6 year old twin wants to harm herself!!

[roddersb]

I have 6 year old twin girls, one of which is very self critical and resorts to attack as a form of defence even with the most trivial of things sometimes. She will often hit herself if something goes wrong and recently she has said she wants to leave home and live on her own and wanted to kill herself!! Does anyone have any information or advice or has experience similar with their children?

This is a tricky one my DD began self-harming at 7. It was un-noticed to some extend at first because it was in the form of her ripping at her skin until it bled and re-picking it.

We discovered that she worried about things and people and this triggered the self harming.
For example one trigger was when another instuctor was taking lessons at her favourite after school activity. Something she loved doing and excelled in.
Another trigger was when she was with another girl in her class, they would argue alot and seemed incapable of keeping away from each other.

Whilst it is to some degree attention seeking behaviour, in our case it was also a cry for help, she had emotions/feelings that made her feel sad/bad/angry and didn't know how to deal with them.

This went on for a while and then I found help after she wrote on something that she wanted to die I contacted the school nurse who arranged to meet with DD on a regular basis during school times and outside if that suited better and worked through some stratagies to help DD.

HTH