6-yr-old middle child is...Out of Control
TLDR; 3 kids, middle child is OUT OF CONTROL. We are going nuts. Need advice.
Edit: Apparently, this needed to be explicitly stated.
Frank Cross: "We don't wanna scare the Dickens out of people." Pause. "The "Dickens" out of people. Nobody gets me."
To be clear. We have tried: timeouts, calm talking, trying to reason with her, trying to de-escalate, distraction, redirection strategies.
The part where I said this, in the comment below, "The wife's first thought was lock her out of the house overnight. But I talked her into a more reasonable strategy of smacking her ass with a bamboo rod until she learns this is inappropriate behavior and that she should fear me more than Chris Watts. But surprisingly, neither of those have worked very well."
Was SARCASM! Aka, mockery, derision, satire, scorn.
I apologize if that was not glaringly obvious.
Original post: Me (54M) and wife (46F) have 3 kids: 16F, 6F, and 4M. The 16 yr old was super easygoing as a small child. Now she's a teenager with everything that comes with that. The 4 yr old is relatively chill.
The 6 yr old is...off the hook INSANE. She has to be the center of attention. She flies OFF the handle if she wants to do something, and we say no. Right now, she is in the middle of a... so far, 40 minute-meltdown over the fact that she wants strawberries and whipped cream. We have no whipped cream. We have no edible strawberries. The ones we got about 40 seconds ago have already gotten moldy, and we had to throw them away. She has super long curly hair that has to be braided every night before bed. Otherwise, she gets tangles from hell. This started off fine. But it has now degenerated into yet another nightly war. To her, everything takes "ages and ages." If she has something she shouldn't and we ask for it, she will throw it at us. I fully admit that dealing with this child has us at our wits end.
I would try and get counseling for her, me, and my wife to help figure out how to deal, but we live in a health care desert. For example, the dentist is scheduling 9 months out. The pediatrician is about 5 months. Mental health providers out here are pretty much "how did you do this past week?" And then stare at you for an hour with nothing helpful.
Need help and advice. TY.