Step daughter self harming

I think its high up on the list of parents worse nightmares. A phone call from the school saying there has been a report that your child is self harming. For us it was the second time we received such call. I guess I should start from the beginning.....

My step daughter (lets call her Lizzie)  is 12. She has mild learning difficulties. Her mum died 15 months ago. She has a new step mum (me) and her best mate became her step sister. She moved 100 miles away from where she grew up and changed schools.

She has had a tough few years.

Just before she changed school we had a phone call saying a student had reported that she was self harming. The school looked into it and decided it was untrue. There were no signs of her doing it so we put it behind us.

Her behavior has been testing to say the least. She had not been taught any basic hygiene and trying to teach her has proved difficult. She HATED being told what to do, or even being asked to do something. She would lie and cut corners. She would stomp and give attitude. But with perseverance and a lot of patience we started to see a difference. She wasn't perfect but what 12 year old is?!

About 4 weeks ago she started playing up again. It would have been her mums birthday at the beginning of the month which would explain the change in her. We have encouraged her to talk about it and she has spoken to her elder sister about it. However she is obviously struggling to deal with the emotions. We have found out that she has punched a wall twice when she has got angry with people. She is being quite hurtful to me, I guess because she sees me as trying to replace her mum. Today we received a phone call from her school. A parent has phoned up with a concern that Lizzie is self harming. I am happy that she has a friend that was switched on enough to tell her parents, and that the parents cared enough to report it. Anyway the school spoke to her and she denied it; however she did admit that she did it at her previous school. We all think that if she lied about it at her last school then the chances are she is lying now too.

There are no signs of self harm. She wears an elbow length sleeve at school so teachers can see that her arms are fine. We feel this is more about attention than actual harming. She often lies and makes things up to get attention so maybe this is just one step further.

We have arrange a meeting with the school after half term to address how to progress. I feel maybe a referral to CAMHS and an Ed Psych would be good. I can honestly say I  have no idea how to deal with this. I don't know what to do to make it better for her. Becoming a step mum to a child with learning difficulties has been a challenge and I'm still learning how to do it. Maybe if I was her real mum then I would know how to make her feel better or how to teach her how to manage her emotions better. Or maybe none of us know how to deal with things like this, we just have to learn on the job so to speak.

I would love to hear any advice you have. Not just about the self harming but also just generally coping with being a mum to a child who thinks differently to me.

I will keep you updated.
TTFN
K


Just a quick update ....
Before I got chance to post this we, and Lizzie's elder sister, have had a few chats with her. She admitted to us for the first time that she did self harm at her old school due to bullying. She had never mentioned the bullying before but we suspected it was happening. She also admitted that she was 'scratching' her thump with some scissors at school last week. She says she wasn't self harming, she just had an itch!

We also discovered she had decided that she wants to live with her sister. We explained that children don't get to choose who they live with and gave a few examples why it wasn't a practical idea.

We advised the school of the above and they have asked us to take her to our GP to ask for a referral to CAMHS and counselling.