Q&A: What Do You Do With a Kid Who Constantly Thinks He Being Abused?

Question by Jennifer: What do you do with a kid who constantly thinks he being abused?
Here’s the story
My 9 yr. old thinks people hit him all the time. If he’s in a bad mood or thinks he’s going to get in trouble for something, he’ll ALWAYS get “hurt” – one time he was sent to his room and was walking there like a snail so I put my hand on his shoulder and pushed him along while saying “faster, please” and he yelled, “Why’d you shove me?!” About a year and a half ago, he was talking loudly early in the morning and was waking up his father repeatedly. His father asked or told him to stop talking and by the fifth or sixth time, he (Dad) got angry and grabbed him by the shoulders and moved him to a wall because he (son) was writhing so much and talked VERY sternly close to his face. Later that day at school, he told his teacher that his father had hit him and thrown him against the wall. So – later in the week we had a visit from Child Protective Services.
Anyway- today, it was when he refused to eat his lunch (that he requested) and I finally told him to just go lay in his bed awhile. He sat, refusing to budge and I walked toward him to take his arm to start him on his way and he jumped up out of the chair and screamed “Don’t hurt me, Go away! Don’t hurt me!”
He does not go to day care or have babysitters and rarely is anywhere other than school and home. He seems to have a twisted view on what being “hit” or “abused” is.
He’s actually my step-son (since he was 4) his mom is a prescription drug addict but hasn’t had a crash in a little over a year now and his father is a calm person who will not hurt anyone.

what do I do with this?
*to abfabmom* during his parents’ divorce and $ 300K custody battle, his mother called CPS (child protective services) to make bogus claims about his father all the time. My little guy was interviewed by a representative from CPS about a dozen times throughout the course of a year. This is where he learned of abuse.

Best answer:

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