How would you deal with leaving the house when upset

[mumofblu]

So my DD is 14 .

She has just been discharged from crisis team after an attempted overdose and was self harming but not now .

Last night we had to talk to her about a deliberate breaking of rules that had put her at risk . The conversation was calm but firm . She immediately burst into tears and said we would be better off without her and left the house at 9.30 pm . I followed her and she said she was walking to a friends house , she was crying . I called the friend to check that was ok and dropped her off.

I am frightened of her walking the streets at night in the dark distressed .

Did I do the right thing ?

Where is she now? What has happened since?

My Ds has mental health challenges too and I would have done the same as long as I knew the friend would support and let me know if there was a problem. Have you found the parenting mental health Facebook group really helpful

Sorry , busy few days
I picked her up from her friends after dropping her off and she's been home since .

We have tried locking her in but she became v aggressive , witnessed by her younger sister who became v distressed , she then cut herself after raging .

She's safe now and calm but whenever we challenge her ( and this was a serious issue and needed to talk to her about ) she became upset and leaves the house without her phone so we don't have an idea where she is . I can't always follow either as I have my youngest and my husband works away .

I have the addresses and support of her local friends parents who can let me know if she turns up . And I have the option of calling the police .

Just wondering if anyone else has to deal with this ?

I was that 14 year old. When I felt overwhelmed by my home situation I simply had to get out. I walked 3 miles in the dark to my friend's house in bare feet once. This was well before mobile phones. I would let her go and have faith that she's doing the right thing for herself. I'm sorry, it must be so hard for you.

My older dd used to do this. We were told you can't stop a 14 year old from going out. Sometimes we tried to follow but on at least one occasion she jumped on a bus as we live very near a bus stop. If she didn't turn up within a reasonable time we would call the police. Sometimes she just didn't come home from school. Overall we called the police quite a few times but they never actually found her. I used to text every so often and eventually she would answer and I'd have to sweet talk her into coming home. Usually she just rode the buses or tubes for a while, so we realised that after a while and didn't worry quite so much, but it was always nerve wracking.

Realistically there's not much you can do. Our dd didn't really have friends at the time so we didn't have the comfort of knowing she had somewhere safe to go, but she did sometimes go to her grandmothers.

She did suffer anxiety and depression so there was concern about self harm too.

Have to say it was a nightmare, sorry.

Younger dd will go out at night sometimes for "a walk" when she gets stressed but she is much better about keeping in contact and will always respond to a call or text. We have never had to call the police about her, luckily.

Thankyou everyone

and @Catshaveiteasy , how is your Dd now , was it a phase ?

I started a thread about this issue we have with DS (15). He was in the park on his own in the dark for 2 hours but apparently that's acceptable

We had this with my dd and I know how difficult it is 💐.

Things wd escalate with any attempt to keep her in.

We managed to get her to agree (when calm) that she wd go to one of 4 households (2 were family; 1 was a family friend; 1 was the household of one of her close friends) if she felt she really had to leave. She cd choose which one but she had to let us know where she was going. If she was bolting we never did any berating ‘how dare u…’ texts - it was always along the lines of: come home plz - we love u. We’ll give you the space u need. If u can’t come home please go to one of the safe homes and tell us where u have gone’.
God it was hard - she was risk taking, mental health shot to pieces, being awful at home (she needed to test us to see if we wd stick with her- we did).
2 years on and things r immeasurably better and she’d rather hang out at home than go out. We still have our challenges but nothing like b4. Hang on in there. Do everything from a position of concern. Look after u.
Xx

@HUGanALPACA thankyou just to update this is what we had just put in place . 1 friend , 1 family member and someones mum of a boy she goes to school with who is her BF friend .

On Friday last she left the house after a v stressful day but no arguing ( pregnancy blood test )

The mum let me know she was coming and had arrived and bought her back a few hours later so she came home to a hug and no upset

It's far preferable to not knowing where she is x