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7 y.o throws tantrums

SierraV's picture

My boyfriend’s 7 year old daughter has the worst tantrums. She does these high pitch screams that hurt your ears and sounds like someone is being killed. We live in an apartment so her screaming annoys all our neighbors. If she keeps this up I’m gonna have to give all of them earplugs. She does this all the time when she here. Its so crazy. She was sent to her room this morning for not doing what she was told and she went into one of her hysterical tantrums and was screaming and crying for 20 min then won’t come out and won’t talk to anyone.

She gets nothing out of doing this but she keeps doing it anyway. My boyfriend ignores her so she doesn't get attention. She mostly throws these fits in her room alone. Its been 6 months now that shes been doing this and the screaming gets worse everytime she’s here.

We have a 3 month old baby and she can't sleep with all the screaming.

My boyfriend's daughter is here only every other weekend. Not a lot of time to have any impact. Her mom says she never does this at home but her mom gives her whatever she wants before she throws tantrums.

I want the screaming to stop. I can’t take anymore of it.

Smomof3's picture

That's exactly how my father put a stop to all tantrums. My sister and I would get water thrown in our face or the hose run over our heads until we were finished. When we got older, he put us to work and I mean work. Girls are bitchy and he informed us he'd work the fight and bitching right out of us...but we lived on a farm and there was always lots of grunt work to do.

SierraV's picture

She has tantrums over everything. Being told to do something, being told to clean up her plate, being told she can't do what she wants to do, being sent to her room.

Anytime she has a tantrum she is sent to her room and she continues screaming and crying and going crazy in her room.

She doesn't have any good behavior to reward. She starts out bad and keeps getting worse as the weekend goes by.

Today I had it with her and she's been in her room all day until I had to go to work. I've had it with her.

Orange County Ca's picture

First of all Daddy does all discipline. He can spank her all she needs - he does't need his ex's permission.

Bribery as Steppin Up above said is good also. Carrot AND stick. Use the 'stick' as you two only have her 2 of 14 days the other 12 of which she gets her way. You need something fast and effective forget all that psychobabble about no spanking which might work in the long run. Which you don't have.

Time out? What? That's when she's screaming for heavens sake.

What happens in school?

SierraV's picture

My boyfriend doesn't want to spank because her mom will go crazy if he does. He wants to do it because he can't get her to shut up.

Timeout don't work because she keeps screaming and crying. She won't sit and be quiet. We put her in her room and it takes at least 15 minutes for her to shut up.

She doesn't do this in school. Her teacher last year said she was really quiet and she doesn't get in trouble. She just does this here.

Great Mom but horrified Stepmom's picture

My Dad used to say "i'll give you something to cry about". LOL!

But we did know he meant business. There is no way we would have screamed blue murder in our rooms.

I don't know what the answer is for you as I think spanking a SD who is only with you EOW is a quick way to alienate her AND cause her BM to freak out on you. If she were with you full-time I would say yes, spanking her might help (obviously I mean a quick swat on the bum, nothing abusive or anywhere else on her body).

It sounds to me like a lot of frustration on her part. Is there anything you can identify that might help alleviate that?

Smomof3's picture

My SS went through a tantrum stage over doing homework when he was 10. We would send him to his room and everytime we could hear his fit throwing...he'd get a spanking. We explained that his choices were to scream into a pillow or act decent. We also took away 1/2 hr of bedtime for every fit. Sometimes he went to bed at 7:30 or 8:00, sometimes 6:30...that put the responsbility on him to control himself.

SierraV's picture

I wish that kind of stuff would work. Getting her to drink is one of the big issues we have. SHe won't drink water. Only pop or juice. She almost passed out from dehydration a couple of times this summer because she won't drink water.

She's so stuborn she won't do something like drink water when she's about to pass out from heat stroke. That gives you an idea on how impossible she is. You would have to pry open her mouth to get water in.

She doesn't have much stuff to take way since she is only here for a weekend. She doesn't have any toys here. She's out of the toy phase. No cellphone, no mp3 player. No electronics really. We don't let her watch tv or movies when she's in trouble but that hasn't helped.

You can't send her to bed without dinner either. She hasn't eaten anything since Fri when her dad picked her up and took her to dinner. Maybe her dad will take her to fast food while I'm at work so she doesn't go to her moms starving but she will hold out all weekend not eating.

This whole situation doesn't work. She isn't here long enough for us to have any control over anything she does.