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5. They break or damage things.
This sign depends on whether breaking and damaging things is accidental, unintentional, or on purpose. These are three different problems. If the youngster often breaks things by accident, it is probably a physical problem. It may involve coordination, vision, or another medical problem. It needs checked out. Unintentionally breaking things is a little harder to understand. It may be because of not knowing how to use toys and equipment. Think about why it happens and see if teaching the child how to use them might work better than forbidding her to use whatever she broke.
Unintentionally breaking or intentionally breaking things are sometimes degrees of the same problem. It works like this. The child feels upset, angry, or wants to get even. Either she is careless or too rough with others’ things or just breaks them. She may act the same way with her things. Here is what is happening. She is taking out her anger and frustration on things. The behavior is a kind of temper tantrum.
It is usually better calmly to watch while she breaks whatever it is. Most of the time, you cannot stop her anyway. She can always break them when you are not there to do anything about it. Yes, it can get frustrating and expensive. This way of handling the behavior is called the therapeutic approach and is the best way. It is never a good idea to manhandle her or to try to physically force her to cooperate.
There are several things you can do. If she can, she should pay for what she broke. Don’t take all her money for very long. Set up payments she can afford.
Usually, it helps not to replace what she broke if it belonged to her. Be careful. You don’t want her to end up with nothing but junk. She needs to see her things as valuable before not breaking them will matter to her.
Each time she breaks something, talk with her about how she felt. Get her to talk about how she felt angry, jealous, or frustrated. Say, “Your breaking things is a problem. At least you reached your goal. If you broke them to cause someone a problem, you got the job done. That lets me know you can communicate. Here is what I want to talk about. There are better ways to let people know how you feel. For example, yelling or pounding your pillow would be better. They are not long-term solutions but are in the right direction. Can we talk about some choices you have that are better than breaking things?” Having this discussion as often as necessary is important. Try to have it when neither you nor the child is upset or angry.