To refer myself to SS?

[LifeSucksBigTime]

I am honestly at breaking point with my 12 year old. I have raised another child who is now an adult, and is the sweetest, kindest girl you could meet. My youngest is the polar opposite, and honestly she makes my life a misery.

This could be a very long thread if I went into the whole, complicated story. But the bottom line is that I’m not coping anymore, mentally. She’s getting worse and worse with age (and she’s never been easy, from the word go).

I really need some help. I don’t know who to talk to, whether I should call SS, or the GP, or her school? I do love her but she doesn’t make it easy, she really is a spectacularly unpleasant individual.

Just re-read your posts (there are a lot of posts on here from mums of DC with unsupported SEN :() to check I had the right poster.

I think your DD is year 8 or 9 right? In which case, at the very least, information transfer in this school is very poor. "No idea she had SEN"?! These things are on the database.

I mean, I've been in a new teaching job for just over two weeks. I know who's got SEN! And it is not a pastoral role to state you think DC are overdiagnosed etc, honestly, teachers are not qualified to say that kind of thing and it's not professional. It also shows leadership is weak further up the school if form tutors think they can say things like that without comeback.

I think a school change could be a good idea once you've had a chance to get on top of the immediate issues.

I wanted to add also that my DD was very unpleasant to be around when her needs weren't met properly/we didn't have a diagnosis. She's much better now we know what we're dealing with. Miserable, angry, overwhelmed, violent even, DC are hard to be around.

Also if she does have a PDA profile, the PDA Society reckon only about 30% of DC with that profile are in school. Believe it or not, you and she are doing well.

Get the adhd diagnosis asap. We went private and started medication within he month. Meds could make a big difference in being able to manage her behaviour

I have ADHD and she sounds so like me as a child it’s quite jarring for me to read.

I didn’t realise I had ADHD until I was an adult so my parents just thought I was an arsehole and treated me accordingly. They’d never even have considered anything other than me being an angry, lazy teen. I’m so glad that you’re at least acknowledging that she is ND. Please please please try to remember that the way she is acting is not her fault. I know people will probably think she has an element of control over her behaviour but honestly, even as an adult I don’t have as much control as I should have.

I think that if you are able to support her through an ADHD diagnosis and get to a point where is is on the correct medication (this is a pain though if I’m honest) then both your lives will change massively.

I am so sorry you’re going through this and your daughter too. My heart hurts for her.

I self referred to social services for very similar issues with my son. They sent the early help team , it was the best decision I ever made. They have supported us so well.

Do lots of reading on adhders. They can be very self centred. They are also usually 5 years behind emotional maturity. So I find it help to picture that I'm dealing with a 7 year old not a 12 year old.

Dont bother explaining how you feel. They lose interest after 1st sentence. One of my dc described it as white noise in their brain.

Apply for echp yourself. Record all the evidence of isolation in diary, all school problems etc. Write down all the issues at home.
Look at sen sos, sen jungle, ipsea. Push and push and be loud about it. You will need to advocate loudly for your dc.

@Marvellousmadness you are SO WRONG. What do you actually get from coming into a thread like this and spouting such shite?!

ADHD is a brain disorder!

You say the father is a psychopath? It could be as simple as this. Disorders like these can definitely run in the family.

My dhs ex wife is a narcissist. Textbook. Uses dc as weapons, does terrible things then acts like dh is the one abusing her when he asks what's going on. I could go on for pages.

I have 3 sc. DSS12 and DSS9 are good kids. They have their moments like all dc do, but they are basically nice children.

DSD14 is exactly like her mother. Sneaky, cold, conniving, laughs at hurt people. A really nasty individual. They've all been raised the same.

Sometimes if the tree is rotten, so is the apple. I can't imagine how hard it must be parenting someone like this. In your situation, I would go to SS.

I wish you luck.

Hi @LifeSucksBigTime

I am so sorry to hear you have been having such a difficult time. And that your DD's form tutor is so unsupportive to the point of being unprofessional. But at last you are getting some recognition from the HoY. It's good to identify the people who will be helpful as well as the people - like the form tutor - who aren't.

Agree with a pp that one of the ways you can tell a child with an ASC is not having their needs met is that they become difficult and hard to like.

With all that's going on, I still think a self referral to SS could bring benefits. SS might put a bit of pressure on the school, and identify some other support for you and for DD. So that you don't have to carry so much of this alone.

Why was the SENCO ringing/meeting you if she had no idea your dd had SEN?

I do think that, because of her father’s diagnosis, it would be wise to see a psychiatrist and investigate the potential for conduct disorder.

is there any support you can access for your eldest? I understand you have a lot on your plate with the youngest, but it seems like your eldest is crying out for help and she desperately needs attention. She’s got a lot going on with school and she’s also facing losing her father. Saying she wants to die is hugely concerning, and I’d be worried she intends to harm herself.

To add, it’s important that if conduct disorder is present, it is diagnosed ASAP and a treatment plan is decided to hopefully give her the best chance of a successful life going into adulthood. It’s a serious diagnosis, and can be a precursor to a diagnosis of ASPD as an adult, which is why early intervention is crucial.

if it’s not, then you’ve lost nothing, but if it is then you at least get a full picture of what you’re dealing with, and can work on a plan with doctors experienced in treating it.

@fUNNYfACE36 the SENCO didn’t ring me. I arranged a meeting with her. It was the HOY and her form tutor who both rang me and neither had any idea she had SEN.

Social services won’t help you unless child is suffering emotional physical or psychological neglect
And if they decide she is and think that it’s you that is causing it they will make your life hell trust me
Contact the school and the GP instead

Social services won’t help you unless child is suffering emotional physical or psychological neglect

I'm sorry you had such a bad experience but that's not true everywhere. SS are supposed help families and children who have complex needs not just neglect or abuse. Whether this works out well or badly varies in different areas and since the school have not been brilliant so far, SS could be a good shout.

In my experience to get any help at all you have to contact everyone who might help and see who comes up!

My friend asked for similar help they said not within their Remit - really all social services will do is signpost
they are overwhelmed and over stretched with actual safeguarding cases to worry about a parent who is struggling in the manner OP described
maybe depends on which borough / part of the uk ..I live in London social services here will only take on cases which present a potential safeguarding issue
( I work with adolescent drug and alcohol substance misuse so am in constant contact with SS)

Yikes I just read your other posts I really don’t think she should be living with you the way you are talking about your daughter is disgusting to be honest I want to be supportive but as her mother I would not expect that kind of language about your own child
maybe you should ask her dad to take her or social services to take her into foster care before you lose it with her and she gets hurt
maybe she can see how much you hate her which is why she is behaving this way ? Just a thought
your both bouncing off each other’s negative feelings toward each other
can she spend some time with her elder sister ? Or grandparents
she is going through puberty and might be going through stuff - she’s not a monster she’s a human being
I take back what I said - I think you should contact social services and I think you should mention everything you have said on here to them .

I'm sorry the teachers at her school have been so unhelpful. It's appalling that they didn't even know your DD has additional needs. Do they know about her early trauma? Their approach is essentially to punish her for behaviour that is in all likelihood outside her control.

Many years ago, someone I know had similar issues with a school that tried to punish her son for what they deemed poor behaviour. They kept saying that her son was making the wrong choices, etc. After months of trying to explain that he wasn't being "naughty" (he too had early trauma and autism) and getting nowhere, she decided to show them in a different way. At a meeting with the school, she suddenly dropped a heavy book on the table. Everyone around the table gave an involuntary jump at the loud sound. She said, "Why did you choose to behave that way?" It made them understand just how instinctive her son's responses to certain input were. While it didn't change everything, at least it made the teachers slightly more aware of his needs and caused them to modify their approach to interacting with him.

The school your DD attends sounds like a poor fit for her. Is there an option of moving schools?

So your dd is being failed at every turn then? Why on earth were her head of year and form tutor not aware of her autism?! Whoever made the comment about it being over diagnosed is absolutely despicable and should not be working with children, please report him.

I don’t know if this will help you but I’m also autistic with PDA, she sounds a hell of a lot like me when I was a teen, although a tad more extreme, I’m now an adult and nothing like that and haven’t been since I was around 16. Please understand that while your dd is causing you alot of upset she doesn’t really have control over that, the ways she’s acting isn’t her it’s her autism and trauma and she needs more support that you realise.

Well what a week. I made the decision last weekend that dd would not be returning to school until they got their act together and made all staff who deal with her aware of her SEN, and put some strategies in place to support her rather than kick her out of virtually every lesson and stick her in isolation.

So she ended up being off school all week. It wasn’t ideal because I had to work, there was no way I could get out of it, and I also caught DD’s lurgy and felt like absolute dog shite, alongside battling with the school to get some support in place. Dd1 was also having a meltdown and refused to go to college all week. By Friday I was even further towards the end of my tether. But as I hadn’t got to spend much time with dd2 I took her shopping in town, took her out for lunch, bought her clothes and make up, then took her and her friend up to the woods on their ponies for the evening so they could have a long ride. Did my best to make it a nice day for her despite feeling like death.

I’d also hardly slept all week as I was coughing so much, so when I got back from doing horse stuff all morning yesterday lunchtime, I had a nap. When I woke up, dd2 had gone and sent me a message to say she was out with friends. She then asked if she could have a sleepover with one of her friends, a girl she knows from primary.

I was instantly on red alert. She’s been video calling a ‘friend’ lately, who is a boy, she said he was from her school and in her year. But I was suspicious as he had a broken voice and I know that’s not very usual for 12 year olds, so had been asking lots of questions. When this sleepover request came from her, I just knew.

I asked her to send a photo of her with the girl she asked to have a sleepover with, so that I knew that’s who she was with. She refused and then ignored my messages from then on. I checked with this girl’s mum to make double sure she wasn’t with her, which she wasn’t, at which point I called the police straightaway. It was my worst nightmare, I haven’t felt panic like it since she was kidnapped as a baby.

To cut a long story short, she had run away and was planning to stay with her ‘boyfriend’ for the night, who she’d met on Snapchat. Thank god she started replying to my ex’s messages (not her dad but father figure), as I don’t know how I’d ever have got her back. The police eventually picked her up at a train station over an hour away from where we lived. This boy’s mum was supposed to collect her but didn’t show up. She’d been there for hours which is lucky as the police took their time getting there. At the same time that the police arrived, the boy’s supposed cousin turned up with his dad to collect her. Thank fuck the police got there before they did.

I had to drive to a police station an hour away to get her, and honestly I don’t know how I drove there and home again. I was just broken by that point. I’d taken her phone away from her. We ended up having a physical wrestle today because she had found her old broken phone and got it charged up (can’t see much on the screen but still vaguely functional). So she’d still been messaging this boy/man, and probably deleted the most incriminating stuff from her phone already. She refused to give me that phone, or let me know the passcode to get into her phone. She also tried to bolt out of the house so I couldn’t get the phone from her so I had to lock her in, at which point I called the police and SS.

SS came over and after some hours managed to convince her to let me look at her phone. This ‘boy’ does appear to be older than he says, lots of sexual stuff which was planned for last night, they’d been planning the whole thing for days. SS suggested it could be county lines related. It’s all terrifying.

That’s a very brief version of events, there’s a lot more detail and emotion involved. She’s gone to stay at my mum’s for the night, didn’t want to speak to me when I phoned to say goodnight. She really seems to hate me, even more than usual.

Everything is even more of a mess. And I didn’t think that was possible. She’s still not back at school, was supposed to be going back tomorrow but my mum lives quite far away so she won’t be. She hates me, and I’m so so scared of her running away again, and I’ve a feeling she will.

There's also a parent support group on FB, I think it's called the B team, which is a term from the book. There's also parent resources on his website. It's not an official group, from Ross Greene or anything, it's parents supporting parents.

In regards to anger, when we talk about emotions are always valid, always ok, you feel how you feel, what's not ok is taking those emotions out on others, yelling, hurting others physically or mentally. We need to work together to express things without hurting others or ourselves, right now at this moment maybe you can't control that but we practice techniques to help us do better. It's a long process. That's the basis I work from with my Autistic DCs. I'm not suggesting that will work with your DD, this is the way I do it with DCs, the way their psychologists do talk about emotions and impulse. The impulse can be uncontrollable in the moment, the work is towards getting them to a place where they can with support see that moment approaching and head it off. They said to me at the start it's not always possible for some children, but we work from the premise they can do better and overtime they are. You could try zones if regulation, but the issue would be getting her to engage. Ross Greene's approach is probably much more doable where you are now.

It sounds like there's multiple things, perhaps a genetic factor with her father, trauma from when he took her, potentially PTSD along with the Autism, your both dealing with a lot. Something to consider if there may be anxiety at play too. My Autistic DD also has anxiety and panic attacks, her anxiety mostly presents as anger, screaming, hitting out, I'm not sure I would have realised there was anxiety at play if I didn't have anxiety myself and experienced anger from it.

Sorry OP, should have read more before posting. I have no idea how you respond to that as a parent. Could she stay with your mum a few days? Physical distance could help, maybe. I'd be thinking about cancelling her phone contract and banning social media to keep her safe, but I don't know if that would be helpful or not. Did the police do anything about this Father and cousin who turned up to pick her up? Does her school have a counsellor you could get advice from?

@LifeSucksBigTime i just read through all of your posts I just want to give you the biggest hug you sound like such a lovely mum, doing your best in such awful circumstances.

Unfortunately scumbags involved in county lines drug pushing do look for vulnerable girls like your dd. I think you've hit crisis point and while it sounds awful I hope this is the trigger for some much needed services to kick in for your family. It really shouldn't get to this point for that to happen but sadly this is the world we live in.

big big hugs you are amazing and well done for trusting your instincts and getting her out of that very dangerous situation. As much as you can look after yourself xxx