I’ve posted this on another topic area too.
I am really struggling to deal with this. This might be a bit long but I don’t want to drip feed.
DD is 13, openly lesbian and has a girlfriend. Just under 2 years ago, her dad and I split up and divorced due to him cheating on me multiple times. He moved an hour away and he sees DD (13) and DS (11) on Sundays for 6 hours. This is his choice. ExDH has a very strained relationship with DD, they argue a lot and he’ll simply walk away from her and blank her for weeks at a time. A few months after we split, DD took 3 overdoses weeks apart (first was ibuprofen, second was paracetamol…I thought I’d hidden all the tablets in the house but I’d missed a pack, I still feel the guilt, third was a massive paracetamol overdose when she’d been out with her dad and he’d bought 2 packets of paracetamol and he’d left them in their picnic bag). She admitted she was struggling with the divorce and family breakup and also she felt that she was in the wrong body. The last overdose was July 2022. Since then, if she’s had period pain or headaches, I’ve given her 2 paracetamol which I’ve made her take in front of me. It turns out that for the last few months she’s been spitting them out and hiding them in her room, she’s collected 8 tablets. She confided in a teacher at school this week and the teacher rang me. We had a talk and she said she’s still struggling adjusting to our new family set up, she feels excluded in her dad’s new life and she wants to be a boy. She also told me she’d told her dad she was keeping the tablets but he didn’t tell me. I have had words with him about this saying it’s basic safeguarding to tell me in order to keep her safe (we’re both teachers, he should know better) but he deflected responsibility onto me saying it was my fault for not checking DD had swallowed the tablets properly and if I made more of an effort with her I’d have known she was hiding tablets. Since July 2022, all tablets have been in my handbag and my handbag goes all over the house with me.
The gender dysphoria has now ramped up and she wants to live as a boy; cutting her hair, changing pronouns and changing name. With everything going on, she’s vulnerable and she’s under the youth mental health team. They’ve recommended I refer to an organisation which specialises in LGBT+ issues which I’m happy to do. DD is highly intelligent and in an assessment she had, the psychologist said she shows traits of autism so she’s on a waiting list of 4.5 years to see someone for a diagnosis. A private consultation is £400 which I haven’t got but I am saving for it. DH has refused to pay towards it.
I don’t know how to handle any of this. We walk on eggshells around her because if we say the wrong thing, she blows her top and self harms. It’s actually quite manipulative. Her dad has borderline personality disorder and honestly, she shows many traits.
So do I go with her wanting to live as a boy and facilitate this or do I explore the autism diagnosis first?! I just don’t know and the whole situation is awful.