"After the lockdown our daughter who was 12 found it hard to reintegrate back in to school life"
TRIGGER WARNING: RESTRICTING FOOD, SUICIDE
She was becoming more anxious and we noticed her withdrawing from us, spending all her time alone in her bedroom. She stopped eating meals with us and was gradually restricting food. One evening she very calmly came into the lounge and told us she wanted to end her life, and that she had a plan, and that she was scared.
We were thrown into turmoil because I think we had been trying to pretend to ourselves that her behaviour was just normal teenage stuff. But it was so much more than that. She shared with us a feeling of disconnection from friends, and that she found school too much. I tried everything I could think of to try to make sense of this situation, eventually we got her to agree to talk to a GP on zoom - and she told the GP honestly how she felt.
The GP did an urgent CAMHS referral. She also agreed that she could be signed off school. We had a good relationship with school and I openly shared that our child was having a break down and was not well enough for school. The CAMHS team called a few weeks later but when the appointment came out daughter didn’t feel able to engage. She had the rest of that term off school and was just at home getting through each day with small amounts of food and rest.
"I was in a bad way, trying to understand where this had come from 'out of the blue'."
I was in a bad way, trying to understand where this had come from ‘out of the blue’. I explored autistic burnout, ASD, ADHD, I read a lot, I phoned a lot of professionals and started to convince myself that she had a spectrum condition and needed assessment…but she couldn’t begin to consider going through the rigours of being assessed. She said to me that she felt I was trying to label her - that I could just take her to appointments and fix her. She told me very honestly it was about so much more than that.
Gradually our relationship became more tense. We existed in this hyper vigilant state for a few weeks, monitoring her, trying to understand, floundering really and with no help. Family members thought we were too soft and to tell her to pull herself together.
A while later I found a suicide note in her room. We sat with her and cried and told her how much we wanted her to stay with us. That was a turning point for her to begin to tell me how some of my well intended and also my less appealing tendencies had made her feel worse. She explained she feels I judge her, expect too much of her and am intolerant of her difference to me. Once I’d let myself see into the darker side of my personality, We realised we needed a journey of healing as a family. It was a long painful summer.
A colleague of my husband’s told me to join PMH on Facebook. It was a pivotal moment. I felt heard, supported, understood and so much less alone with this secret that my child was suffering. In the September I started the partnering course which was a huge step in the healing direction we needed. I learned to step down from authority as it wasn’t helping, to stand beside our struggling child and let the journey take the course she needed it to take, and to support her by her side throughout, come what may. I learned how to love her unconditionally. Something I haven’t received myself in life, and something I hadn’t the capacity to give her until this crisis happened.
Autumn term came and she was still too unwell for school. She agreed to a home tutor. The tutor was great and gradually she persuaded our child to try some counselling. We found a lady privately and they gelled well. Very slowly over the next few months we partnered, she started to have light back in her eyes, we home schooled lightly, and always kept the door open to return to school. There were difficult meetings with attendance officers and safe guarding people, where I felt excruciating shame about my inability to get my child back into school. I know now forcing her would have been divisive, but in the turmoil you feel you’re being judged as a bad parent.
Almost a year later our daughter came into the lounge once more and said I’m ready I’m going back to school on Monday…partnering now, we enabled her decision despite fears it might be too soon. She refused all the reduced time table and special measures offered and said I’m going back. After one false start, she did return full time the following Monday and has had 100% attendance ever since.
She’s now studying for 9 GCSEs in year 10 of the same school. She reached out to a new friendship group who embraced her without any questions as to where she had gone to. And she hasn’t looked back. My thoughts about any spectrum conditions were turned upside down by the resilience and coping she has shown since, and I regret now oversharing my views in desperate times because it fuelled her mistrust of me and her discomfort with seeing me so upset. Boundaries and self-awareness are a continuing journey for me, but supported by the partnering parents and Suzanne it feels very safe to develop myself to better support both of our children who are both now thriving and living life again, living life with parents who’ve got their back.
