How to help DS9 to help himself - very poor self-esteem plus anxiety, telling me he wants to kill himself

[ZigZagInToTheBeach]

DS9 has always been a little bit of a worrier and down on himself, but this has escalated considerably over the last year. I could do with some help/suggestions of what to say to him when he appears to be spiraling into more and more worry and upset.
For most of the time he is a very happy little boy but he worries about all sorts and blames himself considerably for the smallest of mistakes. He has started telling me regularly that he hates himself and this week he has told me that he wants to commit suicide. I have gently pushed him and questioned him on this and am very confident that he is not actually suicidal but obviously, this is still very upsetting for me to hear and is coming from his current poor mental health.
There are many things that he worries about. Examples include, a lost poem that he wrote, how to tell his teacher that he has sweets to give out on his birthday, not being able to write in cursive, accidentally tearing his magazine cover, falling over and hurting his face, not knowing his times tables. He blames himself for mistakes he has made and this is when he says that he hates himself.
So far, I tend to say something along the lines of "We all make mistakes and that is how we learn, we all make mistakes throughout our lives and even in adulthood, xy famous person he's heard of has made mistakes, our brains learn the most when we make a mistake, I sometimes feel frustrated when I make a mistake and then I know what to do differently next time".
I have also suggested ways to help him, eg. practising his times tables, practising writing in cursive, positive affirmations, etc but this is where I need help as he refuses to help himself. I try to encourage positive affirmations, such as "I am learning" or "I am a good person" but he just sits there saying "I hate myself" over and over. What do I say when he says this?! I work hard to validate his emotions too but where do I go after that? After the "I know it's hard to feel so upset with yourself".
When I suggest that we make time to practise times tables or cursive writing he gets even more upset as he doesn't want to do that. He wants the problems to magically disappear.
Help!

Perfectionism can be a symptom of anxiety. Maybe try and tease out if there's anything worrying him. He does sound as if he's really struggling with some big feelings.

This sounds very much like one of mine. It's really hard to see them like that.

No big advice now I'm mainly placemarking and sending empathy.

I'm sure there are loads of lovely times with him too.

@moofolk it's strangely reassuring to hear that I'm not alone and yes, there is masses of time where he's a very happy little boy 😁 His low points seem SO low though 😢

Yep. Mine wails over the slightest thing and really takes everything to heart.

If he does the slightest thing wrong (which is often, because he's a ten year old boy) he panics, says 'sorry sorry sorry' repeatedly and really anxiously. It then comes across as super aggressive and winds me up which doesn't help.

I really feel for him and don't know what to do. He's really clumsy too, and both of his brothers are effortlessly charming and physically adept ...

I try just sitting with him and doing something he likes. He finds decision making really hard though, so I can't ask him if he wants to do that / what he wants to do as it's too much pressure.

Have you read "How to Talk so Kids will Listen and Listen so Kids Will Talk"? I think a lot of the strategies in there could be helpful.

OP and @moofolk

DS1 has autism and ADHD. He's 8. One of the criteria for diagnosis was inability to deal with mistakes and perfectionism. I also teach lots of autistic children, one of whom says 'sorry' all the time and has to check he's not in trouble if you ask him to do something.

Anxiety isn't a condition in itself, it's a symptom of an underlying unmet need/difficulty. I would at this stage be asking his teachers if this merits further investigation/if they show signs of stress/anxiety in school.

DS has ADHD and had clinical anxiety as an add on diagnosis.

He had a year of therapy which was CBT along with lots of sensory activity. He no longer shows as having anxiety, although he can have spikes and he has techniques for managing these.

We found outside help invaluable despite actually being a child therapist myself. I think kids respond really well to having a neutral third party to do this work with rather than parents.
Although obviously we worked with the therapist as asked.

I really think you need to speak to your gp to get referred for cbt. If you have health insurance and can afford private go that route - if not the wait is long for cahms so best to go on the waitlist now. I have twins, one was so showed signs of anxiety at 8/9 and at that age the other showed perfectionism. The child with anxiety had therapy successful and at 14 is a happy child. The child with perfectionism development anxiety when puberty started - it’s much much harder to deal with an anxious teen and they are more likely to push back on therapy. It’s really affected all our lives and if you read posts from parents with anxious teens you will see how tricky it is. Please get him therapy so a professional can give him the right tools he needs for life.

Check out Dr. Eli Lebowitz and the SPACE programme. There aren’t a huge amount of resources on it (I think they may have published a parents book since ) but even reading through the research papers might help. It’s focus is in showing parents how to increase support for kids with anxiety and reduce accommodations (which we instinctively do but they actually make it worse long term).

Getting outside help was key for us. Child services waiting lists, both funded and private have long, and sometimes full waiting lists, since lockdown. We were able to get sessions with school linked psychologist, supplemented with weekly session a with learning support. They kept me in the loop so I could use similar strategies and words at home.

I’m not sure how to express this without sounding very unfeeling, but it hasn’t helped that he is so lazy by nature! So in the long term I’ve been working on building a bit more grit and self discipline. I never over praise the art/writing/test results etc now, (eg oh that’s amazing) but I praise the effort that went into it (you must have worked so hard on that/ I can see you’ve really tried to improve your handwriting/ you studied really hard for that test) and we have a bit more structure around homework and learning - eg writing out spellings that he has to learn 3 times, ticking off things in his homework journal, and referring back to it when packing his bag. It’s instinctive, I think, to try and reduce stress as much as possible, but we’ve found that being firm on homework expectations, actually has helped. There’s no pressure to get good results but a strong expectation to get his work done.

Recently, after a few calm months, we had another flair up, triggered by teacher panicking as the year is nearly ended, and threatening punishments for incomplete homework. Last year we’d have had to approach the teacher, but this year I just gave him a bit more support to get his homework done, checked, packed away and drew his attention to how that reduced his worry and he could now play for the rest of the afternoon (his own strategy would have been to worry all evening, avoid doing the homework til he was too tired, and plunge into suicidal thoughts and be sick in the morning).

Don’t get me wrong : It’s taken time to get to the point that I can step in and put the focus on homework like that. It’s building on trust that he knows I hear his worries, and take him seriously, and that we can do hard things.

Sorry - long and rambling, but the main thing is you’re not alone. And it can get better.

@thelegohooverer thank you so much for your reply. Some really helpful suggestions there. Thank you.

I’m very glad to be of any help when you’re going through this.

Do keep posting if it helps. The loneliness while you’re trying to deal with this, and get some kind of meaningful help in place can be very difficult.