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

[daddywoe]

We have 3 children and our middle one is autistic and has ADHD.
Dh is stressed and struggling with her and today he told me he doesn’t love her.
He has always been such a hands on dad and we’ve always said how we need to be a team and get through the tough times together but he doesn’t care anymore, she tells him she hates him and doesn’t want to talk to him and he just said fine, I’m done with her.
I can see that he means it, he doesn’t care anymore and I think he’s ready to give up and walk away.
I feel helpless, I need him because I’m struggling too.

I am out! Bye. If I so much as posted on social media ‘venting’ that I wanted to chuck someone off a bridge I’d be remanded awaiting sentencing but it’s ok for a man to vent about chucking a child off a bridge because he can’t cope! Yeah ok.

In contrast to the majority view OP, I think your DH has been brave to be so incredibly honest about how he is feeling right now and I hope this means that the core of your relationship is strong. I am sure he doesn’t want to feel
like that and his honesty is a desperate cry for help. You cannot help him on your own and must not expect yourself to.
I would contact your local Parent Carer SEND group and see what info and signposting they have to counselling etc. Also SENDIAS services.
Do you get any Short Breaks for your daughter?
May be worth asking SENDIAS about what is available locally and how to access.
I hope you can find some support for DH and also for you.

Do you think he would consider therapy? I don't think it's automatically the end of your relationship/his role as her dad, but obviously he has reached a very low point and he can't be around her while he's got absolutely no energy to give.

Does he recognise his feelings and actions need to change?

No. I don't believe he was using a "tactic". He was reacting! That's how the OP frames it so that's what I'm going on.
Find me any advice anywhere that suggests snapping back at an autistic child in meltdown is a tactic?

Thank you. Mine are now 25 and 23. One has finished an OU degree and is running her own business, the other is working towards his OU degree and will follow in her footsteps in a different way. I gave up on school and educated them myself, and worked round them and like you decided to live on planet autism, which is actually quite a nice place. Very logical, very educational (especially when they wanted to learn Latin so we all sat the IGCSE together. They both got a better grade than I did.) Now they go out and visit planet neurotypical more and more because they can come home to planet autism.

Which makes me wonder, what's happening at school for that poor little lass and her equally stretched family. Oops, I should have suggested asking the school how she's settled...

Why would you say that when the child is constantly screaming that she hates him ? To put this into context he is likely venting to his partner and telling his DD he feels the same way when she says these things because he’s at the end of his tether and nothing he says or does makes any difference. What do you think would be a better alternative - him silently packing his bags and leaving, as many would ? Or perhaps being honest about the way he feels and warning OP that he can no longer cope, so that together they can get some outside help and find a different way to cope. Sometimes hitting rock bottom is the only way back up.

Time to leave. You would be damaging her by staying with a man who doesn't live her. She will pick up on it and always remember it.

Because thats how distressed and dysregulated autistic children often respond! Their externalitied distress ("anger") is a desperate cry to be understood!!

The father needs to learn about his dd and himself. You can't escape the fact that he's the adult.

He needs to seek help for how he is feeling. If he won't do that he needs to leave.

That is brilliant.
Hopefully our stories will support @daddywoe and others.

I mean, that is the randomness of children, you don't get a trailer before you decide pm whether watch the film.

No, they wouldn’t.

Hopefully, they would access help for all of the family. Busting up the home certainly won’t help the other two children, and OP would have to cope with way less financial input, with two homes to cost in. and would be dealing with 3 children on her own a lot of the time. 🤷‍♀️

SS are all about box ticking, arse covering (in case things go tits up). They are not about putting support in for children with complex needs. I have 2 DC with ASD and complex needs. We just get family assessment after assessment which causes nothing but anxiety and stress. We haven't had an ounce of help over the year. absolutely nothing but blame and judgement (but no support in terms of getting extra respite thera, counselling....).

There is a lot of emotional advice on this thread. You need to look at any practical mitigation that you have available.

You cannot force him to love her again but you can give him time and hope that things change for the better. Leaving him seems silly if he has good relationships with the other children. Being a single parent will only make things harder for you.

The only option that makes any sense if that he picks up more of the slack with the other children and you spend more time with the middle child. A break from her abuse and anger might change how he feels.

What your dh needs to do is to learn to translate your dd's language. When she says "I hate you" what she is really saying is "I am deeply unhappy and I need some help". ds2 (who also has an ASC) uttered similar comments to your dd at age nine or so and it really did help when we started depersonalising the comments & modelling more appropriate language for him to use when he was upset. It took a while but I think we have a pretty good relationship these days (he is now a young adult).

It doesn’t sound as though she’s responding to anything her dad is saying or doing, so l’m not sure why you would think that. OP says DD also has ODD. This is often directed at the same person, which sounds very much to be what’s happening here, given that her dad spending one hour with DD after work is so challenging. He may well be the focus. The situation will be further complicated by the fact that if DD is masking all day at school, she will be stressed and tired from the effort of her coping mechanism, making an outburst more likely because she’s in her own safe space at home.

l think the overall situation is complex and the family are in desperate need of outside help, Now OP knows his true feelings l can only hope she can persuade him to stay and try to access the help they need before the family breaks up and things become even more difficult.

I don’t have a lot of time, as unfortunately Monday is one of my working days.

I don’t like using the word hysteria but unfortunately I do think there can be a lot of it and righteous anger when one admits having feelings that are quite dark, shall we say. I don’t really want to open up too much but I had some very difficult feelings about DS.

Sometimes feelings and thoughts jump into your head unwanted and uninvited. I do remember one occasion I was struggling to get DS in the car and it was by a busy road and unbidden I thought about throwing him into it.

Had I left (At Once!) I would have left a broken family behind me. Staying is the brave option here. A feeling is not an action and a thought is not a doing. He is not actually saying he will throw her off a bridge. To be horribly blunt about it if he was an actual danger to her there would be easier ways of harming her than this.

I don’t have advice about PDA or autism. I just know I had the same years ago - you need to leave (no) report yourself to social services (do people actually know what they do) leave, you are a danger (no I’m not) and so on.

Violent, controlling men do sometimes do awful things. Kind, loving people do think awful things. There’s a huge grey space between the two.

I'm not sure what you are disagreeing with in my post?

I'm saying her behaviours are consistent with a highly dysregulated ND child.

Do you have children? As you seem so blase about giving up on them unless perfect!

I don't think ODD is definitely outdated in all children, but I do agree that PDA is definitely worth exploring for this DD.

I really feel for her and for you OP. This is not a child who is regulated or easy to help regulate.

I do wonder if the school setting is wrong given the coke bottle effect you describe.

My friends got their child (after a lengthy legal battle) into a specialist independent school with residential an option and it's been life changing for the whole family.

Your poor daughter. The fact he's not wanting to deal with his frustrations and feelings and instead just wants to remove her from the situation isn't a good sign. Saying the things he is saying to a 7 year old is unacceptable and he should be remorseful about that at the very least.

I hear what you’re saying and l can only speak from experience - and that isn’t mine. I worked in the field of disability support and although l found professional provision for spectrum disabilities to be patchy, to put it mildly, l always found SS to be as helpful as they could be within the confines of their resources. But accessing outside help for families trying to cope in these situations is a notoriously difficult and lengthy process, and families can be pushed to breaking point. l’m so sorry that this has been your experience. My comment was given in the context of a poster suggesting DP would be removed from his children as a result of his comment, which would not be the case in circumstances such as these.

your husband is one hell of a selfish prick. What normal person fantasies about throwing their child off a bridge? Get him gone! Change the locks before he ends up carrying out with his fantasy and murdering your daughter! Honestly what is wrong with you, why arent you protecting her?

You talk out of your arse with both of your points.

Nobody is getting remanded pending sentencing for that.

How do your other kids feel about her? How do you feel about her?

It’s totally normal to go through phases where you hate a high needs child. What isn’t right or normal is telling that child and it does seem like a bit of deliberatel weaponised incompetance to ensure he doesn’t get to deal with the difficult child.

In any case if he’s going to behave like this you need to get really firm with him. If you need to deal with middle child all the time because he’s ‘done’ then he must pick up ALL the day to day routine of housework and childcare for the other kids. Cooking too. He can’t turn you into a full time carer without consequences.