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8 year old says she wants to kill herself

4 replies

KateGrey · 28/02/2019 20:18

Any advice please about an 8 year old girl with asd and adhd who is frequently saying she’s dumb and stupid? And it has now advanced to saying she wants to kill herself. This is during a meltdown (normally after school) or if she makes a tiny error. We don’t tell her off because she’s so quick to blame herself. She has a ft 1:1 and an ehcp. She’s keeping her anxiety under control until she the last part of the afternoon. We’ve had a lot of issues with school when our other child with Sen attended and we ended up in court and we deal exclusively with the head now despite them being responsible for the issues my youngest faced.

The EP goes in next month and I’ve asked for a specialist teacher to see her but I’m not sure what to do. Do I go into school and bring this up? Go direct to the specialist teachers?

She’s displayed no self harm (though hit herself in the head once) but she’s so angry and frustrated and I’m really worried about her. Academically she does struggle a little but she’s making progress. Her main LSA has also noted she’s very negative about herself.

OP posts:
Jamhandprints · 28/02/2019 20:31

There's not much you can do while she's actually saying it but at other times build her self esteem up as much as possible. What is she good at? Let her do that, tell her teacher about it, tell her how well she is doing. Spend time with her one to one if you can. Can you take her out for a hot chocolate or other treat which means quality time together?
I've seen an advert on Facebook for a happiness journal, it looks good but silly price. Its a chance to reflect each day on good things. Something like that might help. Or just a chat at the end of each day about what she is proud of and what she enjoyed.
I am going through similar self esteem issues with my 7 year old son too.

SleepyDibillo · 28/02/2019 21:10

My DD has said similar. I found this blog reassuring:

Blog

That's not to say I don't take her distress seriously because I do, but it helped me to put what she was saying into context.

Claw001 · 01/03/2019 07:25

My ds did similar and was self harming badly at the time too. It was his way of communicating just how distressed he was and wanting to get away from his difficulties.

We increased the expert support in his EHCP ie he now attends SS, has OT, SALT and counselling in school. Which has helped. Also encouraging him to self advocate and say no, I need x, y, z.

Viewofsaturday · 02/03/2019 20:17

Is there another school she can go to? Just it sounds so awful with that school. I'm projecting massively BTW as school change was transformative for my child!

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