My 11 yr old dd has had a tough year; I went back to work full time into a full-on job in February, her very much loved grandma died in June and she started at high school in September, the only one of her primary class to go to this particular school (her 13 yr old sister is there).
She's not settled in particularly well; for someone who has always been able to make friends she's finding it really hard. Academically she's doing fine. No-one is being horrible to her, but existing groups of girls don't appear to want to give her a chance, or if they do, they then revert back the next day to not including her. She feels really lost and unhappy which is terrible to see. We've alerted the person responsible for yr 7's pastoral care at her school and they're keeping an eye on her, and shortly to try a new seating plan etc. From reading previous comments I know that this is not at all unusual, but I'm just wondering if anyone can offer me and dh some advice as to how to let her know that this will pass. I tell her so often that things will get better but she just cries and says I don't understand. We tell her and show her how much we love her as much as we can, and generally we do have a really close relationship. She is displaying challenging behaviour, nothing outrageous, but starting to test boundaries, eg. answering back, refusing to take 'no' for an answer when it's explained logically and reasonably to her, getting into a temper about silly things. She's so up and down, it's absolutely exhausting for all of us, including her sister. She left a drawing notepad out downstairs the other night which I flicked through and came across a diary entry (it really wasn't a diary) from October saying how unhappy she was and that she'd tried to commit suicide but hadn't been able to. She'd scored this out heavily but it was still legible. The following entry was about her feeling better. I was horrified. I don't think she really means it and there's no doubt she can be a bit of a drama queen at times but the fact that at the age of 11 she could even contemplate something like this is just terrible. Has anyone else's child written/said similar? I had a long talk with her the following night after a long crying stint (hers, not mine, over an hour) - didn't say I'd read what she'd written but said that she mustn't ever feel that she couldn't come and talk to me and her dad about how she feels, that we'll do whatever we can to make her feel better, that she mustn't ever think she's on her own with this. I don't' know whether we should confront her with it directly, or just see how things go whilst keeping a close eye on her, or should make an appointment with a counsellor or what. She's such a lovely lovely girl and we love her so much, it's so awful to know that she's so unhappy.
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11 yr old so unhappy - how can we let her know it will pass?
12 replies
HGG48 · 26/11/2013 02:01
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alpinemeadow ·
26/11/2013 07:05
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