Hi I'm new to the forum unfortunately. Had my daughter (8) at the GP this morning where he has confirmed what I thought - that she probably has SRS. School about to do a referral to CAMHS.

So hi! Feeling I'll be on here quite a bit over the coming weeks/months/ hopefully not years.

Welcome to the Forum, Hillie.

There are a great bunch of people here, all at various stages, willing to lend support when we need it.

Just shout, and someone will be there for you.

Take care,

Simon

Hi Hillie

As Simon said ( wasn't there a game called that ?? ) there is always some one to listen to you in the good time and the not so good - we all understand what you are going through. How long has your daughter been refusing ? hopefully CAHMS will get it sorted for you quickly.

Sarah x

Hi Hillie,
As said already you will find a lot of support here.When I first found this forum I found it helpful to read through past posts.It give me good guidance from those who have been on this journey ahead of me....they truly know what you are going through! Simon has suggested in the past about keeping a record of your dates of meetings etc and I have found this to be invaluable.
Always here for you,
Take care ,Lindy x

Thanks everyone. I'm still in that kind of numb stage. She has been refusing since September and thankfully has only missed one day, which was a day when her brother was genuinely ill and no-one was going to win that battle. Silly thing is, I work within the LA's SEN service! How did I not see this coming? I have started a diary of things she does/says. We had an issue yesterday with going to Brownie's along the same lines... won't get into uniform, feeling sick, leg hurting = can't march... then when she got there was the flag bearer and was as happy as larry! I can't help thinking it's my fault too. My eldest daughter is a talented athlete and so takes up some of my time driving her here and there.

The Head doesn't seem to be taking it as seriously as the class teacher and the SENCO, but the CAMHS referral is going in anyway. Luckily, I work closely with the SEBD co-ordinator for the council. My best friend is a learning mentor and counsellor too so she has been sending me oodles of advice over the last 48 hours.


As for the CAMHS referral... take a ticket and form an orderly queue...

I'm sure I'll be more coherent soon.

Hi Hillie,

Welcome! Getting onto this early and getting the support in place is very helpful. We didn't find the right support for years and years as no one really believed me - so things escalated. If you can get some CBT for your daughter (and you) as soon as possible you might find some strategies to work with on a daily basis.

THis did also spread into my son's soccer - the leg pain - too tired - headache - etc. Try and just keep her going as once they start dropping out of other things they can become more and more reluctant to do thing outside of their comfort zone - although not all SRs are the same.

And the older they get - the harder it gets to convince or be firm about them going/attending. My son goes ok once he has been for a few days in a row - until the next time (having a bad time of it at the moment).
In the early days I was all caught up in the emotion and found I had little strength to know what to do. My son, however, in those early days had huge meltdowns. These days we seem to be able to work together eventually to convince him to push through and get there. Not sure that helps where you are but just to know the pattern can change when they are this young and your acknowledgement to your daughter that what she feels in a morning is real - and she does feel physically ill - can really help her. Reassure her that she is ok and she just has an extra flight or fight mechanism that kicks into place and needs to control it as best she can.

When my son was your daughters age - we called it 'The dragon'. And the dragon had this habit of taking him by surprise as he wanted him to stay home. But when the dragon was like this he wasn't being a good friend he was upsetting the body. So we talked about taming the dragon and talking to it so that it calmed down and would make him feel better.

When caught early - and with support - you will hopefully get on top of it and be able to manage it much better than my son.
We are here to help whenever we can.
Linda

Thanks, Linda, What you have said makes perfect sense to me. When I working with children with anger management issues we have the Red Beast who wakes up and needs help going back to sleep... lightbulb!

Thankfully, I work in the perfect place to try to get her some help. The CAMHS team have changed their referral procedures and it seems we may have to go to parenting classes before they will consider a referral. What the ???? I can see this being a major source of frustration.

It is the sleep disturbance I am finding the most difficult because there is little I can do about it. She's 8 years old, has been in bed since just before 8pm, it is now nearly 10pm and she is still awake. She just tootles about her room or just lies there struggling to get to sleep and not knowing why.

I'm trying to stay cool and calm. Trying to think about it in a professional capacity, actually! But this is my baby girl

Having read around, I am glad we have insisted she go to school etc. now apart from that one day she missed. She has avoided swimming but I put that down to her not being her sister (who swims) because she does diving and jiu jitsu, but now I can see this little pattern developing. It's interesting you have said that for your son it spread to other activities too. The SENCO at the school questioned whether she was agoraphobic because of this but it seems it isn't just solely school then!

Sigh... at the risk of sounding like a cheesey American film... I guess we're all in this together!

Hi Hillie,

We certainly are in this together!
My son also has sleep issues so I know what you are going through. They probably started about your daughters age (he is now 12) and I still struggle. He hates going to bed and then can't sleep. He once said it was because he doesn't want morning to come because that is when the anxiety hits worse. Trouble is - when they are tired - the anxiety is worse - and they can't see that. I battle every night because I think if I don't at least get him to bed before 10 - he'd try and stay up even longer. And he is tired next day - and it does effect his concentration - but he doesn't fall asleep in class.

My son also developed some anger issues which come and go depending on the severity of the anxiety. It is, I believe, frustration. Perhaps you have seen this kind of thing in your work too? The anger is always aimed at me - and the psychiatrist said that this was his frustration being taken out on the closest person. I keep my eye on it as I don't want it to worsen as he gets older - but he seems to be getting a bit better at calming down these days. And it is on and off - usually when he has anxiety over a specific thing and he doesn't tell me (ie giving a talk, a test etc). Usually, however, as you will see with your daughter, the anxiety can not be pin pointed - they just feel anxious in certain situations and cannot explain why. Exposure to those situations can help when they are young but then you also find that you can't battle with everything so just focus on a few. I learnt it was ok to let a lot of things slide and then feel really proud when he did something that other kids might take for granted.

Keep talking to us - it helps! This forum saved me. I cannot thank Simon enough for having set this up.
Linda

Well a little bit of good news this morning. School trip to the zoo today so we had a problem-free morning. Then I rang CAMHS to find out what hoops I'd have to jump through to get her the help she needs. They were surprised the GP told me to ask school to do the referral. Anyway it seems she will be put on the caseload when the referral goes in. Phew. I didn't dare ask how long the waiting time is! I think it is not too bad here though. Fingers crossed. I'm feeling pretty emotional today.

Hils

Sigh... The payoff for a good morning was a refusal to go to Brownies last night. Still awake until 10:30. So Not a great morning but she got to school in the end but i was late for work again. My boss has told me to take some time off if i need to but that will not help H if she knows im at home! She's been filling in her feelings diary and it makes for such sad reading :(

Meeting today at the school to fill in the CAMHS referral form. Glad that's over with. I held it together though thankfully. They are starting a meet and greet on Monday with the class TA who is lovely, in the hope that H might want to get to school if she knows someone is waiting for her because she so wants to please people when she is in school. So we'll monitor if there's any effect and review it if need be. Her class teacher is so lovely too.

Hope you've all had a good day

Hils x