Mental health, struggling with 4 year old

[Aprl2419]

Finding my little girls behaviour a real struggle for me to deal with. I’ve been struggling with my mental health for 2 1/2 years. I’ve got Borderline personality disorder and struggle with depression and anxiety. Her teachers have been really helpful finding ways to try and help me deal with her better at home etc and we also have a family support worker. My little girl has seen my self harm. I didn’t know what to tell her. Should I mention this to her teacher tomorrow? As she is already receiving emotional support at school for other issues and don’t want it to effect her. If I did would her teachers have to do anything about / tell anyone etc about me self harming?

I’m sorry you’ve been self harming. Are the school aware that you have a support worker and is the support worker aware you self harm? I think it is likely that the teacher will need to report that you’re self harming as part of their safeguarding duties to your DD, but if you are open about the self harm with the teacher and your support worker then I would expect that to be much better than not telling anybody and risking your DD mentioning it. If you mention it then it will show you are being proactive in ensuring your DDs wellbeing is met.

School know we have a support worker. our family support worker knows I have self harmed before, I’m just really scared about what would happen if I tell her teacher. I didn’t mean for this to happen.

I don’t know exactly what would happen, sorry, but I am a teacher and I know I would have to report it if a parent disclosed that they self-harmed. I also know that whenever I’ve been to A&E having self-harmed they always ask me if I live with any children (I don’t).

Are you known to social services? Is that how you have a family support worker? I think it is likely that if the teacher passed the information on then social services would want to carry out a welfare check on your daughter and chat to you and make sure that you are okay and coping. That probably sounds scary but they will be wanting to support you and your DD rather than catch you out or anything and if you have been open and honest and co-operative that will definitely work in your favour compared to you trying to hide how things are.

Social services were involved up until October last year, now we just have a family support worker from children’s centre. I don’t want everything to get worse again, I just want to make sure my little girl is ok and has support.