11 yr old DS says he wants to kill himself - being dramatic or a real possibility?

[redandblack]

DS has had bads bouts of anxiety this year and it has built up to a head over last few weeks - NHS not much help so scraped together money to go private and seen doctor at weekend. DS fine and happy at home but has meltdown about going to school or sometimes just going to his dads (who he adores) and says he can't manage it.

This suggestion he will harm himself - is it a dramatic card he plays because he know I hate it when he says it or is it a real possibility a child that age would do something bad? School advise me to be firm and ignore it, doc says we will 'work' on it...

redandblack - dd is like that in that she says she hates school everyone is mean to her etc, then I say ok let's change your school and she says 'no i'd miss all my friends and the teachers/lessons'

She genuinely thinks everyone is horrible to her but they're not I don't think unless they're very good at hiding it. She gets invited to all the parties, play dates, when we pick her up someone's usually cuddling her or talking to her or playing etc. It's really hard to know what to do for the best as I can't just keep her off school

Sorry, not sure where all that ^^^^ came from.

cory - dd has constant utis too, is it all connected??

Cory - I still think of her as much younger, they grow up so quickly in the MN background! It is good that she can see she needs 'the tools' to cope and she isn't just 'woe is me' - even though she's every right to be :( I'm sure you have tried everything with and for her - it just feels like 'there must be something' that can get her out of the otherside of all of this so she can have a 'normal' life :( I hope she finds a way of coping with it and making her life a happy one.

Nan It's sad and scary isn't it :( I hope you get a dx that enables you to help her.

Thank you Chipping, its been a total roller coaster so far

Just seen your posts, Nan. It's horrible when they're so young, isn't it? Do you feel the psychologist is helping? Dd had to try a few before she got the right package, but when it worked it was really good. Sounds like a diagnosis might help your dd- I do hope it works out for her.

Chipping, the one thing that has really helped dd over the last few years is acting. Even when she can't attend school she still tries to make drama club (and the school are happy with this as they can see it's keeping her going). I can see where she's coming from: sometimes it must feel like it's better being almost anybody else. Lady Macbeth doesn't worry about her dodgy back, when Juliet sets out to meet Romeo in the church she doesn't have to think about whether she will make it across the road, the evil witch can let her feelings rip in the most satisfying way...

And as if on cue the school has just phoned me to say she's 'not well' argh. Sunday nights and Monday mornings are always the worst.

A diagnosis of something would help as we feel like we don't know what we're doing at the moment. My instincts are to keep her off school and away from anything that causes her anxiety but I know that that isn't a long term solution.

"but I was naive, and thought that following the school's advice was for the best, because after all they are the professional"

Me too, me too

Maryz

Amen. I won't ever make the mistakes I made with DS1 again. Not realising how unhappy he was until he started to call himself a loser and say he wanted to kill himself. I was on a thread a couple of years ago where OPs child was talking about wanting to die. It was the advice of some of you on here today which made me seek help for him.

You can't know if they "mean it" or not, but it's enough to know that what they are telling you, in the strongest words they know, is that they are deeply unhappy

Spot on with the Sunday nights and Monday mornings, Nan: Sunday night being when they start stressing about the next day and Monday morning when it comes to full physical fruition.

I used to wake up at 4 o'clock every morning and lie there thinking "dawn is coming, dawn is coming, I'm going to have to deal with this again".

I went to pick him up and he said there was a problem that he was meant to be doing an exam in 20 minutes and he thought he had better do it. He needed to have lunch first though and he said he couldn't face going outside with the others...the deputy head walked past and overheard and said she would track some friends down and whisked him away in tears. Then she came back and took me to her office and we watched out her window for 10 minutes while he laughed and messed around with his friends, munching away on his sandwiches. She said she would call me once his exam is over (he feel little pressure over work, barely puts much effort in and gets great grades and in top sets for everything, just lucky that he seems to get it all quite easily)

If you were to ask him he says he feels awful 100% of the day, yet I have been told by teachers that he seems perfectly calm in all the lessons - and was the loudest and most enthusiastic in drama on Friday. They say he is reluctant to get going but once in he appears to calm down into each lesson and is happy and chatty. So what is it? Just huge waves of anxiety that once passed leave him doing fine to be at school (but telling me it's 100% awful all day long so he doesn't have to go) or is he just able to cover it up in front of other people and he is in deep distress all day long inside?

I wish I knew the right way to play this, to do the right thing and not make it even worse. I am torn between tough love by almost forcing him through with school attendance (with the danger it will push him too far, lose his trust in me) or easing off to give him some space to cope right now (with the danger that avoiding things is usually asking for trouble and solves nothing)

Redandblack - that's pretty much our thought process too We spend all the time trying to crack down on bad behaviour (like screaming and not getting ready for school) while at the same time letting her know that we understand her anxiety is causing it but its still not acceptable. I try my hardest to be patient and loving and her 'safe place' but I'm just so tired. I work ft and have a 2 year old too that never sleeps.

DD will say no one has played with her all day and everyone was mean but then later, when telling you about her day will say what great fun she's had with x and x and how they did y etc and I'm all

Work is no problem with her either. She gets sent out quite a lot because she has these 'melt downs' where she thinks something isn't fair or right and she won't back down. You can't reason with her when she's like that so the teacher tells her to go out the classroom for 5 minutes to calm down. She then comes back in having missed most of the explanation of the work, finishes it in half the time left, writes twice as much and gets As (according to the teacher).

But socially, she just doesn't get it. She's obsessed with fairness and sticking to the rules. She gets very upset when she queues at something and other children don't or push in. She's also very bossy.

The psychologist has said that when children are anxious they have to control everything which is why she's so bossy/obsessed with rules.

I just don't know. Sorry, I think I'll start my own thread rather than cluttering up yours . See if anyone has any ideas what it actually is

Not cluttering up this thread in the slightest Nan, good to hear your experiences too - it all helps to get an understanding. I hear you when you say how exhausting it is, trying hard to keep calm here too but somedays I feel like i want to shout at him instead (never do!)

DS has come home in a foul mood told us he hates us all and is lying on his bed refusing to talk :(

I used to think like this when i was that age, i never did anything about it or shared these thoughts but it was a dark time. All i would say is unfortunately the internet is great research ground for how to do it properly now days, and i do think kids who wouldnt have managed it years ago now have access to information and the necessary things to get the job done.

What happens if you just go in and cuddle him? Dont say anything just a big cuddle? Might be quite nieve on this one so bare with me!!

Cory - I'm glad DD has found some small relief at her drama club. Maybe she will become a very famous actress :)

Nan & Red I am at a loss at what to say. In some ways making them go to school seems the right thing and they both seem to do 'ok' or better when they are there - but on the other hand cory & mary have 'been there, done that' and wouldn't do it again. Not knowing what to do for the best is utterly exhausting - please both take care of yourselves as well x

Cantbelieve - I'm sorry you felt like that too. Did you find anything to help you or did you just change as you grew up? (I'm assuming you don't feel like that anymore as you said 'used to'?!)

In our case, getting dd back into school was certainly important; it was just the way I went about it that was wrong. Dragging her in by force was getting us nowhere. But she needed to be in school. It's working much better now that we've got a plan supervised by professionals who are helping her to help herself.

Can your ds' counsellor help at all with a plan, redandblack?

Sorry to butt in on this thread but have been reading with interest as a friend's son is going through something very similar atm. I ued to suffer with anxiety myself and know that none of my friends would have had a clue - I would always put on an animated, chatty front with them (and in fact, doing this often pushed the anxiety away for a while). But if anyone had asked me how the day had been I would still have said 'awful' - I think this is because one of the characteristics of anxiety is that it swallows everything else up - when you're in that state you feel as if it will never end and you will always feel, and have always felt, this way.