.
TT