"I want to die" she said softly to me. She's 8 years old and has been living with her special needs brother for as long as she can remember.
She's said it before. Last time I called in the children's mental health team. They did a load of work around worries and it went away for a while, but sometimes it comes back.
This time, though I decided to deal with it differently. Instead of being rational, sensible, explaining the finality of her statement, I decided to let her see me cry. Not to make her feel guilty for saying it, but to really let her know how much I want her to be here.
"You're so busy with him," she says, "if I wasn't here then it would just be easier, you would have more time." She wants to die or to go and live with another family, at age 8 perhaps these two things can seem interchangeable.
I tell her that no family is perfect, that wherever she goes there will be problems of some kind, that she is really loved and fortunate in many ways, that I want her to stay and it upsets me to hear that she wants to leave us.
Finally, when we are both in tears, she stops hiding her face and jumps into my arms. "I'm going to stay now," she says at last.
Special siblings. They tolerate a lot, they cope so well. But sometimes it has unintended consequences, and sometimes we both cry.
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