borderline personality disorder in childhood

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My mother in law has BPD and we have always struggled with DD for difficult behaviour. Tantrums that are really out of norm. Screaming, so much screaming. She has sensory issues so a lot of that can he explained by those. However she’s daily threatening with killing herself and tries to hurt herself in many ways, she has been hurting herself since she was a baby. It started at 9months old with head banging for no reason, and hasn’t stopped. She pulls her hair, bites her fingers, tries to hurt her ankles on the stairs, goes to the kitchen to get a knife, hits herself, tells us to hurt her… if I can’t do what she wants me to she will say I don’t love her anymore and she’s very worried I would go away, it’s her worst fear.

this is daily, it will come from the smallest thing. Usually if I can’t give her attention in that moment or need to for example put her sister to bed, or I tell her to be gentle with her sister.

i have taken her to doctors but nobody is concerned because when they meet her she is a beautiful, charming little girl who does well in school. These problems are only at home. I am actually worried she will hurt herself. She has tried to pull herself underneath a car previously.

does anyone here suffer with BPD and recognise this as a possible sign? Also how to get in the UK for a child? We are going private but still find it hard.

I agree with Peekaboo, also: autism: you can be a friendly, playful, attractive autistic person.
plus with both autism and adhd, many people learn to mask as if life depended on it! From an early age. Especially if female.

Definitely film the incidents concerning you, particularly the self harm. GPs and health visitors get something like 10 minutes to make a decision about diagnosis or referral. The more evidence they have to work with, the more confident they can be about those decisions.

I'm surprised your 5 year old is threatening to kill herself. If your MIL is unlikely to have accidentally modelled that kind of verbal response to her, then is there any chance your daughter may have watched a programme on TV or YouTube that might have discussed that?

She sounds very distressed, poor thing. As do you, understandably.

You mentioned your MIL lost her in a park. Was that recently? Has your DD been able to discuss her feelings about that, and tell you about it being scary? I'm 39 and to this day, I remember getting lost at an aquarium on a school field trip at age 6. I was taken care of straight away by a staff member and reunited after a while with my chaperone. Nothing bad happened, just a few tears on my end and my group had to spend time looking for me. But I still remember how scared I felt. I didn't have much of a concept of time back then either, so it felt like hours before we found them.

Sounds more like autistic behaviour

Point of the aquarium story is I wonder if there's a link between your DD being lost at park when grandma was looking after her, and the anxiety she's displaying about people going away. It wouldn't solve every problem, but maybe another chance to discuss that day and how she felt would help?

anyway, it's tough when they're so distressed

I wonder if she would have heard us talking about DH friend who committed suicide years ago. We didn’t know he had a daughter and went to a party in the summer where DD was playing with her. We talked about it in the car, but using words being careful but DD does hear and notice everything.

I mean DH friend’s brother committed suicide

You need to hit several diagnostic criteria for a diagnosis for BPD. A 5 year old would simply not meet enough.