We have 2 children, one is 8 and the other is 5. We have no issues with our 8 year old. He is sweet, he listens well (for an 8 year old) and other than refusing to play with his little sister, he's a good kid.

Our 5 year old has been assessed. She walked late, (she was two when she first started) talked late, etc. She's always been a little behind on stuff but all the assessments we've had have shown no learning or developmental disabilities.

She's had Occupational Therapists, speech therapists, social workers, counsellors, etc involved.

We are scared of her. We try to talk to her calmly, we do our best not to raise our voices and we never hit her. It can be something as simple as asking to have a cookie, and we say no, and she screams and hits us. Or screams and throws something at us, and hard. She throws things so hard that she puts holes in walls.

She does this at school too. We're just at our wits end with her. She doesn't do well with routine changes, and now that she's not in school for the holidays, the behaviour has only gotten worse. Her impulse control is so bad that we will talk to her about not doing something, she will say "okay" and nod and agree, and then go ahead and do that thing less than 2 minutes later.

Today it's gotten to the point where my wife and I are just so scared, and tired, and burned out. I broke down and cried while talking to her today, telling her how scared her behaviour makes us, how it makes us feel, and how it makes it hard to parent.

We feel like awful parents, like we can't provide her the supports she needs. Not for the first time I've had these awful thoughts of giving her up to foster care, so she can get the help she needs.

I'm not going to, I would never, but I'm worried we can't help her. That this will just get worse and worse as she gets older.

She can be such a sweetheart too. It's like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, but you never know when the other one is going to come out. It's like flipping a light switch with her, she can be perfectly happy in one moment, and throwing chairs across the room literally one second later with no warning.

The school has connected us with a social worker who is going to come to our home and hopefully help us, but I just don't know what it'll do. We've tried time outs, we reward good behaviour, we try to ignore the bad, we talk to her, we explain what she did wrong. All of these things, and it just doesn't seem to help.

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Does anyone have any suggestions? Please, I love my daughter and I want to do better with her than we obviously have been.

I apologize for the rant, I just don't know what to do.

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