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.

@EmeraldShamrock000 i often wonder this myself, although i am not the poster you’re replying to.

I don’t know that there is a solution. Obviously you can’t just ‘hand a child back’ (I mean, you can but not without serious repercussions!) You could possibly live in separate homes if finances allowed this but it’s only something I think we’d (royal ‘we!’) would consider in really extreme circumstances; as in a direct threat to life or possibility of serious injury.

I just don’t know. I do think it’s absolutely miserable for the NT siblings of a ND child in some cases, though. It isn’t just NT/ND - I remember reading an interview with Nikki Grahame before she passed away in which she acknowledged the terrible impact her illness had on her own sister and on their relationship as a result.

It's a risk that you take when having a DC, sadly a healthy DC can suffer a head injury or cancer, as a family you can only do your best, it's easier with a supportive partner, he needs to learn boundaries and a do parenting course on sensory triggers.
When the other parent is fighting against the DC, fueling the triggers, it is a lost cause.
She's still very young.
She will settle down as BOTH parents roll into a routine.
It's easy as an outsider to say, they wouldn't tolerate it. There is no alternative.
You would have to hate your DC to put them in state care.
The podcast patient 11, a young lady who was placed in NHS state care for autism. Horrendous story.

And ruining the other DC lives but keeping one at home causing hell is ok though? As long as you love the one with issues then sod the rest? Is that what you are suggesting?

No one can make you keep a child. Hell I know someone who refused to take her 4,,th home from the hospital as it was the wrong.sex They couldn't force her to

No I don't.

This sounds like a man who is completely at the end of his rope. If he's otherwise a good dad, I would honestly be more worried he was going to throw himself off a bridge than your daughter.

It sounds exhausting and upsetting just reading about it, I can't imagine what it must be like living it. And while I get that he's "away" from it in a way you aren't, it's not right to assume that work doesn't come with it's own stresses - while she is at school you're at home. They are different, and honestly, if I was coming home from a shitty day at work to being screamed at how much I was hated by my child I would want to die.

what do you suggest? The husband version of throwing them off a bridge?

ND kids don't destroy families. It's the lack of support for families like that.

I’m so sorry OP. How horrific!
Honestly if he is reaching this point I would be telling him he needed urgent mental health intervention before he was alone with the children.

This has been discussed over and over and over again upthread by professionals in the field. He doesn’t need urgent mental health intervention because he is not a danger to the child. He hasn’t expressed this opinion from rage but from frustration and exhaustion. In the absence of any other signs that he is a risk he wouldn’t be removed from the home just for this comment.

Spot on.

Edited because I was replying to a now (thankfilly deleted ) post. But I'll leave my thoughts here

Why are you so determined to vilify autistic children? Attitudes like yours cause much greater damage to struggling families than any diagnosis.
Coping with complex and severe disability in all its forms impacts families! Families are "destroyed" not just by autism FFS.

But sticking to this specific thread, the OP describes how her dd holds it together at school but has meltdowns at home after school. So, straight away, despite OP saying the SEN support in school is good, there is concrete evidence that it is not meeting her dd's needs because the child is dysregulated to the point of meltdown as soon as she leaves school! That's why we're saying discipline won't solve the meltdowns at home!
Getting the education that her dd needs would be the first and most important type of support that would have a massive impact on the family.
But the reality is that because she's experienced the wrong approach for so long, trauma is being added to primary neurological disabilities. And there is virtually no specialist educational provision for children like this.
I have decades of SEND experience as both a professional and a parent. I am fully aware that some disabled children have needs so complex that living for some or all their time out of the home is the only way to meet their needs and in some instances keep family members safe.

But there is so much in the OP's posts that indicates that the crisis has occurred because the child's needs are not being met first and foremost at school.

Families and the SEN teams in LAs need much greater knowledge and understanding of the different approaches that are needed for a child like OP's dd. Complex needs but cognitively able. Especially when possible PDA rather than typical ASD.

Parents get a diagnosis (asd, adhd etc rarely pda) and then very little support afterwards. Parents spend hours seeking information and understanding alone on the Internet.

My experience of CAMHs is either they are not equipped to work effectively with most ND children who get referred to them. And in patient facilities and even worse.

Social care are geared up for safeguarding or more 'traditional ' types of disabilities. Getting funding for holiday or afterschool support for cognitively able ND children is almost impossible.

So there should be avenues of support for the OP's family thst really could make a difference, but instead they are left to reach crisis alone.

Agree with you here. I had far worse thoughts when in the depths of PND. Unfortunately there just isn't enough support for parents of children with special needs etc. I don't think it's his fault he's not coping, and saying/thinking he hates her is potentially easier than saying he loves her and feels devastated that he can't help her or cope with what she needs from him.

1. Where In my post did I mention Autism specifically?
2. I didn’t vilify it, I actually said it’s not the child’s fault, but that it’s also not the parents fault for reaching breaking point because it, which you just admitted yourself impacts families to breaking point.

The rest of your post I didn’t bother to read because it’s irrelevant to me now as you read mine, added 2 + 2 and got 5

Honestly, so fed up with posters on here who deliberately misunderstand the point to suit their own narrative. It’s tedious.

I’m not suggesting anyone would or should ‘remove’ him from the home.

but I disagree that he doesn’t need mental health support and that his state of mind poses no potential risk.

Regardless of how he expressed this, that he has fanaticised about throwing his child off a bridge IS in fact worrying.

And if this were my family I would not feel comfortable about him being alone with the child until he was accessing support.

My own professional opinion, as well as my personal view.

What are they supposed to do with the ND child then? Lock them up? Give them away? What is your genius solution?

I didn't say I had a solution but it seems very wrong to me that 3 kids for example should suffer for the sake of one. Why does that one take priority over all the rest?

And not all parents are able or willing to look after a kid with extra needs remember . Or for example if one kud was so disabled that parent couldn't work another 3 would lose their home as can't pay mortgage. Good chance of the father buggering off also.

But you don't seem to be offering any solutions. Its so easy to criticize ND kids as being burdens to the family, but none of you offer anything of value. You just hurt their parents feelings, and the feelings of people who grew up ND. Apparently ND kids need to be isolated and shouldn't have loving families.

I'm not criticizing the kids themselves. I'm criticizing the society who don't help and expect parents t( and even more so siblings) o lump it with no alternatives. My best friend grew up with a disabled sibling. Her and her other siblings had their whole lives basically out on hold as kids due to this and everything revolved around the disabled kid.

Strangely enough all the kids moved out by 18 and I don't think any of them haf any contact with their mother or the siblings since. They are all in their 50s now. In fact none of them had any kids themselves in case they ended up the same. So obviously has a detrimental effect on the other kids ( that parents profess to liove but obviously to a lesser extent)than the one with a disability

You need to separate sorry. Hearing this from her Dad will damage her emotionally

I actually agree when @RubySquid
there was a thread a while back from a mother whose ND elder child was physically harming the younger one who was barely 3 years old - had broken their arm deliberately, put them in hospital etc….the behaviour was deliberate malicious and violent.
why should other children suffer because of the behaviour of 1. My response then was the child needed to leave the home. I’m not saying old school asylums are the answer at all but there should be some acceptance that not all children can or should be continued to be raised in the family unit and need 24/7 professional care

I do wish that there was more respite care for families in this sort of situation and even longer term placements for those whose needs can't, after trying everything, be managed in a family home without the other members being significantly harmed.

I'd find living with someone that told me that they hated me on a daily basis absolutely soul destroying. In this case I'd advise him to see his GP, he might cope better if he's on a lot of antidepressants but it's still a horrible situation to live with.

I was surprised MN deleted the post by @Jtfrtj

I read it before it was removed and it really didn’t say anything that broke talk guidelines. It was passionate certainly.

Some things are uncomfortable to read but it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be written.

Thank you.

I’m suprised it was removed too. I never once blamed ND children directly for the breakdown of families, I said it wasn’t their fault. I just pointed out that marriages have indeed broken up from the stress and the parents cannot be blamed for reaching breaking point.

But just like the mainstream media, Mumsnet also silences certain statements, regardless of whether there’s truth to them or not.

Unfortunately that professional care is thin on the ground for exactly the reasons you raise. There are some children whose behaviour makes it difficult, and in many cases impossible for a suitable placement to be found. Over the years I’ve been involved with families whose children’s behaviour has worsened over time and they have become bigger and stronger than their parents. Scenarios where families have to have safe rooms and barricade themselves into these rooms to escape violent meltdowns are not uncommon.

Nope. Try again. Read the thread. In this scenario the parents are the ones emotionally damaged because in the main they are left to get on with it. As the child grows up the abuse turns to the physical.