Anyone had a teen report them to social services out of spite?

[4cats2kids]

DD is 13. I suspect she has PDA, and she’s on the waiting list for an assessment. We only have two more years to wait for an assessment! She is compliant at school but hell at home. She seems to want to control the entire family. No parenting methods work. I have been to parenting classes and any form of boundary or consequence makes things worse.

She has gone to pastoral care at school several times when she has been upset about being told off at home. She has a high IQ and has given a completely one sided version of events. The school refuse to believe that she can be so good at school and so totally vile at home ( bullying disabled brother, stealing things, breaking things, horrendous tantrums, constant arguing over simple everyday requests and so on...) Yet, her confrontational behaviour happens daily, and is wearing me into the ground to the point I am getting ill. Her latest angry outburst was because I told her she could not go camping with the school. My reasons were that she has no sense of danger and will eat things she is severely allergic to if she feels like it. This resulted in her crying to pastoral care that she is suicidal, which resulted in a safeguarding referral. Note, she was laughing and giggling that evening when she came home! Plus, when they rang me and I asked where she was, they said she had calmed down and had gone back to lessons!

On the phone the pastoral care lady was implying that I am a bad parent. She was basically implying that they can’t see any behavioural problems in school. In addition, she told me I needed to do a domestic violence programme. I believe this stemmed from when my daughter told them her other mum restrained her. This was gently holding her as she was having a massive tantrum and attacking me. We have explained the circumstances of this.

Anyhow, the lady from SS came it yesterday and read us the most opinionated report from the school. It was short on facts and heavy on judgement. There is no domestic violence. I believe we are disapproved of because we are a lesbian couple, although the report was worded carefully enough not to contain homophobia.

We are at our wits end as DD is learning to control us by making reports! The lady from SS is going to talk to the kids before working out how to support us. There is fuck all help out there. I am guessing she will close the case once she realises the other one is happy at home, and we will be back to square one with no diagnosis and a hellish home life!

Didn't want to read and run. I have no experience of this but it sounds absolutely awful :(
I really hope it gets better for you xx

Sounds like she's giving you a really tough time of it! I have a 12 year old daughter with ASD and so I'm very familiar with the masking that most autistic girls do, how they can present as a different person entirely to others, so I really sympathise with that. My suggestion would be to film her outbursts. Set up cameras if you have to! I don't know if SS would be able to use them but you could at least show them to whoever wrote the report at school. 3 years is a long time to wait for assesment, how come it is so long? Ant chance you could go private? Write down a list of all her symptoms since birth. I found if I showed this to professionals, teachers etc and said 'this is what wevr been struggling with, any ideas?' they then liked to make their own assumptions and were less judgemental even when they hadn't seen obvious ASD behaviour yet. Have you had a meeting with school SENCO? They are usually more open to your side IMO.

Hi Op there is another thread with helpful advice.
Holding onto the thread.

PDA is very difficult to deal with. We are lucky in that ds is mild, he does shoe demand avoidance behaviour at school and dh is a teacher and his school sent him on a PDA training course. He said it was really useful in learning how you have to manage a child with PDA differently than one with just ASD. Is there any possibility you could book onto something. Dh went to Birmingham.

I am a SW and can tell you these things happen regularly. Hopefully this referral will turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Your other DC will be able to describe to the SW how things are at home with your other DD. SW are generally good at spotting young people who are making erroneous accusations about their parenting.

I have also found that some schools think they are social workers and can be very judgemental. It is the job of the actual SW to cut through all that and get to the core of what is going on. I hope it leads to some support for you. Work with the SW and be honest with them. They will not judge you for being a same sex couple.

Can you , v discretely, video some of her home behaviour.
It's v hard for a school, and Children 's Services to comprehend how different DC on the spectrum can be when they're masking at school, to how they are when they come home and release everything, in a deluge of negativity.

If you could do this, as a way not of proving you're right and they're wrong, but in the spirit of ' can I just help you to understand the whole picture?'

This sounds like a really tough parenting position to be in, you have my sympathy. I hope it doesn't sound too irritating to say, try to stay friends with your daughter. I don't mean , in any way, condone bad behaviour. But she's dumping her overload on the family. She probably doesn't have the tools to do otherwise: she's used them entirely up holding it together at school. Many teens with less difficulty are pretty foul at home. They need us to stand firm.

Have you looked at the threads on here about parenting teens and the effects on our own mental health?
They have some wise words.

Usual behavioural techniques simply misfire for kids with PDA. Dont wait for assessment, seek info and help online or through local/national groups.

Sorry this is turning to essay, but lastly, this is hard on you, really hard. You have to look after yourself, both for your own sake, and for your children. Weekly unloading to a counsellor kept me sane: provided virtually no answers, but verbally dumping out the weeks shit events was like washing it out of my hair. It lowered my stress levels to a point where I could face the next week.

And we're here listening, anytime.

www.pdasociety.org.uk/blog/2019/06/pda-society-training

If your DD is also bullying your disabled DS I would put covert cameras in the home ( obviously not in her bedroom and places of privacy) because as could say that by pointing a camera near her is antagonising her and prompting her to escalate behaviours. Tell SS that you put the hidden cameras in to safeguard your other children who are vulnerable. If her behaviour gets particularly violent you can actually call the police thus generating a record of her outbursts. Sadly SS input or in our case with my disabled Dd lack of input really is a postcode lotto due to local government funding. 😬🤦‍♀️

Thanks for the replies!

It’s good to know I’m not the only mum with a daughter who gives the impression she’s fine in school.

I have a few sound recordings of her in her room screaming and kicking the walls that I took outside without her knowing as this upsets her more. I feel I might have to resort to cameras around the home just to prove we are not bad parents! I’ve had some help from the early help hub regarding parenting and then they referred her for an assessment for autism and told us we would be waiting years. I’m hoping SS might be able to speed this up, especially as her behaviour can be directed at her brother. Private isn’t affordable at the moment, but I’m getting the impression I need to find a way of funding it. The services in Cornwall don’t seem to be meeting the demand.

I’ve lost faith in the school. They seem to have formed the opinion we are bad parents. Despite us repeatedly going in and telling them how her behaviour and development is causing us to think she needs a diagnosis and help.

You may feel like you want ss to close the case because you are loving and supportive parents but actually this is the opening that you need to gain additional support with DD. If you told the worker how difficult things are for you all then I would hope that she would be signposting to sources of support if she hasn't then please do push for this. Simple things like some short respite for your son to have a break from DD could really help or seeing if they can access any services for her. Make this opportunity work for you and dont allow the school to spin the circumstances. Dss did similar and went to school stating he was suicidal basically because he wanted a week off to play a new play station game that his mum had bought him. He had some brief (2 sessions) camhs input and it was never mentioned again. Are there any buddy/youth work/mentoring schemes in your area that DD could access because what did help DSS was someone else explaining to him that he absolutely should discuss his feelings but also the seriousness of stating that your suicidal. Sometimes teenagers listen to others rather their parents.

If teen DC did that they know I'd be encouraging them to leave home & go into care. #cowbagparent

I could tell you some stories OP, but I don't want to scare you.
Take care.
Be careful.

Our SS case was horrific. Even subsequent SW'ers said they were shocked how badly it was handled.

Very similar situation to you. Ours turned out to be a Blessing in disguise. Instead of trying to cope on our own we got some proper support. SS closed the case very quickly as they could see no issues, but they put into place lots of support which is still ongoing and has really helped. CAHMs finally stepped up after SS made a referral - we had been trying for a long time, along with the GP with no success!

I know it’s frightening but try to think of them as support. Both ours ( it happened twice!) were lovely and quickly realised we were telling the truth.

Thanks to everyone who has posted. This thread is really comforting to read through.

We have met the social worker and she seems to get what the issues are, which is a relief. I think she wants to meet the children a few more times to get an idea of how to proceed.

I’m still really hurt by the school. From what I can tell the pastoral care worker put in quite a judgmental report in against me, leaving out all sorts of context that I have discussed with her so as to build quite a negative portrayal. The bottom line is she doesn’t think DD has ASD as she behaves at school. She has implied as much in person! We have a referral but have been told we have we will wait years. I am annoyed as the primary school believes my son has ASD and are supporting a referral, which is not going to take this long. I am now infuriated that an untrained person can block services in this way! I’m also so upset all the blame has been heaped on me. I know social services may help but it’s horrible to feel so judged by the school.

IME early help will offer more support than having a diagnosis. The school may be forced to put her on the SEN register if you get one, but if she doesn't appear to need support at school it won't help much. By all means pursue a diagnosis but usually what happens is you get told "yes they have autism" and then you are discharged with a leaflet. CAMHS then won't help as it's not a MH issue.

Better off taking the early help support; ask if they have non violent resistance training available for parents.

The bottom line is she doesn’t think DD has ASD as she behaves at school.

Right. Then send DD on the school trip (if she still says she wants to go). There are two possibilities - either it all goes brilliantly well and you get a break, or something will kick off and the school will see what you are dealing with. Well actually there's a third possibility, which is that the anxiety makes her behave so badly beforehand that she can't be sent. But that's a risk worth taking. You have been protecting the school from really having to deal with her. So stop protecting them. If they don't think it's too risky to take her on the camping trip then let them go right ahead. The school do risk assessments for these trips and so long as they have her allergy medications it's up to them to deal with any foolishness or accidents.

It might all go well but my guess is that a weeklong camping trip - sharing a tent, without home at the end of the day to vent her stress in - will bring her issues out into the open.

The bottom line is she doesn’t think DD has ASD as she behaves at school

Then she needs to do her research, because masking, particularly in autistic women and girls is unbelievably common. I spend my life outside the house doing it and it is exhausting, physically and mentally.

The pastoral care person sounds as if they have a nasty little agenda and that's not helping anyone, is it worth putting in a formal complaint?

And yy to cameras in common areas of your home, she needs to know that she cannot keep school and home separate and play them off against each other (unfortunate that school have played right into her hands!)

I'd let her go on the trip, if only to give you and her brother a break. Masking for that long won't be easy so it's likely she'll not manage, and the upside of that would be school staff actually seeing first hand what you've been trying to explain.

At least the social worker sounds sensible!

I forgot to say, DD decided she didn’t want to go camping after all!

Don’t know whether to 😂 or 😭sometimes!

Sign! But I'm not that surprised to be honest. PDA is about anxiety and avoiding demands, and however much she wants to go on the trip in theory, in reality a school camping trip is demanding and scary. And of course it's so much easier to get angry and blame you for everything than to to admit she's scared and can't cope

By the way have you looked at Ross Green's Explosive Child book and Lives in the Balance? website? You mentioned your DD does not respond well to consequences and some of us with similar kids (with and without PDA diagnoses) have found them helpful.

Just to say it's a poor show from the school to claim there can't be a difference in her behaviour between school and home. Rule one of any kid with special needs, is that they often behave differently in different environments. It's very usually home that see the worst, because that is the child's "safe" space. They can hold it together for 7 hours a day, but that's it.

However, the school is also only able to go on what she's told them. They cannot risk assuming she's lying. As a school, it's always safer to assume the worst, than assume the best with regards to safeguarding. It's a shame that they didn't stick to a factual account, rather than judgement. It sounds like whoever is leading their pastoral care needs to up their game a bit.

Hopefully a social care referral may give you some extra support. If not, at least they might be able to get to the truth. Social workers have too much work to be doing without making up stuff about families that will cause them extra work! So try not to worry too much about their involvement