12 Year Old Cutting. Need Reassurance

[fakenamefornow]

Found out today my 12yo dd is cutting herself. School called about a cut she did at school on her lower leg. She has lots of cuts on her arms, clearly done at different times. We had an incident a few months ago when she said she took some paracetamol at school, only 4 and it was for a headache or something and she said it was a mistake and it was unclear if she took any tablets.
I'm really hoping someone will tell this will just stop but looking online it seems we might have a long term problem on our hands. Thing is, she doesn't seem to fit any of the descriptions of self harmers. She doesn't seem at all unhappy or anxious, she has lots of friends, we don't have any family problems. There has been a little bit of online bullying but very minor, blocked and they go to another school anyway. The bullying came up when we found out about the self harm today. She said some of her friends have been self harming but wouldn't tell us who. She has a gp appointment next week about it.
Does it ever just stop?

In a similar boat but my dd13 doesn't know I know yet. Going to try and get her to talk over the weekend. Good luck, let me know what the GP says.

Thank you.
Does your daughter fit the depression/anxiety pattern? Mine doesn't seem to.

I wonder if we should take her phone and laptop off her?

Anxiety definitely applies, think depression is also creeping in but difficult to work out what is 'normal'. Am also concerned re online stuff but don't want to remove control from her. She knows I can check her phone and online activity if I have concerns. I discovered she was cutting through a journal but don't want her to know I was snooping. Went snooping as I was concerned - she's been quiet and not herself.

I fear mine is basically copying what she sees online.

@fakenamefornow why would you take them?
I mean that genuinely, is it because of specific concerns about what she is accessing? It might come across as a punishment or as though you think its because she's read about self harm online

I have always self harmed and think its began when I had the usual fluctuating and intense emotion of teenagers, and it helped me manage them. Teenagers have extreme emotions and often struggle to regulate and look for outlets.

What has she said about it?

@fakenamefornow

I think you have to make sure you take it seriously. For years theres a common narrative that self harm is in someway contagious, and linked to teens accessing bad influence peers or getting the idea online.

There are certainly unhelpful communities but in general increasing feelings of isolation is unhelpful, and treating it as something that is copied rather than authentic is likely to make her feel really misunderstood and as if you Don't believe her

As an adult its easy to look back on teen dramas and forget how intense and serious they felt at the time (especially as most are very small things in hindsight!)

I mean that genuinely, is it because of specific concerns about what she is accessing?

Yes, concerns about what she's looking at. She's very easily influenced and I'm constantly told 'nobody does that' if I suggest something, even like a drink to take to school. I'm going to get her (reluctantly) to spend her evenings downstairs with us instead of up in her room. I've also asked her and her sister (three years older) to keep their bedroom doors open in future. The doors face each other across the hall and would have a clear view into each others rooms. I thought this might make her feel less alone and be less vulnerable even though she actually wants her door closed. We live in quite a big house and our bedroom is a little way away down the corridor.

She was ok about me telling her sister, I asked her if it was ok first and was told that she didn't care. We ate dinner in the kitchen this evening and the table was filled with her and her brothers laughter and jokes. This is a completely normal evening, she hasn't seemed at all unhappy or distressed about anything in the last year or ever really. She's always been quite lazy about school work and room tidying etc but nothing abnormal. We are so worried about her but it's confusing because she doesn't seem to fit the self harming characteristics i've read online.

I've not personal experiences about cutting, except for a schoolmate so many years ago, and I would talk with a therapist to take the best decision but on the spot I would not take her phone and laptop off her. It could be the main source to understand what is really going on. With a good parental control you can easily check that.
If it can help you, I use Safe Lagoon (for a fee) with my daughters and it lets you see everything they do on the phone since it takes screenshot of any app while they are using it. Maybe too much controlling but IMO it depends just on how much the parent look at that. I know it works very well on android, I don't know on apple phones. There are Family Link for android and Family Sharing for apple too, basic ones totally free. For laptop I don't know which one is best, I used Qstudio (for a fee, for all the devices) and it was really good until it started to not work all the time and it became very easy to bypass, maybe they fixed it. Anyway I think a therapist would be the best to tell you what to do. I hope it's just a temporary thing. Nowadays teens are very good at hiding things, I would check more closely if she really doesn't fit the self harming characteristics and at the same time I would try to be supportive having very open discussion.

My DTDs both went through this at that age, spoke to them, spoke to school. School were great and said it tended to be a bit of a thing at that age and lucky for me it was, they both "grew out of it" I think it was a way of testing how to express there emotions and anxieties.

Thank you this thread Op.

We have found out that DS has tried cutting, and we're just trying to work out what next.
I'm not sure whether to contact school or not at this stage.