I'm sorry your daughter is going through this. I can say that so much has crossed my mind as far as what to do next. My mother brings me back down and says that I have to make her live life to make her strong and not a victim. I also wanted to start homeschooling when my daughter started feeling sick about going to school. I cried everyday because I worried what I was doing to her. It made me sick to drop her off at the doors and force her to keep going. Finally, things calmed down and she got used to it. I was glad that she figured things out for herself and realized that she has to keep going. I feel like she is stronger now from this experience. Just wanted to share with you and give you some hope.

I'm sorry this is happening. I wish I had lots of great advice for you. I am going through something a bit different, but totally relate to feeling alone and having no one to talk to. I do have a few people, but they are not sure how to respond and I hate burdening anyone with this heavy, heavy subject. All the concerned phone calls and messages I was getting at beginning of this mess have stopped. Anyway!!! I feel like if your daughter is having trouble dealing with school and is showing an interest in homeschooling, that might be a good idea. I was raped when I was a teenager and never told anyone until in therapy as an adult. I had a lot of problems as a result. At least you know what your daughter is dealing with and together you can work through this. She might not be receptive to counseling right now, but she knows that you care and she is getting tools she will be able to use when she's ready. I hope her new therapist is the perfect fit and she can begin healing. As for her being upset with you and how you are trying to act "normal", have you asked her what she needs from you? I'm sure she doesn't even know. Prayers and hugs for you and your sweet girl.

The beginning is the worst for you and then. My daughter was really young 3 when she started she also did not want to talk about it. Rather pretend it didnt happen. We had a huge family break which has affected all my kids. We homeschool and have continued. I tried to keep as many things normal as possible. She wouldn't do children's church anymore and I didn't force her to be away from me so she just say with us. So I flexed with things like that but again the age difference for us makes a difference in how you choose to handle things.

I would talk to her therapist about any changes especially like school. She will hopefully have some insight that will help you decide. It is going to take a lot of time but all,you can do is trust the process. It's far from perfect now but you will get there little by little.

Bonnie, I could have written much of your post above. My daughter was abused for about a year (?) when she was eight, but disclosed 16 years after the abuse. By then, she had received years of therapy for "depression and anxiety," to no avail. When she was 19, and 500 miles away in college, she was drugged and raped at a party, She tried to manage on her own with the university counseling services, but with such a long history of trauma, she was unable to stay in school, and came home, and went back into therapy with her child psychiatrist, who could no longer share her information. Unknown to us, he scheduled her for a random drug test, which came back "dirty." He recommended she attend an outpatient DBT program, and of course, we signed her right up. She told me that she had "discovered" at the program that almost all of the other patients had been raped or sexually abused. I didn't realize that they, too, were also all in the program because of drugs. After that program, she returned to college, and "regular" therapy, but it took learning that she was a full-blown addict and suicidal before we finally learned the truth about the source of her almost lifelong pain.

I'm repeating my story for a couple of reasons. One is to highlight how flawed mental health care can be -- forever treating the symptoms and not the cause, even though we KNOW that sexual abuse is a huge predictor of childhood depression and eventual drug abuse. Psychs truly should explore the possibility of sexual abuse as soon as possible when a child who was happy earlier in life suddenly presents with mysterious symptoms of depression, OCD, etc. There HAS to be a more effective way to lead the process of disclosure than the "let's see what she says" method most therapists employ.

That said, the other reason for telling my story is to let you know that, now that your daughter has disclosed, to some degree her healing is going to happen on her own schedule. Even after her disclosure when my daughter was in her early 20s, she, too, expressed regret about six months later that she had ever told us -- whereas OUR only regret about her disclosure is that she hadn't told us 16 years earlier. (STILL the "sexual abuse specialist" therapist we found for her danced around the issue of the sexual abuse, and didn't help her with it directly. It was absolute madness.) It has taken both shocks and slow steps over the past three years, but our daughter has begun to rebuild the sense of self she lost when she was eight. She is clean and sober now, and working hard at three jobs.

I say this to let you know that a straightforward healing is unlikely, and it is not within our control. But you know the truth now, while she is still young, and this intervention will likely ward off suicidal behavior. What else can you control? Make sure she gets to school, or gets her education in an alternative setting (home?), and help her with her homework, because she may find it too difficult to hold her act together to complete that part of the educational bargain. Read her textbooks and assignments with her, even if she can read perfectly well -- this way you'll have more to talk about than just the trauma, her school day and her psychological care, even if those things are at the top of your mind! Keep the school discussions light and adventure-filled -- "wow, I didn't know that!" "Gosh, I had completely forgotten what the Teapot Dome Scandal was all about," etc., rather than making work completion the focus. Interest in learning should be the focus. And it will give you lots to talk about that has nothing to do with her own pain, or yours.

I have to hop off now, but I hope this gives you some direction of how you can still guide your daughter during this very unsettling process.

MANY hugs. You and I would definitely be friends "in real life." Hang in there!

Naive.
The psych people - any one of them... If they have done any time working in inpatient child psych, they will tell you "it's all child sex abuse". In other words, maybe not ALL sex abuse but a ton of it correlates with it. They just don't have the courage to assert this - because perps are so retaliatory - they will only acknowledge it if it's obvious and documented / proven elsewhere.

The funny thing is my daughter tells me everything,or so I thought.She would say "Mom I was on my tablet when you told me to get off",she is not a good liar and I can usually tell when something is up,she acts weird.And even if she doesn't tell me she would ask questions"Mom how mad would you be if I got in trouble in school?" She is so obvious.But with this I had no clue,none.she hid it well.Not a flinch when at her well checks when the doctor asked those questions,not a thing to her therapist, her pastor,her school counselor.But she did tell 2 friends that I know of.Really good friends,friends that I think of as daughters.No one told me.I mean I seriously know when something is up.She went willingly to her grandparents home knowing he was there.She has been with the same therapist for 2+ years,she loves her,why didn't she tell? Her new therapist is really hitting some sore spots.

96, when I was in grad school a few years ago I observed at a residential treatment school that some students could only attend as day students. I learned that almost all of them had been sexually abused, which was really eye-opening, because I thought, how could there be so many -- a couple hundred -- kids in our small metropolitan area who had been sexually abused? One young boy whom I was asked to observe was a day student who sometimes went home to find that his rapists (father, brother) had been allowed to visit. He would come to school the next day with haunted, deadened eyes. I'd never seen such a look in a child's eyes...except that I had. After my daughter disclosed, I remembered how sometimes when I'd reprimand her for the usual childhood errors, her eyes would appear deadened; her abuser sometimes yelled at her and this was her response to anger. I recognize this now as the gaze of dissociation.

Bonnieboo11, it's a good sign, I think, that your daughter told friends -- at least she told someone! They didn't tell you because they were trying to be loyal friends -- I'll bet they thought your daughter would get in trouble if you knew. I don't think my daughter ever told a soul in 16 years. She appeared to be such a good girl, I hardly worried about her at all. It's sad to think now just how MUCH I should actually have worried about her. In fact, I think a lot of abused kids work very hard to appear perfect and beyond reproach, which means that they are indeed very good "liars" (although it's a lie meant to protect us parents, and to hide the shame they are feeling). Perhaps your daughter loved that therapist because she provided your daughter with a way to explore her feelings and self-doubt without coming right out and saying, "This is WHY I have these feelings."