We go through a lot of these things with DS6. He is a very literal child and very black and white in thinking. He also holds very high standards for himself. He will get upset with himself for something and will hit himself in the head, usually when he is very frustrated and emotional about something. It started several months ago and hasn't happened in over a month or so, but for a while there it was happening a lot and we were quite concerned. At first I wanted to add on a punishment for hitting himself because I didn't know how to stop it, but that was not at all helpful and just added more frustration when he was already clearly overwhelmed and didn't know how to handle the strong emotions. For us, getting him to calm his body down and figure out what is going on was more helpful and reminding him that it not acceptable to hit himself when he makes a mistake, and give him other behaviors he can do instead.
He also will self impose punishments. For example if he didn't behave somewhere or didn't do something right he will say to us something like this "I know, I think I am the worst child in the world and you should take everything away from me for a year because that is what I deserve." and of course we respond with things like "no, you are a wonderful child and just made a bad choice, hopefully you will make a better choice next time." and try to explain to help him see it is not all or nothing. He also tends to say things like "it's all my fault" or "it's all because of me." and we often say things like "no it was an accident." Unless of course it was all his fault something happened, lol. Then we tell him yes it was, I hope you do better next time. But usually things are all someone's fault as there is a combination of events. some days are better than others. It is strange to us, because we know that he hears lots of positives, he just tells himself so many negatives I guess. When we tell him the positive he usually is like "oh, okay." He doesn't keep telling himself negatives.
In general he is not a very emotional kid at all, but he has little spurts where he will put himself down a lot. One day he was even putting himself down for getting things right all the time, like there was something wrong with him for that. I think if you keep the communication open and try to help him through not being so literal that will help some. We are in the same boat though. I am a counselor with kids, and have decided to not go the official counseling route with my child yet. It may come in future, but for now I think things are going okay and we are working on accentuating the positive and positive self-talk.
Last edited by shellymos; 01/24/11 10:36 AM.
