To not allow my 12 year old DSD to come round here until...

[Bumbalaya]

... she gets some proper help for her mental health.

Hi all, my undiagnosed PDA step daughter (12) had a bad night the other night.
Her dad took her tech off her before bed and she was cross so locked herself in the bathroom and (told her mum the next day that she) self harmed with a pencil sharpener blade.
Because her mum told her dad this she went ballistic and was asking her mum for a pencil sharpener.
Obviously her mum wouldn’t give her one so she banged her head against the wall repeatedly and eventually went at her mum and dad with some scissors and a large kitchen knife (which my husband managed to get off her)
I have a 2 year old and am very concerned that my step-daughter might pose a risk to her so have asked that she doesn’t come round here until they have sought and received psychological help for her whether that be psychotherapy, medication and maybe even a diagnosis.
I am very disturbed because she has never done anything quite so extreme before.

AIBU to put down this boundary?

PDA is a challenging profile. It's a form of autism.

It's important you all work together kindly and supportively to help her through this.

Read up all you cannon strategies for PDA, it's not commonly recognised and rarely diagnosed in children (long story).

If you get your approach just right and decelerate her anxieties she will cope fairly well and learn to use words or alternative actions to express her anxiety.

At the end of it all, you have a child who is enormous anxious, on the end of terrified. This is there all the behaviour stem from. Once you realise this your actions to address it will change.

In the mean time protect your tiny one by not leaving them unattended together. But don't whatever you do make your DSD feel as though she is in any way coming second or is in the way. This will feed into her anxiety.

Such a hard one to get right. You will need help but be prepared for a fight, not many child mental health support workers have this experience.

My advice is to join as many parent forums on PDA as you can and ask questions. Other parents have walked this path too.

Do you own or rent? In the short term you and DD need to live somewhere else, she must come first so either sell and buy 2x flats or rent a new place. Youll then be in a better state of mental health yourself to help dsd. I wouldnt allow DC to sleep under the same roof as someone who might attack them

Flip it. If years down the line you and your DP slit and your dc was having MH issues, how would you feel if his new partner banned your dc from their home? Probably a lot of what his dd is going through is down to poor parenting and bad handling of the situation when parents split. So the very least your DP can do is step up and handle the fall out and not leave it to his ex as you suggest.

It’s nothing to do with her being a girl and everything to do with her being a vulnerable family member.

With sensible supervision there is no need for the two year old to witness anything at all.

The op is understandably worried and the reply she sent back to the mother was very good. Hopefully the three (or 4) parents involved can sit down and come up with a plan in order to help get the support needed.

Kateandme
I'm sorry about your experience but unfortunately it doesn't change the fact that this child needs inpatient treatment.

You can and should not treat any mh patient who threatened to harm themselves and others in the community as a first step. Inpatient treatment to assess and stabilize her is necessary first.

I agree that children should not be sent hundreds of miles away for this care. It's yet another example of Tory austerity at its finest.

But this poor girl truly needs the help.

I think her parents need to decide between them how to adapt the visits to ensure what are the best times for either mom and dad to keep an eye on her and deal with any worrying behaviour.

At this age, children who move from one house to another for residence/contact start showing a clear preference for one.

The question here is what sort of contact arrangement would work better for her mental health? (And no, the fact you are more at home because of your toddler does NOT make you the best person to keep an eye on her, you have your hands already full with a toddler and the primary responsibility to ensure she is safe is with her parents.

PDA is a form of autism and often runs in families (and often from the Dad’s side). OP’s dd is very likely to also be diagnosed, so shoving out the dsd may not help in the end.

To the person that said sell her house not being funny why should her two year olds life have to change so dramatically you can't just turn everyone else's life upside down because of one child you have to consider the whole family
And also what's to say she would like that her dad is next door so your gunna move and get two flats and that might increase her anxiety or worry she is to blame for a split. This thread is pathetic and unrealistic and I'm sure if the OPs child did this in years to come she would have the understanding to think that mother is keeping her child safe.

Stressedout10 you can not say she must have inpatient.it might be able to be worked at home with proper support and care.inpatient is not the only option so saying she needs this is xtremely dangerous approach to make.especially with somone suffeing with PDA the anxiety that comes with that means there needs lots of thought into the right care.

Kateandme
We will have to agree to disagree on this point as we obviously have different opinions on the need and helpfulness of inpatient treatment. And how much of a risk someone who brandished weapons and threatened to harm themselves and others is

Yes you're being unreasonable but you know that now. I think saying she's a risk to your 2 year old is a bit of an excuse as well. Sounds like the child is in need of some proper help - what about family counselling as well?

She is not a risk to your 2yo FFS

People saying this kind of thing are assuming that the only risk would be from the DSD deliberately harming the 2-year-old.

Assessment of the risk should include the possibility that the toddler could accidentally be hurt if someone who is angry and upset has a knife in their hand and is lashing out.

I can understand your concerns....
My son was diagnosed with ASD last year age 29. (As a teenager we tried all sorts to get him help but no joy.) He has self harmed from time to time since he was 15.
Until last year I didnt know how early this started, & have only been aware when it's been bad enough to require treatment as he hid it well, plus hasn't always lived at home.
After his diagnosis last year his meltdowns became much worse. In our home there's me, my son & my DD10, who is his half sister.
Son is 6'3" & could be very scarey when shouting at me. I felt very intimidated, daughter was scared. A year ago son ran upstairs carrying a knife to self harm...but DDs room is at top of stairs...if she had come out of her door there could have been a terrible accident. Son had already been thinking of moving in with my parents . I told him he had to go. I know he wouldnt intentionally hurt DD, but felt I had to protect her, especially as her dad started saying she should live with him. My son didnt speak to me again for 6 months...till he self harmed on NYE & my cousin rang to tell me I needed to take him to A&E. My parents live very close, if I visited them he would ignore me.
I felt like the worst parent ever.
However....my son was an adult. So it is different in a way, to stopping your SSD coming round. I do understand you feel you need to protect your 2yr old from the psychological effects of DSDs behaviour. But to stop a troubled child visiting her dad would be very unhelpful to her. I really hope you can all work together to get her the help she needs. When my son was that age he started displaying difficult behaviours ....trying to control me & becoming violent. I was a single parent back then too, his dad took no notice of our kids after we split. It was hard work & extremely stressful coping with my son back then....your DSDs mum will need lots of support.
I hope your DSD feels better soon.

Everyone saying shes not a threat to the 2yo - how on earth can you possibly know that?

Yanbu op at all i would be scared for my child and myself too.

Its not your place to get her help her parents should be doing that. I really cannot understand why they haven't already.

If it was your child it would be entirely different because you would be getting them help. Imposing your own rules. Youd have the control. Some posters are very thick if they cant understand that.

Oh and if it was my 12yo and they had a 2yo step child id probably offer to stop overnights myself because id realise that being in a home with no other children was probably better for everyone in the short term.

Would i expect a step parent to deal with my v troubled child and get involved in therapy and whatever else? No. If they wanted to be involved i wouldn't have an issue but i wouldn't expect them to be.

Instead of banning her you need to read up on pda and support her.
My son has pda and is 16. He still occasionally has meltdowns in which he becomes violent and sometimes self harms. It is a cry for help, not something that he should be punished for. Usually his anxiety has got so high that he needs to release it, hence the meltdown.
We have reduced all triggers and this seems to have helped. He has full control of his life. The only things we don't allow is where he or others are placed in danger or if something is illegal.
He decides when to go to bed, what he eats, if he he eats, where he goes each day etc

Gosh I would put the 2yos safety first. And either move out with her or ask your dh to have time with his dd next door.

Obviously an unpopular opinion but the worse case is so unthinkable.

The OP has a duty of care to her DD

which includes protecting her from being frightened, from seeing someone threatening with a knife
let alone the risk of accidentally being hurt

The vast majority of those with MH don't threaten with knives, but this DSD did

I would ban any knife-welder from my house, regardless of how close a relative or friend they are

Thanks all.
I know a lot about PDA.
Me DsDs mum and DH make a great team and I’m very proud of that. We all work hard for it.

But knives are scary and I needed some objective views.

He decides when to go to bed, what he eats, if he he eats, where he goes each day etc

With respect that will not work for a 12yo who goes to school.

You said in your op that psychological help would be sort. I think it needs a professional to advise if it is safe for her to be around a young child. Many years ago when I was a young child my sister and I had to stay at an Aunt's house when my normally loving Grandmother had MH issues following my GF's death. She was staying with us and a professional advised that it was unsafe for us to be near her. When she recovered everthing returned to normal. I now only remember being excited about staying at the aunt's, had I witnessed what was happening at home it may have been very different. Please take professional advise.

You're appalling OP. Educate yourself on how to not stigmatise mental illness. She is not a risk to your 2yo FFS

How could you possibly know this? Mental illness manifests itself in all different ways. It's happened before.
She came at her mum and dad with a knife and scissors, that is dangerous. I'm not sure why people don't want to admit that.

OP your dsd needs help, but I don't think yabu to not want your 2 year old to either see any of these incidents or worry about something happening to her.

I can't believe some of the responses here because you are concerned for your child's safety.
I can honestly say if this was one of my children and their step mother was concerned about them being around their siblings, I would completely understand.

Yabvvvu. I get it is stressful my DD is similar, throw hormones on top and she is terrified of life, I fear self harm next.
It is not a matter of getting help to overcome it, it is a disorder, one you need to learn to manage.
Have a routine in place what time tech is off etc, what is expected of her, is very helpful
TBH if DP and I broke up, if he had another baby and this was the situation, I would be heartbroken for DD.

We initially hid the knives in our house, but then our son would break pint glasses and use the glass to threaten or self harm with.
We have 3 children so the younger two (14 and 6) would witness his meltdowns.
They now know to go to their rooms if our eldest has a meltdown. Usually after a meltdown our son will be exhausted and be crying. They used to be daily but now probably once or twice a month. Everyday is still a struggle and I feel like we walk on eggshells most of the time.
Has something happened at school to upset your stepdaughter?
Usually it's social circles that causes anxiety in our son.
Camhs suggested pda to us, but it took a year to see anyone again about a diagnosis.
We referred our son to the Early Help Hub (which is part of the council) initially as we needed immediate help due to his self harming.