How would your child react to this (trigger warning-suicide)

[user27495824]

If your 11/12 year old's best friend seriously attempted suicide (but survived) how would you expect your child to cope and how would you manage it? I realise this might be hard to answer without the experience. If they are a different age please say.

Oh I'd be very worried. I have two DD's aged 14 and 11. The older one is very sensitive but also very sensitive to her friend's feelings...I think she'd cope well to be honest. But the younger one is very "young" for 11.

It's possibly because we live in rural Australia...but she's so immature compared to English 11 year olds I think that her main reaction would be confusion.

Suicide isn't on her radar....she knows what it is but would not imagine someone she knows doing it.

I'd consider counselling to be honest. Or at least I'd try to find some books/films aimed at helping her to process.

This was the age my ds was when he came home one day and found his sister semi-conscious on the patio after a suicide attempt.

He did all the right things: rang the ambulance, helped her to a safe place, kept her warm- but I was told afterwards that he cried the whole time. He was a year or two older at her second attempt. We tried to get him counselling but he didn't really engage with the counsellor.

He said very little at the time. But eventually confessed several years later (he'd have been about 15) that he had been having such bad flashbacks that he couldn't concentrate at school and that he had finally talked to his best friend about it. His best friend had given some very good advice and he felt he would be ok now. I was a little sad that he had not felt able to talk to me, but also knew that I wasn't the important thing here: the important thing was that somebody had been able to help.

Ds is now a young adult and we are on very good terms, but one thing I think we did notice was that he lost faith in adults to some extent and developed quite a cynical attitude. He was always polite, but there was an underlying sense that he didn't really expect us to have the answers any more.

So I wouldn't be surprised if you found some anger there, directed either against the friend or yourself.