About My Daughter

6 August 2018 at 23:18

The youngest of my three children; the baby of the family.

Always a loving, affectionate child and in turn was loved by many. She was popular at her primary school and had many friends.

Both of the girls loved to dance and were involved in performing arts from the age of five. She took many different styles of dance classes growing up; ballet, flamenco and street dance to name but a few. She also excelled at gymnastics, winning medals at her first competition.

She loved art and design, making things, crafting and colouring in. She had subscription to an adult colouring magazine which she enjoyed doing. The concentration required maybe helped to relax and switch off from the world around her.

She was certainly more creative than academic and this bothered her, she truly believed that she was stupid but of course I disagreed with this and always encouraged her to follow her aspirations, telling her that everyone has different strengths and creativity was hers, along with her caring and considerate nature.

Family was also very important to her and she enjoyed attending our get togethers and celebrations. The wall in her room in Brighton was covered in pictures of her family and close friends. She also loved children and often helped out family with the younger ones. Children were drawn to her and her sense of fun.

We were very close and spent a lot of time together, but things changed once she had spent a couple of years at her secondary school.

It was not my first choice as I did not want her to attend a single sex school. Her brother and sister both attended our local mixed sex school. However, she wanted to go to be with her then best friend, so I reluctantly agreed to this. Unfortunately, her friends’s mother died soon after they started there and the child moved away. My daughter felt this loss of her friend very keenly and subsequently felt that she struggled making new friendships and constantly complained about being bullied. The school were very unhelpful in dealing with her complaints and she became so distressed at having to attend that I decided to withdraw her from there and home educate her, something I had previously and successfully done with my son and something I felt confident in doing.

Unfortunately the bullies followed her out of school, offered her false friendship and that was that. She started mixing with these unsavoury characters, telling me that it was safer to be accepted by them rather then being their victim. She started sneaking out and staying out at night despite the boundaries that I had put in place. Every time she went out without my permission, I got into my car and scoured the streets looking for her.

Most, if not all, of these young people were under the care of social services and consequently seemed to have more freedom than my daughter was allowed, as well as more money from the allowances and benefits they received. She started to question why I had to work when a lot of her friend’s families relied on benefits and were at home. At that time I was working part time as a driving coach and this involved working every Sunday although I was always home in the early evening.

Eventually I did resign from this job to be home more often but by then she wanted to be out with her friends.

By then she had developed a negative attitude towards life and learning. I believe that her worsening behaviour was mainly a result of the traumatic experience she experienced at Secondary School and influenced by links established during her time there. I know she felt resentful that I had not withdrawn her sooner but it would have been logistically impossible due to my working hours at the time.

After this, I did start to have a few concerns about her mental health, she had quite severe mood swings which left me feeling as if I had to tread on eggshells around her.

Unfortunately this challenging behaviour wasn’t fully addressed as her natural cheeky charm always won people over.

I know that she felt very let down by the various agencies who were meant to be supporting her and making unfulfilled promises.

Her father and I split up when she was three, and she always longed for him to be more present in her life.

I was reluctant to let her go to Brighton to live with her father but thought it necessary to put some distance between her and these girls. Unfortunately she kept returning to London to visit various friends but at the time of her death she was still permanently living in Brighton.

She was a sensitive person and took things very much to heart. In an unsent card to her sister found in her room after her death, she expressed that she was trying to change but didn’t think she could. She said that she felt emotionally unstable and would keep her distance from her family until she was better. Tragically we did not realise the extent of her helplessness.

Thank you so much for reading.

If you enjoy reading Medium articles and would like to support me and other writers please consider subscribing by clicking on the link below.

Sending you lots of love and positivity.x.x.x.

Honeybee🌷🐝

Please follow me and read the next post here: