Daughter over reacting, screeching like a banshee upsetting siblings

[Heswall]

My DD thought she was late for school today which set off a tantrum, a howling fit and screeching in her younger siblings faces terrfying them.
I lost it with her after half an hour of this non sense and I'm ashamed to say I did shout back as did DH, we were at the end of our tether.
She sobs like the world has ended, scratches herself til she bleeds whenever she's under pressure.
Given that she's at a grammar I feel she ought to have better coping mechanisms, it's not that she isn't capable the school is very very pleased with her and her progressed.
I've asked the head of year to contact me about referring her to the school counsellor who comes in once a week to help with strategies.
Is the school the right people to deal with this ?

'Creating a pattern of poor me, i'm ill now I get attention, a relative is exactly like that and it works because we all come running but one day they'll be really ill and nobody will bother. Drug usage is not ideal....

....Well if the are required, I'm going to see what the school counsellor says when they get back to me, camh is not something I want to go to lightly, there would need to be compelling reasons to go down that route and after other avenues have been explored..'

Heswall, I am getting the impression that in your heart of hearts, you don't believe your DD's cutting and terrible anger are symptoms of a mh problem. I think you feel it is all just one more bloody thing you have to put up with, and that you think this is something she is deliberately doing to you.

You need to get to the bottom of your denial here. Do you associate some sort of stigma with mental or emotional health issues? How was illness dealt with in the family you grew up in? Do you feel panicky when something happens that you can't fix easily or is out of your control?

You are putting the cart before the horse here when you rule out medication ('drug use') and indicating that you don't really understand what is involved with mental health issues. I realise you work in the pharmaceutical sector, but that is different from being a psychiatrist.

Cutting and extreme anger/mood swings are 100% compelling reasons to seek out the big guns of professional help.

I'll see what the school have to say when they get back to me, thanks for the info, goodnight all x

I can't imagine that professionals will encourage your dd to indulge in attention seeking or feel sorry for herself, or that they will rush to prescribe medication to an 11yo.

My dd has suffered from severe anxiety for many years. The CAHMS people did everything they could to avoid prescribing anything, and only agreed to do so once she got to 15. They explained exactly why they were cautious, what the dangers are and how limited the drugs are that you can prescribe for young people: if we hadn't been happy they wouldn't have done it. They worked with CBT for over 18 months first and if CBT alone could have done it then nobody would ever have thought of medication. It turned out dd needed a stronger approach and in the end it was we who asked for medication.

She is still having the CBT sessions and as far as I can see, they are very much about getting dd to take responsibility for her own issues rather than dumping on other people and showing her ways in which she can do that. About as far from encouraging attention seeking as you can imagine.

In a way, I can understand your frustration. Having mental health problems in the family is a massive drain on the whole family. I often feel like screaming and running. But years of struggle have taught me that no amount of denial will cure dd; the problem simply won't go away because I refuse to see it. In that respect it is no different from any other illness. SILs cancer is also a great inconvenience to her cancer. But she can't make the problem go away by refusing to see her doctor.

The good news is that we are seeing a slow improvement. Dd does seem a little more willing to believe that things can be worked out, she is less liable to freak out and easier to talk out of freak mode.

Like your dd she is intelligent, used to working hard, has had a (fairly) privileged upbringing, has been showered with love all her life. It hasn't made the difference between her developing an anxiety disorder and staying well. But it may just have made the difference between her still being alive and...not being alive. And that has to count for something. Whenever I feel like a failure because my daughter, my daughter! has a mental health problem, I remind myself that my daughter (the one I love and am proud of!) is still alive and fighting.

Heswall, I hope the school can offer you an appropriate referral. Yes CAMHS can take a few weeks, but hopefully they will be able to offer some support. Hopefully your daughter will be OK, but please don't dismiss the anxiety as it can be so difficult for some young people. My colleague has a daughter who started with behaviour issues and anxiety and things escalated and she has been very poorly with mental health issues for years now. This is a rare example, but not all bad behaviour is just attention seeking, and I also work with teenagers in a school, and have quite a few at the moment who are displaying issues with anxiety and stress etc. and it can cause bigger problems. I hope your daughter gets the support she needs.

Thank you, I'm not under estimating this at all, I just want to be sure before going in all guns blazing because as I said I do have some experience of this as a teen myself and the professionals barking up the wrong bloody tree. Not their fault at all, but didn't help me either.

Obviously professionals can make mistakes. Doctors make mistakes. But if you have had your exzema misdiagnosed as chickenpox in childhood, would that stop you from ever seeing a doctor again, for whatever illness?

Dd was seriously misdiagnosed by an ordinary paed when she was younger and it had pretty bad consequences. But when she needs a doctor she still sees a doctor because you don't have much choice, do you? I feel the same about CAHMS- we're at a point where we really don't have much choice. We have to hope they won't make mistakes because there isn't really an alternative; just waiting for the problem to go away has failed.

I found that by ringing up the school and telling them that dd was self-harming, we got fast-tracked to CAHMS; they take cutting very seriously.

I hope things go well for you both. You do sound very stressed and as if you already had a lot on your plate, though you haven't said it in so many words. But this could be the start of something better.

She's not cutting though, she scratches at her skin and yes there was blood as there would be but we aren't talking about razor blades here and I know everyone will jump in with it might become razor blades but equally it might not.
I don't want people running away with this because that will upset her too.

Thanks for the words of wisdom it is difficult to talk about in real life so I do appreciate you posting.

I don't think it matters much if it is razor blades or nails tbh; what does matter is that it is a coping mechanism to deal with extreme stress and she needs help to deal with that stress in more positive ways.

You do seem very worried about the connotations of mental health problems. Is this because of previous problems in the family?

I would be very careful not to let your dd pick up on this; if she feels there is something very dreadful about having any kind of mental disorder, something that means you have to deny it at all costs, then it will be much harder for her to ask for help to fix something that may actually be fixable.

Fear is also a kind of attention. Calmly taking her to the doctor might actually take some of the drama out of it for her. Shame that your GP turned out to be so useless.

Heswall are you under stress? Have you ever really confronted the issues you had as a teen?
Because the two things I wonder, is; is there a lot of stress at home which is making her behaviour feel worse? And is she scratching herself because she feels she has to be extreme to get attention.

One of the best forms of therapy for these kinds of issues can be family therapy, where the interactions of the whole family are considered.

I expect given your dd's age that she will have a very black and white view of the world as divided into sane people on one side and mad people on the other and some huge great chasm in between.

Part of what you can do for her as an adult is to try to explain that life isn't that simple, that ordinary people can have an illness that affects their mind, that often such illnesses are temporary, that they can be helped, that you can still have a normal life, that it will be a much better quality life once you've had some help for your problems.

Scratching and cutting -- it's all the same. It doesn't matter that there are no razors involved. It's all self harm and it is all done to ease stress or to feel alive or real or to escape something that threatens to crush her.

Still nothing from CAMH other than a letter confirming they have us in the system. The school have been great in suggesting she meets up with the school nurse but nothing seems to be happening with any sense of urgency.
We have not had any scratching since but the reactions continue.
This morning she thought she'd be late so shouted in her fathers face, this is at 7.10 to be at school for 8.30, 10 mins in the care ie what we do every morning.
I'm at the end of my tether with her.

10 mins in the car sorry.
She is upsetting the younger ones and i'm worried she frightening them or they will decide to copy her and the thought of 2 of them hollering and shouting every morning will send me off my dial.

Heswall, I'm wondering whether you might benefit from some counselling? It sounds to me like you've got a lot on: 3 kids, including two young ones and one you are finding challenging; a full-time job; an older relative you feel ambivalent about but also feel some responsibility for; some difficult past experiences that are colouring the way you respond to your daughter (And those are just the things you've mentioned!)... No wonder you feel a bit stressed and overwhelmed!

You need to look after yourself to be able to look after your child effectively. The good news is, it should be reasonably easy to get support for yourself. Your GP can refer you for counselling, or you can go privately. CAMHS is over-stretched and your daughter may not reach their threshold for support (yet?), but adult counselling is readily available.

I had a penny-dropping moment a few years ago, when I heard something on the radio about mental health: it isn't about never being stressed or unhappy or disturbed; it's about having strategies to cope when you are. Up til then, I had thought I 'should' never be unhappy, especially when there wasn't anything much wrong... and that meant I felt powerless if I was... After that moment, I realised mental health isn't an on/off lightswitch, and I could always do some things to help myself even if I couldn't fix myself. My mental health is very good these days, despite major stresses.

Maybe that won't mean much to you, but maybe it will resonate. You sound like me 10-15 years ago, setting very very high standards for yourself, and expecting super-human abilities! A couple of people have said you don't sound very sympathetic to your daughter, but nor do you sound sympathetic to yourself... If you can cut yourself some slack and get some support, maybe it'll be easier to cut your daughter some slack and support her! :)

Oh he's wall, you have made me laugh, when you said 10 yrs time they will all be at uni or the foreign legion who ever will have them. What a breath of fresh you are. I got one of those dd and shes nearly 16 lol all that's keeping us functioning is that hopefully next year she will be in uni. Or in her words prison lol. I am so over it but still doing the nicely nicely approach bit just to keep the peace and she has a pt job so she will be out working fri-sun yes yes yes. Love her to bits but by god she's hard work. Hope you get through it all, I live a typica l disfunctional family life somes great but always followed by the not so great but hey ho here's to wine and headphones x

One last thing, I found my dd would do silly silly things because she just wanted us to focus on her alone. Lots of it I ignored and she got bored so moved on to random silly thing no2. The more people involved the more she went out of her way to get attention, like she is the only girl in family and praised upon like a princess, obviously too much. So try not to draw too much attention to her having a scallywag and what not, but all the same keep an eye open. What's more is that I cannot believe how many of us there is going through sxxx when I thought it was just my family, see whew we are normal x

She is not yet a teenager. You sound so unsympathetic and tbh after seeing what you have said in the past about people and schools you consider beneath you I agree with whoever said you maybe need some counselling. You are very concerned with what is on the surface and what others think of you and your family. You need to love and support her no matter what.

I do love and support her no matter what, the behaviour is the problem not the child, what do you suggest I do allow the hollering and shouting ? Sit back and accept the tantrums ?

Girls mature much faster than boys so teenage angst is very likely to be half the problem.
Oh and it's piss poor to bring other threads up when discussing my child's potential health issues so rein it in.

Having worked in a girl's grammar I know they can be high pressured place and this kind of anxiety or self harm is more common than one would think. Being academically bright does not mean that one is also emotionally mature. In fact if I think of the girls I am responsible for who act in a manner similar to your daughter they are all quite bright or even very bright and they often have perfectionist traits.

It is a good thing that you have contacted the school they may be able to speed things up or have other contacts.

I am sure you do love your daughter , you clearly want the very best for her. We all show our love in different ways. However on this thread you are coming across as quite irritated by your daughter and perhaps overly concerned by outward appearances. Of course you may be acting in an entirely different manner with your child.

I am rubbish with remembering posters names but I am sure that I've seen you posting about stressful events, perhaps your daughter is picking up on that tension. Maybe some counselling as a family would help.

Good luck .

Oo Heswall, I just remembered you were weaning your night-feeding baby a month or two ago, weren't you? So I'd guess your eldest may be feeling a bit left out... She may even be a bit left out, cos babies are demanding little things, aren't they?! 'Reverting' to more babyish behaviour is absolutely normal for older siblings when breast-feeding envy is concerned. (My eldest once smeared my whole bed with Sudacreme when I'd spent too long nursing in it!)
How's the weaning going, by the way? :)

The weaning is not going very well, I am knackered and have shed loads of other stuff going on, other child studying for 11+, out of work hubby to name just a few. Counselling isn't my cup of tea i'm afraid I'm not interested so I'll have to find another way to deal with my problems, getting on with it being top of the list.

But DD is only just starting out and it seems so cruel that she's suffering at the first fence so to speak.
I hope CAMH can giddy up and prove helpful.

I am irritated by her behaviour, not suggesting she can help it but that doesn't stop it being irritating in the same way I'm sick to death of the baby breast feeding, not going to stop him during the day though if that's what he needs.
I am equally allowed to be irritated by it.

Of course you're allowed to be irritated by it! :) Whoever put the myth about that mothers need to be ever-patient saintly super-human martyrs needs slapping telling!

I know a lot about "just getting on with it". It is a very useful survival tactic. I would say, though, that you should be careful not to expect your daughter to 'just get on with it', simply because that is your chosen coping strategy. Screaming like a banshee might be hers. Seriously. I hope for the sake of your ear-drums it isn't, but... Just a thought... Is there any possible way you could get away for a couple of hours, just the two of you, and climb a hill, or go to the middle of a big field, or drive somewhere remote, and both of you scream like banshees?! It might do you a power of good!

(P.S. Counselling isn't what you think it is, you know!)

Believe me there's no danger of her just getting on with it, not if she can make our ears bleed at 6.50am instead.
She's been packed off to bed for an early night and that may well make all the difference. Fingers, toes crossed. tomorrow is another day