My daughter’s behavior is awful.

I don’t know if it’s adhd, autism, odd, or something else, but my five year old is, to be blunt, a brat. Not just a brat, but she seems to have some sort of social issues as well. I’ve asked doctors, but they always shrug it off as kids being kids. The thing is though, I’ve been around plenty of other children her age, and none of them behave like her. I’ve tried talking to her, rewarding good behavior, making a chart, bribing, but nothing and no amount of consistency helps.

Just an example from yesterday: My boyfriend and I took her to stay at his apartment downtown. I explained to her on the drive there that she needs to be on her best behavior. No cursing, no taking her clothes off, no hitting, throwing things, taking off running or not listening. She understood exactly what I was saying to her and said that she would be good.Right when I got her out of the car, she took off farting through the parking lot, completely ignoring my shouting for her to stay by me.

We went into my boyfriend’s and she started looking at all the fish tanks, like she does every time. I told her, like I do every time, she can look but no knocking on the tanks or putting her hands in the tanks. What did she do? Knock on and slap all the tanks and try to reach high enough to stick her hand in one of them.

Next, she asked if we could go walk around. We stepped out the front door and immediately, she tried to dart into oncoming traffic. I grabbed her and told her that she can’t do that, that she needs to stay between my boyfriend and I, not take off running, and not cross the street without looking. She agreed, then we got to the next intersection, and of course she’s already sprinting way ahead of us, with me yelling about “what did we just get done talking about” and of course, she made yet another attempt at just darting into traffic. It continued every block like that, with her blatantly ignoring everything I say, running away from us, and trying to run into traffic. At one point she started walking around on all fours and barking like a dog and licking her hands, another thing I’ve tried I’ve tried to get her to stop for the past two years. Eventually we just took her back to the apartment because she wouldn’t behave or even act like a normal human being.

Fast forward a little, we put a movie on, we feed her and get her ready for bed about 9. A little past midnight, she finally falls asleep, mind you, I’ve taken all distractions away, shut off the tv and the lights, and she’s up sneaking around trying to find all the things that I’ve taken away. She finds the spray bottle to her hair dresser barbie and starts spraying us in the face with it. I take that away, so she takes off her socks and rubs them in our faces. 9am, she’s running around the apartment barking like a dog again.

This isn’t just something she does at my boyfriend’s. She’s mean to our pets at home, she’s defiant, she’s sneaky, she steals people’s things and hides them for fun. She even knows to wait until we aren’t paying attention to abuse the animals. She only laughs when caught even if punished.

I’ve talked to three different doctors. Nobody’s suggestions work. She won’t stop misbehaving and she won’t stop acting like an animal in public all the time no matter what I do.