10 year old daughter

I am a single parent and was very close to my 10 year old daughter.  She made various allegations against me which have mostly been false and have not been substantiated.  She went into foster care 6 months ago (have never been involved with social services before) and could have returned home to me months ago but refused and carried on making further allegations against me.

She has recently had unsupervised overnight stays with me, and we got on extremely well, she would not take a bath or sleep unless I stayed with her.  She is now about to be returned home but she does not really want to.

All this has been devastating.  Even Social Services are puzzled.  Sometimes mothers leave there children, but it is very unusual that a child of this age leaves her mother and would prefer to stay in a foster home.

Why should be behaving like this when our relationship has always been so loving.  (We had just moved house, and she had started to grow breasts which she was not happy about not longer after we had moved - don't know if this would have anything to do with her rejection of me)




This discussion is related to Can a 10 year old have Separation Anxiety?.

[margypops]

Could you share the reason she was removed from your care in the first place, what the allegations were,?

[goodatit]

Thanks very much for your reply.  

She had to dress up as a story book character for school one day.  That morning she needed a saftey pin for her cloak and I knew she had some in her bedroom in one of her boxes she kept Knicks and Knacks in.  (A couple of days before this, computer keys had gone missing from my laptop - a total of 5), and I found them that morning in her box.  We were in a hurry to get to school, but told her I had found the keys and said I would talk to her that evening.  

Just as we were setting off for school she said that she needed to draw some whiskers on her face, I gave her an eye pencil of mine and she went to the bathroom to draw them on.  As she was taking such a long time and the time was getting on I went to the bathroom to hurry her on, and found she had black all over her face, as she had drawn the whiskers on and had not been satisfied with the result and tried to rub them off.  I made the mistake of laughing - she went ballistic -  really angry and crying, that I'd laughed.  I did think I'll have to take her into school late as she was so upset, but ended drawing the whiskers on myself and just got her on the school bus on time at the top of the road.  

I will always regret the decision that I did not give her time to calm down and did not take her into school late as that was the beginning of a nightmare.  Then bus driver asked her what was wrong and she told him that I had beaten her.  At about 3 p.m. Social Services and the police arrived - I was driven by them to the hospital where I had to sign papers for her to have a full examination.  Obviously there were no marks on her, but the police/social services said that they wanted to take her foster care and were going to ask her to undertake a video interview to take the case to court.

She refused to do the video interview, but I had to undergo a police interview for 2 hours.  - they took 2 months before they got back to me to say they were not going to pursue the case any further.  

In the meantime at her foster home she has made further allegations against me such as I am making faces at her when the Social workers are not looking, (quite a list of things) etc.,

She has recently had overnight stays at home and we have got on very well,  In the presence of her foster carers or a social worker, she takes on a withdrawn frightend stance and has actually told them she is frightened of me.  During her unsupervised stay with me, her foster mother has dropped her off as a sullen frightend looking little girl, and as soon as I close the door she becomes her usual animated happy self, shouting and singing etc.,  Unfortunatly I have had to secretley tape record/video her and show social services the complete change in her when no one is around,

She is coming back home full-time soon, (after 6 months) but if she makes anymore allegations against me, the police could be involved again, and she could be taken away for good.  I have almost had a break-down over this, and don't know why she has been doing all this.

[jdtm]

Have you considered borderline personality disorder?  One of the best sites on the internet is Facing the Facts - www.bpdfamily.com - perhaps the issue is not you; but her.  And, it could be the result of her "disorganized" mind that she truly believes these things happened to her  (does she lie easily and remember situations and people incorrectly?).  Those with BPD often demonstrate "splitting" - meaning that the sufferer worships someone for some time and then, due to a small and/or perceived infraction, the sufferer now considers this person to be evil or of no value.  Ten years of age is very young for this disorder to manifest itself, but it is not unheard of  Actually, I hope that your daughter does not suffer from BPD or a similar personality disorder - they can be devastating.  Nonetheless, it is a possibility ...