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?

I have a mum who likely had many years of undiagnosed depression before the wheels fell off at 16 and she was hospitalised for most of a year. Unfortunately that was also my A Levels year. Life was so stressful that I don't remember large chunks of my final school year.

My memories of childhood are endless emotional turmoil - it is incredibly distressing having an emotionally unstable mother. It was only after I got boyfriends that I realised how unusual my home environment was. I still feel sometimes that 34 that I'm learning appropriate behaviours at times.

Being very middle class we were sent to a nice private school & I have no doubt my life would be very different if I hadn't. It gave me a degree of stability, better role models of behaviour, some pastoral care, I dragged myself to uni and ended up with a fantastic husband & decent career. Please send her to school - she needs the behavioural role models and the stability.

I think you should investigate moving to be nearer a better school so that it can become a good option that you may or may not take up but first and foremost get yourself an autism/asperges diagnosis and then access support based on that (I'm assuming there are national charities who could help you). In the mean time I think your DH needs to take over weekends as you are unwell as much as us feasible and could you investigate other ways for you to have a break during the week? And I think you should definitely investigate with a GP whether your daughter has mental health problems that coukd be supported. That's quite a lot to do so I hope you can just start off by having a break this weekend or else just watch plenty of TV together and try to eat well. Focus on getting a diagnosis for you and getting your DD mental health support on Monday.

I understand that you are a zealous advocate of home schooling. That you have applied your intellect and researched the evidence and believe home schooling to be the best educational model and the right thing for your children.

However, I think you are making life extremely hard for yourself. Whilst you want what you consider to be an educational panacea for children, I question whether it's the right thing for your mental health. And note, I'm not questioning whether you can do it - you clearly are intellectually very capable and desperately want the very best for your DC and most days you are putting up a front and coping. But is this spontaneous interactive social educational model the right thing for you, for someone who describes herself as introverted? It seems to me (also introverted and socially anxious) like a massively stressful and challenging undertaking. It's almost like a form of self punishment - forcing yourself to be a spontaneous extrovert.

I'd like to very gently suggest that being so desperate to do something that is just so alien your own personality traits may indicate that your illness is affecting your ability to see this clearly.

The school day is predictable and routine-bound. Many children benefit from this side of it.

As an introvert I need ideally 2 hrs on my own every day. If I don't get it I have much less patience and energy as a mother. Although in many ways the ethos of HE appeals I know I would struggle with the consistency and discipline of it (the discipline to keep going at a steady pace not to discipline the children). I think of the school day as the time for my children to learn to socialise and to conform (up to a point anyway!). I spend an hour most weekdays on teaching them what I want them to know and maybe encouraging them to think about things in a different way. Plenty of time at weekends and during holidays for educational trips and visits.

I am highly educated too btw and was also quite 'exam shaped' - part of me believes I could educate my DC pretty well. But even though I was usually ahead of my peers academically I loved school so much. It was my domain, a neutral territory which somehow took the emotion out of ups and downs at home - nothing particularly awful but in some ways similar to how you describe your own mental health affecting family life.

No one has said home education is damaging your dd. It is you which is at risk here

I think it's sad that the op thinks we are trashing HE. Would it be financially an option to send the children to a home education childminder one day a week.

I think the op is very negative about schools. I doubt that her children would be put in bottom stream because they haven't been taught phonics. My daughter's school has got rid of ablity tables. They allow the children to choose the level of challenge they want. The teacher and TA make sure they don't choose anything too easy and gets them to pick some easier if they are getting nowhere after ten minutes.

Schools have strong anti bullying policies and very few schools are completely white. A black or mixed racism or British Asian child would not stand out at most schools.

My suggestion would be if you think you may have autism is to manage your life like you do - see if it works.

Create a family timetable - everyone have a say what goes on it including what's for breakfast, lunch, dinner, when is bath time, when you HE etc.
Make reasonable amounts of expectation on you - I suspect at the moment the up and down is because yiu take on too much one day and then time to recover.

Then also agree family rules and natural consequences if they aren't followed. For example - it's agreed family dinner is spag Bol on Tuesday - it's that or fruit. Ride the storm of dealing with the fall out.

I wouldn't assume a child would be bullied because they are the only one of a different colour / background etc. I grew up in a very middle class white family and due to a string of events I ended up attending a rather low achieving / "rough" school in Brixton in South London where I was the only white girl in my year. I didn't encounter any bullying and loved it. Everyone was lovely to me and despite less than 50% achieving 5 GCSEs I went on to get 9 at A*. It's not ideal to put a child into a less than perfect school but what makes a school perfect or not is more than the league tables. If a child is happy and wants to do well and a school is capable of encouraging them then that's the most important thing.

I don't think anyone is home ed bashing in a sense that home ed is no good - in fact I'm considering if for my own son who has asd for various reasons- but if your own mental health is in a bad place then maybe it's not the best time to do it. For you. Not as in home ed is a dreadful thing in general!