I am totally destroying my 7yo DD. Please help me work out what to do.

[thoroughlymortified]

I've suffered from MH issues all my adult life, have had every form of therapy, medication, hospitalisation and alternative approaches on the planet: none have helped. I've never managed to hold down a job for long, and though I am married, it's a difficult relationship - for obvious reasons. I currently don't fit the referral criteria for any local MH services due to the duration, complexity and non-response to prior treatment. I had come largely to accept that this is my life from now on, and that I would never feel better and never find the help I needed. Until today.

Today I realised that my DD's recent behaviour has been a direct response to how bad I have been feeling recently. For several days now, she has been screaming at me whenever I have asked her to do anything, has been refusing to eat anything I have cooked (though DH has been feeding her instead to make sure she doesn't go hungry), has been screamingly refusing to do any work or activities (she's home educated). She just seems so angry, and so unhappy. I have another child, DS5, who seems his normal self, but I have always recognised DD to be the more sensitive one.

And so, whereas I know that I can no longer get any help for myself - what do I do about DD? How do I help her? My guess is that (from what I know of family and friends who work within the local CAMHS) that she won't reach the threshold for children's MH services unless she self-harms or does something criminal oh God please no. But what can I as a mother going through this now do? Should I be firm with DD about the need for family meals and home ed work, or do I overlook her screaming and refusals. Do I try and stay away from DD as much as possible to minimise my impact upon her, or do I try to cuddle and talk to her and reassure her? Do I ask Social Services for advice on handling DD, or will they simply get me removed from the house so I can't make things worse? And how do I make sure that DS is really as OK as he seems?

Please find your daughter a school.

Your MH issues are yours to work on. Give yourself the space to do that whilst your daughter is being educated and making friends and everything else which going to school includes.

Nobody is trashing HE or saying that you are not capable of educating your daughter. But you have a lot on your plate, give your DD a break from what sounds like a really intense home environment (at least at the moment).

Have you been assessed for Aspergers yourself? Your fear of change, introverted personality plus obviously a very bright mind may point to that. Apologies if l have missed anything about that in your post.
My dm suffered with mental health issues growing up and the biggest thing l needed, which l never got, was knowing it wasn't my fault. Could your dh make this clear to your dd and could it be constantly part of the family conversation. Not in a big serious way but in a normal way. Also l grew up in a home where we often weren't allowed to express our feelings as it might " upset our dm" l would make sure that didn't happen and that book already mentioned How to talk so your kids will listen... Is excellent for letting them open up.
Also lm a very experienced primary teacher and a keen supporter of homeschooling but l would struggle to homeschool in your circumstances so don't feel like a failure if you decide to change. Is your dh a keen supporter of homeschooling?
Finally l have come to terms totally with any issues l had growing up and my siblings and l have grown up happily and l think very well so don't panic. We all have a good relationship with my dm although she still struggles. My Df had a very stable influence on us all.

I agree with all those saying your daughter should go to school, I think both your children would be better off in school and if they both go your daughter is less chance of your daughter feeling rejected. It won't solve all your problems, but I think it will be much better for your children.

I am not against homeschooling at all, it considered it for DS, but concluded that if you are going to homeschool you need a very calm happy home environment and you to be just the right person and I am not. It doesn't sound like you are either, that is not to say you are not a lovely caring intelligent parent, but from a child's perspective what you have described sounds very unsettling. As others have pointed out if there are any MH or behavioural issues with your daughter school will be better poised to help.

I was very unhappy at school and therefore quite anti it, but my two are thriving at school and very happy there, it may not be everything you fear.

If you couldn't cope mentally with a full time job in any other field then expecting yourself to cope with being a home ed, a job in itself, is probably just not being kind to yourself.

You can't expect to get well when you're not giving yourself time to recover.

Home ed is still you-led. You're involved in what she does, what she learns, where she goes, who with. You're making every single decision about her life.

School will mean someone else is making decisions about her, what she learns, who with, where etc. She'll learn that's ok. That you don't have to make all decisions for her.

And if she won't eat your food let her go hungry!!! She'll learn quick enough. I'm a big believer in kids needing boundaries to feel safe though, and not pandering. Others feel differently about kids ability to decide.

I 100% agree that you need to end all your children to school otherwise it would cause terrible damage to your relationship with your daughter. The only difficulty I can see is finding a school with places for both children.

OP I still believe you can do a great job either home educating or formal schooling (whatever you decide) but the key is to have confidence in yourself and believe that you are not a crap mother (I'm sure the crying under the duvet is partly self esteem, and feelings of failure/sense that you are not coping with the kids and generally catastrophising)

CBT has been a very useful help to me, as is getting out in fresh air sunshine, lowering my expectations, talking to friends and believing in myself, and that my children need me and that I am the best mother for them and no-one else.

Being tired might have all sorts of other organic causes, have you checked thyroid, Vitamin D, iron deficiency as well as mental health aspect? Things have a habit of being chicken and egg.

Elizabeth how do I talk to DD like that? I realise that maybe my cluelessness about how to do it probably reflects part of the problem as well. But how do I ask her how she's feeling?

Pick a good moment (she's not busy, she's not furious, you won't be interrupted).

Tell her you want to talk to her about whatever's making her feel sad and angry, reassuring her that

1. You love her and want to help
2. The conversation isn't a telling off. You want to understand.
3. You want to know what's making her sad, even if she thinks it might make you cross or sad. That you won't get cross and that you want to know even if it's something you're doing or not doing.

You can very gently probe with questions eg does it make you sad/cross when Mummy is ill? When you don't want to eat the food Mummy's cooked, is it because you're cross with Mummy?

Be ready to reassure her that it's about her feelings not yours, even if you have to share some of your feelings to get there. And that it's not her fault when you feel sad and ill. And so on.

Keep the conversation separate from disciplining about bad behaviour. If you don't get anywhere, your husband could try on a different day.

Honestly, I think you'll be fine. It's worth a try. Good luck.

Hi, I'm sorry you're having such a crap time. MH issues are hard. I am a veteran of depression etc, was also hospitalised.

Re: the home ed, it stood out to me that you said home ed doesn't give you any social life yourself and you wouldn't expect it to. I just wondered what's made you feel like that - do you not get on with other parents within the community?

I'll be honest I didn't expect to find friendship among the other HE parents when we withdrew the DCs from school last year. I was an outcast at the school gate and had no 'mum friends', I was totally isolated and couldn't break out of it (I have ASD although this was only diagnosed a year ago). So I thoroughly expected the same when we started HE and I was really worried how my lack of social skills would impact the kids. But it's been great - the kids have made friends and so have I.

Which is a long waffly way of asking is there any way you could get to know the other HE parents and this might help with a lot of the other stuff, if you build up more of a support network.

Sorry if I'm totally barking up the wrong tree there. I know it depends a lot on what your local home ed 'scene' is like (I have dabbled in a few different areas nearby and definitely get a different 'feel' from them).

The point of sending her to school is to give uou both a break, it takes some of the pressure off, she will be out of the house most of the day and she will also be part of a large school community, it helps you and her.

Do I get the impression correctly that although considering this you personally really want to not do it? It genuinely might help, it basically gives you both breathing space.

Don't have time to read further than the OP at the moment but my first overwhelming reaction is that HE sounds like very, very bad idea given your state of mind. I would say you need to stop that as soon as possible.

If I didn't have them reliant upon me, I would off myself in an instant.

Hi OP, it sounds like this is how you have felt for some time, maybe since they've been born?
This must be affecting the dynamic between you. I was maybe 12 by the time I realised that my mother often felt like this. My childhood memories are bleak, and much went unsaid. My mum did her very best for me, and I learned a great deal of good stuff from her, but the huge responsibility for, basically, keeping my mum alive and with something to live for, affects my life even now.
I went on to drink to escape what was in my head. I am lucky to have made it through, and it has taken many years of working on myself to believe I am worth living for, just as I am right now.

I really hope you will do and be open to whatever helps you to remove that terrible responsibility from your children. I don't want to upset you at all, and wish you all the best. You are educated, resourceful and brave (I wouldn't now have children knowing what I do, but am immensely broody!) and you can improve things, for you, starting with a weekend, this weekend to yourself.

Thanks to all of you who have stuck with me through this thread.

As ReallyTired says, finding school places isn't going to be easy. At the moment, the only schools in the area which have spaces for both years 1 and 2 are those which have appalling reputations either for racism (DCs aren't white) or for very low academic standards (DCs currently doing year 5/6 English, maths and science). Sending them to different schools would be intolerable for them (they are very close) and and sending them to the good but out of area school requiring three different buses each way just wouldn't work (by the time I'd finished the morning school run, it'd be 11.30, and I'd have an hour before needing to set off to collect them - what could I do in that single hour to improve my MH?) Would a terrible school or exposure to racist bullying still be better than home education? I really don't know.

Re the question of Aspergers/autism - yes, I am 95% sure I could be diagnosed, for all the reasons raised. What I am curious to know is, how would an assessment and diagnosis help? As I have said before, my experience to date of MH services has been such that most diagnoses leads to a denial of support and an exclusion from services. Is autism different? Again, I don't know?

OP people are telling you to send your dd to school because it mean you don't have the mental pressure of HE.

you've said yourself that you're restricting some activities and you find it makes you anxious which both dcs are picking up on. This will impact on how they behave as adults.

You haven't said why you home school either.

You need more help. You could be misdiagnosed which is why no treatment has ever helped. What have you been diagnosed with?

It took years for my mother to be diagnosed with bipolar. She held it together until I was about 8/9 then rapidly went downhill and life got worse.

So I can see why people are saying you should get (both IMO) DCs to school. You have MH health issues which are not being effectively treated. Why would you HE if you cannot, by your own admission, do it properly?

Don't ask your dcs about school. Make the decision with your DH and then tell them.

You can put them on a waiting list for a decent school. We got places at the school we wanted for both dcs. We just had to wait a bit.

OK - to explain.

Firstly, I don't home school, but instead I home educate. I am confident that most with sufficient experience on this thread will understand the difference, but for those that don't:

Home schooling is a conservative and often isolationist method of teaching children at home which follows the national curriculum and seeks to put the classroom into the home - as I said, I dont do that.

Home education as opposed to home schooling is theory-driven in a way that challenges many of the philosophical assumptions of institutionalised education. Read AS Neill, John Holt, Paulo Freire, Maria Montessori, Jerome Berryman, Emilio Reggiano et al. The YMCA-run InFED website has some very accessible summarise of their work.

You say you are introverted,find h e hard, cry under the duvet. You are not up to home schooling your children. Would you tolerate a class teacher who behaves like you do?
Schools are far from perfect environment s but they give children other adults who are responsible for them and who can be role models.
Many people move due to be near better schools. Could you do the same?

Ok well thank you for explaining the difference (which I didn't know), but what are your reasons for doing so especially when you have MH issues?

X post. I appreciate the distinction between home ed and home schooling. I still don't thing you are able to home ed now.

Whereas most home schooling takes place within the home, most home education takes place within the context of a community - which is why the usual "home schooled kids get stuck at home without any social interaction" line shows a profound misunderstanding of home education - hence why I fear that DD going to school would ruin her social life,

Whereas home schoolers work to keep their children in line with national targets and directives and seek to use the same teaching methods as schools, home educators allow children more autonomy to learn using their own methods and at their own pace. Again, to conflate the two shows some misunderstanding - hence my fear that although DS can read the books at age 5 which I was reading at 10, that he'll be put in a remedial stream because he never did any phonics,

Why should my MH issues govern every decision I make? I didn't choose to eat brown toast rather than white this morning because I am mad - I chose it because I believe brown bread to be healthier, and can cite a fair degree of scientific evidence to back it up.

I really don't think your children's current high levels of academic achievement are the most important things for consideration here. I think right now your priority should be their socialization among peers outside of a home where mental illness looms large and their long term emotional and mental wellbeing.

I couldn't give a stuff what level they are currently working it. That won't be worth shit if they are damaged in other ways.

I am going to leave this thread now.

As I have explained to this thread on multiple occasions, I am fully aware of how home EDUCATION has ruined my daughter's life and I have committed to putting her into any school which will not allow her to get her face kicked in for being a p%#^ boffin

So why are posters on here still attacking me?

I don't disagree with the ethos or benefits of h e. But your mental illness is affecting your ability to deliver it effectively. It is also preventing yr children from having a break from you

The nastiness of her actions, screaming and not wanting to eat your meals, is a concern. It's like she is deliberately trying to punish you/hurt you.

Have you actually say down quietly and asked her why? How she thinks that makes you feel?

That could be a good starting point?