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Behaviour/development

Something wrong w my 9 y.o Daughter...please help!!

17 replies

erin189 · 20/12/2018 17:48

Hi everyone, I'm Erin and I'm new to MN.
Thought to post on here because I'm having a lot of issues parenting my 9 y.o daughter.
Since she was 2 n a half I've sensed something wasn't quite right w her, but i thought it was just quirkiness and a strong personality..
Here are some things that concern me about my daughter (for context)

School refusal: gets violent whenever her dad and i try and take her to school, screams, swears and i remember once when she was 6 she screamed out the car window 'this woman is kidnapping me!' (Referring to me, her mum) and obviously that attracted strangers attention. I asked her why she did this & she said so that someone can rescue her from going to school. I dont know whats going on w her at school but this has been going on since she was 3 - she’d have violent outbursts whenever i took her to nursery.

School has concerns about her: she’s apparently disruptive in lessons, always blurting things out, impatient, gets out of her seat and walks/runs around during lessons , unfocused, gets very annoyed whenever another child takes her ‘seat’ (even tho they don’t have allocated seats but she always wants to keep everything the same ) , v disorganised, never turns work on in time even if she does it she forgets it at home , time management issues (takes hours to get her ideas down on paper ), panics at lunchtime and has meltdowns , doesn’t have many friends and keeps to herself a lot , (when she tries to socialise other kids don’t want to because she can be quite rigid about playing and comes across rude or bossy ) she’s in detention a lot for being disruptive.

Things that I don’t think are normal for a kid her age that she does : has to touch everything 3 times, has weird rituals like lining all her toys up before bed which takes hours and she won’t sleep if they’re not done ‘properly’ , has to close every single door and if it doesn’t make a certain sound she panics (this isn’t normal, right!?), asks ‘mummy are you proud of me’ or ‘mummy do you love me’ or ‘is daddy happy w my report’ all the time, even tho we tell her every day that we love her and are proud of her! , she’s obsessed with airplanes, and I mean OBSESSED. She spends most her free time watching air crash investigations on the TV and creating her own theories as to why they crashed , she also loves medical and crime tv shows and loves to learn about diseases and the human body... not necessarily bad things but this is usually what she talks about with the kids in her class so they find her ‘weird’ and don’t want to be friends with her ..

She’s a control freak: if one thing about her routine changes (eg: taking the tube instead of the bus on a school trip) she FREAKS OUT. Any last minute changes wreck havoc w her... she cannot stand room changes at school either or changes to lunch . She will not touch certian things like cream (the texture bothers her) so as a result she has extremely dry skin .. if i tell her I’m picking her up from school at 3 and arrive at 3:02 (literally) she has a massive meltdown and says I lied to her!!

Also : she never goes swimming with school because she hates the smell of chlorine and getting her hair Wet , she also said ‘I don’t want to wear a swim suit because Im fat’ .. she isn’t fat at All! She’s actually underweight because her diet is so restricted (again, problems w texture of food) so I’m worried she’s seeing herself incorrectly or in a distorted way .. also whenever we plan family day outs and picnics to the park she won’t come because she’s worried about ‘contracting Lyme disease from a black legged tick’ her own words!! Heck, when I was 9, I didn’t even know what Lyme disease was! (Still don’t know much about it!)

Sleep: she doesn’t sleep at night bc she’s scared of the dark and has to keep her light on , most nights at 2am she comes down to me and her dad and keeps asking us ‘when I die will it be pitch black’ or ‘when I die will I hallucinate’ and I know to a certain extent talking about death when ur 9 is normal but her questions are just.. odd! She sometimes gets nightmares as well , usually about being drowned or kidnapped (horrible , I know ) and she grinds her teeth super loudly in her sleep , as well as being unable to stay still and she trashed around the bed.. GP said it sounds like anxiety but I’m not convinced

Hyperactivity: she’s always on the go , always talking , moving, jumping around , and basically doesn’t sit still or concentrate . Getting her to do homework is a NIGHTMARE.

Sorry this is so long , but I’m super worried about her. Sometimes she even says ‘mummy I wish I was dead’ and this is a recent thing she’s been saying (a few months) and I don’t know what’s going on but I’m so scared for her mental health. please can someone help , is she just a difficult attention seeking kid or is something wrong? My gut intuition is something is v wrong w my little girl.

Thanks for reading

Erin 😢xxxx

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Lara53 · 20/12/2018 20:52

Sounds like there is an awful lot going on. What does school say? From what you say I am thinking possible ADHD/ ASD/ OCD. I would b3 urgently finding a private paediatrician to assess her and then also an educational psychologist to look at her learning/ school environment.