I’m worried sick that my nine-year-old daughter is self-harming
DEAR DEIDRE: I RAN my little girl a shower last night and was horrified to see some marks on her arms. It looks like she’s self-harming.
She’s nearly nine and has just gone to middle school. She finds it difficult to process verbal information.
We are waiting for some assessments as she never really fitted in at her previous school.
She found it hard to make friends because she struggles to understand what other kids are saying, so it may seem as if she’s ignoring their requests to play.
It was the headmistress who raised concerns with us, but the tests haven’t been carried out yet and she’s moved schools. We thought she may have hearing problems but it wasn’t that.
When I saw the marks on her body, she looked so ashamed so I patted the scratches gently, wrapped her in a towel and held her close. We then lay on her bed while I read to her.
I didn’t feel it was the time to start quizzing her about what the marks were. I’m her mum and I’m 34 but I feel ill-equipped to deal with this.
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DEIDRE SAYS: That’s so tough. Self-harm is a way of dealing with emotional pain so my guess is that she’s feeling isolated and down.
If she’s finding it hard to process when people are talking to her, she may have sensory overload.
This can be a symptom of ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) or an auditory processing disorder where she’s finding it difficult to disseminate speech from noises around her.
You can read more about it through our NHS (nhs.uk/conditions/auditory-processing-disorder/).
Do talk to your GP and her new school to see if you can speed up her assessments.
It may help her if you could talk to her about particular friends who she likes and invite them home for play-dates separately so that she can form a bond one-to-one with less interruption from outside.
