I have a 6-year-old daughter who is wonderful and basically your normal 6-year-old. One behavior that she has been exhibiting that scares her mother and me a bit is that she will occasionally talk down to herself.
This typically happens when she's having a big drawn out argument with her mother or me. For example if she's being mean to her younger brothers over and over again or doing something that she isn't supposed to and ends up going on time out. Once she's on time out I'll hear her saying things like:
"You can't do anything right!"
or
"You are always bad {her name}"
It doesn't happen every day - maybe once a month? And it only seems to be on the days where she misbehaves over and over again. I suspect that it has to do with the fact that she's being told her behavior isn't acceptable over and over again, but no one has ever said anything like that to her. We've made it clear to her that no one is perfect and that we all make mistakes from time to time and that no matter what happens we will always love her.
Time outs are usually 2-3 minutes. Afterwards we talk about why it happened and what we should do next time instead ("Instead of hitting your brother come and tell daddy that he took your toy" etc.) We give each other a hug and go back to our day.
It really has her mother and I freaked out. There is some depression on my mother's side and I worry about this being some sort of early sign of that.
I've never really heard of this type of thing in children this young before. Is anyone aware of reputable sources that discuss why this might happen and how to address it? Should we consider taking her to see a child psychiatrist? Any help would be greatly appreciated.