My daughter is going to stay with daddy :(

[pixiehollow]

This is so hard to even write but I'm wanting advice as I've found my self in a horrible position. My eldest child is 6 years old, I have a 3 year old from a new relationship and another on the way. Me and my 6 year olds dad split up when she was very tiny, so she has always lived with me and seen daddy every now and then, now she sees him every weekend but over the months has absolute meltdowns whenever she comes home. She is a difficult child and always has been. But I'm her mummy and I love her unconditionallying. She is in trouble at school almost every day now, aswel as being absolutely awful at home.

She tells me she hates me and wants to live with daddy. She trashes her bedroom and is nasty to her brother. I find my self in tears and asking her why she is so angry at me and all she will say is I want daddy.
Yesterday she was in so much trouble at school that they actually removed her from the class! The new class teacher said her behaviour in ther wasn't good either. I left school feeling ashamed! Upset and in disbelief! I messaged her daddy. Told him exactly what has been going on. He then said he would come and get her for a week, take her to school and see if it made a difference. I told her this and she was estatic.

We went to meet him with all her school things and handed her over.
Its for a week but I'm terrified she will want to stay there.
It's awful for me because we didn't get on, he was vile to me which was why I left and put me through years of hel when I did leave. I'm worried that he isn't a good role model although he is a good weekend daddy... he's still living with his dad. She dosnt have her own room she has to sleep with him in his bed.

What do I do? What would you do?
I went to live with my grandparents as a child and grew up determined that I would keep all of my children. I was abandoned by both of my parents.

How do I do what's best for her when I just want her at home with me.

She has had a better day at school today which suggests I did the right thing but this also tells me she isn't happy with me at home. And this is devastating to me.

Has anybody been through anything like this? To make matters worse I lost a child 2 years ago, we had ago little girl who was born extremely poorly and died. I can't bear the thought of losing another one.

Sorry some of this dosnt make sense I have predictive text which just makes up words

Don't worry about a one off comment from someone who hadn't fully understood the situation, we can only respond to what's written in the posts here, sometimes we fall on the right side of interpreting things, sometimes it falls on the wrong side. There's no need to delete and I'm sure you'll get great support here if you stay and keep posting :)

You said you didn't know what camhs stands for - this is Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services. They deal with all kinds of help for children from grief counselling to assessments for things like ADHD, and usually you get referred either through your family doctor or through the school.

Six year olds often feel you're unfair in my experience! Yes I'm sure she'll soon realise that she still has to go to school etc even with her Dad. I do hope that the week is helpful for both of you. But I agree with others that it's time to push for more support. My starting point suggestions would be either the school, your GP or perhaps your midwife, but Graphista's links look really helpful as well. Don't spend too much time thinking about which approach would be best. Just pick one of the starting points and go with that.

Sorry to hear about the loss of your baby, I also meant to say this earlier but it was lost in the other stuff. I think it's quite natural that your DD is anxious about the new one and as she's intelligent it might be that she's not quite convinced by reassurance that everything will be okay this time, I know when my DS was going through something difficult at 6 he wasn't really convinced by explanations that everything would be fine. He was happier when we acknowledged the possibility that something could still go wrong but explained all the reasons why we thought it was a small chance.

I found this PDF on the Sands website which might be helpful.

www.sands.org.uk/support/bereavement-support/supporting-children-when-baby-has-died

Have the hospice offered any sibling support? They often have therapists/play specialists who may be able to offer some help, I think you made an incredibly brave decision in horrible circumstances and it is clear you want what is best for your daughter.

She needs stability OP. I would get her back after the week and make it clear that she lives with you. End of.

Don't know much about the other stuff going on, but I do know a lot about beheavement and grief sadly, so I'll just focus on that.

We had a very close family member die when DS was 4. It devastated both of us and DS really fell apart. I read a lot about the psychology of grief at his age, and it's very different from the grieving process of older children and of course very different from adults.

Each age has its own individual difficulties when it comes to coping with death. The problem is that 4 yr olds are caught in between two stages of development that occur in younger and older children.

At this age they are not young enough to not understand the permanency and cause / effect of loss, and they're not old enough to understand death either.

So they really struggle to process it.

And because they cannot process it, it doesn't fade over time in the same way it does for grown ups.

Each time your DD moves into a new stage of development, and understands the world and herself differently, she will be re-processing the death of her baby sibling and the events around that.

Children also often don't understand why things happen, and the connections between events, especially when they are younger and are still grappling with the idea that the world doesn't revolve around them (!). But this is really sad when a tragedy happens, as they can blame themselves, or think they can influence events by doing something, or not doing something, by being naughty, or getting found out, or basically anything.

So, what I'm trying to say is, please take into account that she may well be grieving and terribly sad about the death of her sibling, even years later. Don't dismiss it as a factor in her current behavior just because it happened a couple of years ago. The new pregnancy will be triggering all sorts of feelings, and she might be feeling a terrible burden of thinking her behavior will influence events this time. Or that someone else can.

My DS is almost 7 and although he seems mostly fine now, every so often something will happen that completely throws him and raises those big raw emotions again.

Oh sorry I can see lots of people have posted about bereavement, I think I must have missed a page earlier. I do hope you manage to get some help for all of you. I got some very good support from a local charity who helped DS and me by me seeing a psychologist who specialized in trauma in families, and she taught me how best to help DS at home, without him potentially feeling freaked at being brought into a clinical therapy type of environment himself. There might be something in your area similiar?