My husband is giving up on our 7 year old daughter.

Hi OP

I haven’t read all the replies but I just wanted to share my experience. I’ll probably be berated for it but hey ho. Our daughter 13 is newly diagnosed ADHD and potentially autistic. I am her whipping boy. We have had the year from hell with school avoidance, probable ODD and I just wanted to say I totally get where your husband is at. My husband sounds like you, - more able to cope with the outbursts but also perhaps in yours but definitely ours the vitriol is aimed at me. I know I’m the adult and it’s easier for those without SEN kids or even with ‘better managed, better behaved SEN kids’ to judge that I must always be the adult - and I perfect one at that and it’s exhausting. I have been battling PTSD from the trauma of raising her - I kid you not and a work situation and this kid amongst other overwhelming reasons resulted in my voluntary admission to a MH ward for a week. The reason behind my ramble is please don’t give up on him. He sounds a good man that is overwhelmed. I am a good mum who burnt out and I have said and thought som horrible horrible things to my husband about our situation and our daughter but are thoughts and feelings aren’t always true reflections of who we are just the pain etc. sometimes the words just mean we want things to change he or the pain to stop but we can’t always articulate it well enough. My behaviours would have had many declarations of leave her on this forum and believe me I’ve told my husband the same. He deserves better, the kids deserve a better mum etc but he is loyal and loving and kind and I hope we will emerge again on the other side. But my ending is horrible thoughts often don’t equal actions. He must trust you so much to have told you his feelings and he will have been so scared of them and the guilt and shame he will have been having will have weighed so heavy on him. If he is a good man he or you on his behalf need to reach out to SEND parent support groups. It can feel so incredibly isolating and knowing he isn’t alone and isn’t failing as a father (because in his head you can guarantee he thinks he’s not good enough, you
manage and cope why can’t he etc) may give him strength to keep
plugging on along with ideas and maybe some humour to keep slogging on until things get easier. Which they will. We found 7yrs old very hard then we had a good few years (but we didn’t have a diagnosis like you have) and then puberty hit and our world imploded. Had we had the diagnosis’ before I would have hoped we could have navigated the situation a lot better. Anyway sorry for the 1am ramble and I just hope you can take what you need from what I’ve said. If you love him and he’s a good guy try and love jim through this with some signposting to support services. If my husband have LTB I.e me, I don’t think I’d be here writing this message. All the best x

You can't. Seriously. I literally was that little girl growing up, and the ODD doesn't go away. I literally didn't do well in school, because I subconsciously was trying to stick it to my parents. It took realizing I wasn't going to graduate with my friends to turn things around. I still had to stay an extra year.

100% I have learned some
lessons the hard way but now my DD is quite well regulated. Staying at her her father with his relationship breaking down was bad for her. I removed this. She has a long bubble after school and I keep our home calm. I try not to react to her outbursts and she is responding well. It was absolutely awful my ex was blaming my parenting i was upset an anxious and my poor child was completely overwhelmed by school pressures and moving to high school was the tipping point.

We are the adults no matter how hard we have no choice but to work with it. Granted my child doesn’t swear, is not violent towards me but could just blow up and just point blank refuse school. The school were pressuring me I have worked with them i get her in early to avoid the carnage of school yard. She eats lunch in a quiet area instead of the overwhelming canteen and she is improving massively.

My ex cannot cope he cannot regulate himself so I only feel ok with her spending a few hours a couple of times a week with him and she is happy with it. I sk get a break she goes to my mothers house every other weekend and she enjoys it. It has to be figured out. 1 year ago we were in total chaos.

💛 This is so true!

Maybe because it’s not his fault?!
It’s a condition. He didn’t choose to be this way. If your child had a physical illness, would you not love them?!
@Thelifeofashowgirlx I don’t know if you thought about this, but have you tried homeopathy? If you tried everything and nothing worked, it might be worth a shot as it is a gentle method and causes no harm. I’ve worked (for our issues) with a couple of amazing homeopaths over the years, and they’ve successfully treated children with strong autism symptoms expression.
My heart goes out to you, what you describe is awful! It must be really hard to live like that!
My heart goes out to OP too! 💓

I actually watched a documentary just a few weeks ago where a father did this with his 4 year old in Australia. I was shocked but it does happen.

OP didn’t say it was said from rage - more frustration and exhaustion. This was discussed at length upthread. It’s unlikely he’s a threat to DD - it’s more likely he’s expressing that he’s not coping. The OP has already said that he isn’t sleeping and explained how complicated her DD’s condition is in updates.

Thankyou for that- I've shown my colleague this thread as it contains some good pointers and advice for how she (and I if she needs my support) might move forward from her current situation and ensure both her sons reach their full potential

You need to tell him he needs to leave for a period. Any parent saying they want to throw a child off a bridge shouldn’t be around them. Sounds like he’s at breaking point. You don’t want him to even accidentally hurt her out of rage.

Not being intimately familiar with her circumstances, I don’t know the extent of her choices. It is, if she and her husband are willing, quite possible to preserve the family unit.

What he said, when considered contextually, does not mean that social services would remove the child from his care, or that OP has no choice but to go it alone*.

*going it alone doesn’t always lead to the improved outcome you seem to think it will. Sometimes, when people say they won’t be able to cope, they’re absolutely correct. Children like OP’s daughter can and do end up in foster care because a single parent cannot cope alone and has psychologically collapsed. The impact on the neurotypical siblings also cannot be dismissed as inconsequential either.

Thanks - this what I looked at from this July - my laptop is mis-behaving [everything jumping around] and read it too quickly

• In the last five years there was an average of 56 child deaths by assault or undetermined intent a year in the UK.
• Children under the age of one are the most likely age group to be killed by another person, followed by 16- to 24-year-olds.
• Child homicides are most commonly caused by the child’s parent or step-parent. NSPCC

Anyway thankfully a rare occurence

An average of 84 child deaths per year up to 2019, but these were across a range of circumstances - only 15% were overt or covert homicide.

I can really empathize with this situation, and we have been in a similar situation. I think it is very common in families with autistic children, my husband has really, really struggled with this dynamic too as he has felt extremely hurt and rejected by our child. What has helped is resetting the family dynamics, as hard as it may seem to hear, both of the parents need to change how you’re parenting to reset this. Sounds like the challenge might be finding the time for your husband to spend time with your daughter. Do they have things in common they can enjoy doing together? Making models or nature walks or playing games? It may be that you need to step back and not be the primary parent when you’re all together, not sure if you intervene and try and keep the peace by managing thier relationship, but maybe you need to step back and let them negotiate the terms of that themselves. If you can improve the communication between the two of you that may help. And also if possible get some support for yourselves and therapy, having autistic children is hard work and particularly as one or both parents may also be neurodivergent. I hope things improve for you all.

This report is on child deaths, and doesn’t specifically mention the incidence in families under similar stress to OP’s. And the report is outdated - the figures used are averages between 2014 and 2019. Glad to see you’re bowing out of the thread because you really aren’t contributing anything and your advice to OP is anything but objective.

it is not terminal 3 at Manchester airport; your departure does not need an announcement.

I actually read the thread I made when so angry and hurt and rejected by my (not ND) DS. I can see reading it I was suffering from post natal depression actually although that wasn’t clear to me at the time.

It was a painful read. What was most painful were the theatrical chest beaters urging me to leave, report myself to SS as I was a danger and so on.

Throwing someone over a bridge would be a ‘snap’ action and not in line with confessing in darkness and despair that you feel like it.

You are correct I read the NSPCC website wrongly - apologies -10 did seem too low

There is something very sinister going on with this thread, so I am out.

Presumably because in the absence of actual fact, knee jerk reactions and hyperbole are all that’s left. That and insulting those posting from experience, both professional and personal.

www.willispalmer.com/nspcc-one-child-killed-every-week-in-uk/

on average there are 10 children murdered by their parents/year

that's out of over 14 million children

10 too many but not 'many children murdered by their fathers'

why are you exagerating like this?

Why ? MN is supposed to be a place to come to for support. Not much evidence of that on this thread I grant you, but that was the original intention.

I have over twenty years experience of working with families in these circumstances and have heard many similar comments from those under stress - happy to report that not one of them has ever followed through and in all of those cases where social services were involved, they were not considered threats because the context and circumstances in which they were said was taken into account.

Of course nobody can know for sure but experience and a knowledge of the circumstances and past history play their part. That’s why parents aren’t lining up to throw their children off bridges and prisons aren’t overflowing with people arrested by the thought police.

You’re arguing with people on this thread who are clearly professional - the latest was with a forensic psych whom you accused of misinterpreting the law !! I’m done trying to explain this to you because all I’m getting back is the same stuff you’re doubling down on, rudeness and now you’re patronising. Please stop tagging me because I won’t be responding - we’ll have to agree to disagree instead of derailing OP’s thread further.

What a great day, poster. To bring it on mumsnet, wait now someone to call the police on you and SS because of this post. Or people to advise you to call the police on him .....or better: let him go to therapy to explore his child killing urges.

Some things are meant to be considered first, before posted.

You simply can not know that,
Many children are murdered by their fathers. This is hardly breaking news Ross.