Eight Hear Old Hits Himself

Maybe you are too tough on him, or maybe he is too hard on himself.

He may be a perfectionist. Is he highly emotional in general? Any other quirks? If yes to those questions then why not talk to someone? There are many things that can be addressed when a child is young...... or you could learn some new techniques to help him.....and while he is young it is less likely he will refuse an assessment.

It's probably no big deal, but you are worried..... that in itself makes it a good idea to be evaluated.

At the risk of exposing myself... I am a recovered "hitter" also. In order to recover from this I had to take a serious look at when, how, and why I was doing it, what I was feeling, how I was internalizing, and why this was a solution for me. In my case, I think that underlying self esteem issues, paired tendencies that leaned towards being a perfectionist, made it VERY difficult for me to tolerate the influx of other people's critisism, especially if it was in a situation where I was geing yelled at or treated in a way where I internalized it as I was being told I was "bad" "worthless" etc. For me, I hit myself for reasons that were twofold: 1) because I could control it. You see, if I took over your punishment by hitting myself while you were disciplining me, I then become my own discipliner. I can control not only how long the punishment lasts, but also in some strange way it allows me to control what the punishment means to, and about, me. I am beating my message into your head, not mine. Also, 2) self hitting was a way by which I communicated back to you that "I got it." It was as if I was saying "See! I get it! Yes, I am worthless!!! I can take it from here!!! Please leave me alone!!!" Finally, self hitting was effective for me, because it would cause the punishment, discipline, and critisism that I had such a hard time dealing with, to stop... so, long story short, it was a coping mechanism for me for many years. The question as to whether the way my discipliner disciplined me was too extreme or unexceptable, vs. whether I was just for whatever reason unable to tolerate "normal" parental discipline, is irrelevant. The fact was that it was what it was. As you are "live" in the situation now, where as I am speaking as an adult, looking back on it in my youth, I would advise you to seek family counseling, so that you can at least have a trained professional witness and make recommendations about what dynamics are contributing to your situation and what you can do to help it to come to a stop. I do not have any learning or neurological or phsyciatric disorders. Maybe for me it was just the perfect storm of a low self esteem in childhood, mixed with perfectionist tendancies, mixed with a single-parent mother with 4 kids under the age of 6, who worked full time and was completely stressed out and yelled a lot. Like I said, irrelevant in terms of blame. I just encourage you to try to learn more about it. :-)

I am not sure if this helps, but my 8 year old does this sometimes. I just calmly ask him to stop and he does. I am not really worried about it.

My almost ten year old does this when he gets in trouble. He will make a fist and hit himself in the head repeatedly. He says he's mad at himself (he is a big time perfectionist) or that he's punishing himself. We tell him he's not allowed to hit anyone, including himself, and that he's not a parent, so it's not his job to punish anyone, including himself. This usually makes him stop and will usually help him calm down, at least enough where he will express himself with words instead of by hitting himself.

My son is bipolar and when he can't express his feelings (anger,fear ect) he will hit his head pretty hard too. Since you have anxiety I would definatly let the dr know because that could be him having it as well. I would not ignore that behavior in a 7 year old. Hope this helps :)

My son does the same thing. Only when he is in trouble. I also find him doing that. When he wants attention. You need to talk to him calmly. Then when the behavior stops. Then talk to him about why he is doing that. It will stop. Sounds like a age thing. My son is 8 as well.

I believe you are stressing him out a bit..albeit there might be other things going on, but you are sure enough teaching him a negative way to deal with his emotions.

I would try calming ways of dealing with your problems, walk away or reduce the yelling..start dealing with you and you first and he will adopt to the new way eventually!

I think its just a phase of goofiness. It will pass if you ignore it.

Hi T. - My son does this also. He is 9. Are there any other behaviors that he does that concern you? My son was diagnosed with ADHD and Pervasive Developmental Disorder and the doctor told me that he does this because he is overwhelmed and doesn't know what other way to express his feelings. It's all in the way that his brain is processing me yelling at him and the way that he takes it in. My son has other issues too though like the face that he can't pay attention or focus on anything at all, so it could be that it is not the case with your son at all. If talking to him calmly stops the behavior, then it's probably nothing more that needs looked into but that doesn't work with my son.