Step-daughter (12) shows overwhelming signs of BPD

[leviathansmiles]

Hi, all! Thank you for being here. I just finished reading Walking on Eggshells and am looking to continue that path to support.

I know 12 is young for diagnosis, but it's really explained so much. In addition to strongly embodying six of the nine DSM criterion (and showing early signs of a seventh), after reading the book, I could see so many of our conversations and her behaviors directly mirrored.

Things have long been difficult, with the unexplainable outbursts, extreme reactions to small (or completely imagined) slights, but in the past six months or so, they have ramped up to a great degree.

She's in therapy. After a few months of it, we had an emergency session when the school called, saying another parent had reported her posting disturbing things on social media: pictures of herself crying, pictures of scratches on her arms, posts about hating her life and wondering what the point of life was.

A second emergency session came just a week later, when my husband and I were about to head out of the house, she whispered to our son (14), "I could kill you in your sleep and no one would ever know." She insisted, alternately, that she was kidding and that we had heard her wrong, and wound up still leaving for a short while. When we got back, she had locked one of our small dogs in the bathroom, because she was "bothering" her. Her therapist, at this point, recommended she be evaluated by a psychiatrist.

The psychiatrist's evaluation in May, however, was brief at best, and seemed wholly focused on putting her on Prozac. We were originally against this, hoping instead for a deeper diagnosis (I was already thinking it was BPD at this point) and more targeted therapy.

However, things have continued to escalate. She had one week where she had several tantrums that lasted hours, one with absolutely no provocation other than self-imposed pressure over a short take-home quiz that she didn't know what to write for one answer. She was sobbing and pacing and hitting her head. We had her take a break and go sit in her room and at the last second, I had to tell her dad that we needed her to leave the door open, because I was worried she would hurt herself. We almost took her to the hospital before she finally started to calm down.

I just found out over the weekend that she's continued to threaten her brother. She's more than once threatened to kill him, reminding him that she "knows where the knives are." She tells him to kill himself. At one point she physically cornered him, and when he took her shoulders to move him out of the way, screamed out the window that she was going to call the police for sexual harassment.

My husband called to fill the prescription today, and despite my original serious concerns about putting her on medication, I'm now worried that the dose won't be high enough.

On top of worrying about her, which we all have been for awhile, it has become increasingly clear that we also have to worry about protecting the safety (emotional and physical) of our son, and our dogs, our house, and us.

She's already once accused my husband of hitting her. Luckily, it was a case where it was the middle of family gathering and everyone could see that he wasn't even within arm's reach of her. He didn't, and never would. But he spoke to her sharply (trying to keep her from harm when she wasn't being careful by the fire pit), and her immediate response was "WHY DID YOU HIT ME?" She's done the same thing to a lesser degree with her brother and the dogs. But the older she gets, and the more in the world she is, the bigger the risk is for her to be spreading those kinds of lies, or reacting in those violent ways.

But at school? She's fine. Her teachers think she's a delight. She has lots of friends. She splits with some of them, and sometimes in ways that I think are reflective of BPD, but sometimes just in ways that are reflective of being a young teen.

I have been doing what I can to take care of myself. I go to yoga, and my fellow yogis support me well. My husband is my best friend. My dad and I are close, and he knows the situation, as does my daughter's maternal grandmother.

Anyways, I could go on and on all day. But it has helped so much reading about BPD and tools for handling the conflicts that arise from it, so I'm hoping that talking some of them out here might help too.

So thanks to you all for sharing your stories. And hello!

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[Blueskyday]

This almost mirrors my own experience except the emotional cruelty and animal cruelty came later. My dtr was 10 when my troubles began. She started her period on her 11th birthday so I think hormones played a part too. She was never verbally violent. She gave me hell at home but was a star pupil at school. My name and reputation have been in tatters for 18yrs. Everyone who knows her things I am a monster, except the ones who know me.

She did other things. I caught her online Catfishing a man as 2 ppl. then at 14 she was communicating with a 33yr old man. I called him and threatened him with the police. This man told me she said she lived with a violent partner so couldn't speak on the phone. He thought she was an adult. I believed him!

I have another close family member however with BPD. I think that's where this came from in my own child. I saw her shake a baby as a teen when we were babysitting, got pregnant at 13. She took drugs and abandoned 2 sets of kids and 3 husbands. Your stepdaughter sounds more like my Mothers other daughter. I truly believe this woman was a psychopath having lived with her in and out of my life with her until I was 30.

If it were me I would seek a second opinion

[leviathansmiles]

Thanks so much for sharing your story!

Her therapist has also suggested that her upcoming period might be what's ramped this up lately (she has not yet had it, but has early signs).

I also wanted to get a second opinion with a different psychiatrist (in addition to her therapist, who she continues to see), but my husband is reluctant because of the wait to see someone new, and because of the strain of the initial appointments. I think he blames himself, because of the amount of time he raised her on his own. But this isn't a matter of poor parenting (our son is is such a tremendous person with a beautiful heart, just like his dad!). I think it would ease things for him so much if the situation could be named and addressed as something outside of his control, and hers, and work from there, but I think it's hard on him to go there.

I'm very worried, though, about how much more this could escalate.

I could very much see her going down the catfishing road just like your daughter did, because of the nature of what I saw on her social media (what I could see anyways... she deleted her Snapchat before we took her iPad to increase the restrictions on it, since that was one she'd been expressly forbidden of using... and because she did that, it just means she logs onto it from her friends' devices). So far, it seems more fishing for sympathy/attention/platonic affection, but I could see that escalating to sexual attention very rapidly. She's already had three boyfriends (which she's denied to me, but is common knowledge around the school), and was the subject of a rumor of either having sex with or being raped by another young boy, resulting in yet another phone call from the school. It was determined to absolutely just be a rumor. But part of me couldn't help but wonder if it wasn't a rumor that she started herself.

And she's already asked to take babysitting classes, which we told her she could not do. Because of the way she handles her own conflicts, and the fact that we can't even fully trust her with the dogs without her brother there, there's just no way she could be trusted with the safety of a child for the very reason you mentioned with your other BP family member, despite how good she is with younger family members at gatherings. Another incident with the dogs was when she and her brother were in separate schools, and she got home about a half an hour earlier than her brother, she put our more boisterous dog in his harness and leashed him tightly to a closed door, then went in her room and put on headphones and closed the door and wouldn't hear him cry. After that, we had to have her just leave him in his kennel until her brother got home. Toddlers are even more unruly and unmanageable than dogs. I appreciate her wanting to build responsibility, make her own money, and do more than just watch tv, but I just couldn't agree to that.

[wendydarling]

Hello leviathansmiles

 

I join Blueskyday welcoming you to the community, And Hello  

I commend you for digging deeper to understand the complexity of your young daughter's behaviour, as you say it's escalated these last 6 months, what next and how can you support your son.

Here in the UK National Society for the Protection of Children advise children under 13 should not be left at home alone for long periods and children under 16 should not be put in charge of younger children. Here I'd be personally legally liable if anything happened  (my DD is now 29, I'm past it  ) Are you able to cite similar, so your daughter understands, it's what most parents follow as good practice and it's not a trust issue (though it partially is) that may further undermine how she feels? How we communicate using the tools we learn to your right   can help improve the relationship. Have a look at SET Support, Empathy, Truth (your truth), see how you can apply it to situations you've had to deal with.

I'm sorry you think your husband may be blaming himself ~ that's a hard place to be and one for him to work through to a better place with his learning, while he's not keen on moving therapist yet have you considered you both consulting a BPD specialist to support the two of you both managing your daughter, helping you husband understand he's done nothing wrong (I'm a single parent   and how you can help your son?

I'm glad you've joined us, the wonderful parents here and the amazing resources have guided me to a better place, a GREAT place in fact, and I wish that for you  

WDx

[leviathansmiles]

Thanks for the welcome, wendydarling!

In the US, at least where I am, you can start babysitting for a couple of hours at age 11. Oftentimes these are more "mother's helper" roles, where the mother is in and out with errands while the young babysitter is with the kids. So it's technically an option, and something her friends do, and again, something other adults tell her she'd be perfect for when she's toddler-wrangling at weddings, so unfortunately, not only can we not cite regulations against it (a tool we've used when restricting access to certain apps with minimum age requirements in their ToS), but she's getting the opposite reinforcement to her case from other adults. :/

I would very much like to involve a BPD specialist. She's presently undiagnosed, and my husband is very worried her being stigmatized by such a diagnosis, and hasn't pushed with her therapist to have her evaluated for BPD specifically, despite that he agrees that all signs point to that. I feel like the stigma is a small price to pay for having therapies (and medications) targeted for that specifically. So much of what I've read say that giving kids suffering with this the tools to handle it early on can set them up well to handle it more effectively in adulthood. (And if nothing else, it's a slight protection for us and our son if she ever does decide to really take the false accusations to the school or police.)

We'll get there eventually.  I think part of his reluctance is also because she goes back and forth with her splitting with him. He has periods of still being idealized (though fewer and fewer as things have escalated), where her brother and I have been consistently on the "you hate me, i won't even try" end of the spectrum for several months. So I think when she swings into the cheery, adoring version of herself with him, he thinks, well, maybe she is getting better, maybe something is working. I can only imagine how much harder that much be. I just need to be patient and loving as he comes to this on his own terms, since he's been with her since birth, and not just the last four years.

I've been slowly but surely working through the resources here, and am so grateful! It's very empowering, both in terms of giving me new tools and ideas, as well as validating some of the things I've just tried on my own. Not to mention the sense of comfort that comes with finding a community of people who have experienced the same thing. Virtual hugs can go a long way. :D