There has been a big debate in the media regarding a young girl being given a sterile Bic razor blade so she could self harm.
She is on the spectrum and this occurred at her school, which caters for 7-19 year olds who have Aspergers or higher functioning autism.
According to the report, the school and her own mother had made an agreement that she would be allowed to self harm.
The incident in debate had her going to the toilet with a sterile Bic razor, whilst two teachers stood outside and checked on her every two minutes. Her wounds were then cleaned and dressed.
This only became news after other staff made a complaint about this action.
J has self harmed before. I have written about it on here. Head banging until he made himself bleed.
He has also used scissors to cut the ends of his fingers, smashed his head through several panes of glass, scratched himself raw, bitten himself, and made himself sick.
We had a psychologist who visited the house, and tried to work through it.
It made no difference.
I've said before that J cannot answer questions, or communicate with words what he is feeling, and the input from the professionals was not relevant or helpful due to the severity of his autism.
His school had better ideas and help. Their ideas did not involve giving him scissors to cut himself, or letting him head bang a wall until he made his head bleed. They intervened and talked him through, calming him, if he was hyper, or distracting him if it was just him wanting the sensory aspect.
J has severe autism and learning difficulties. This young girl has Aspergers, the higher end of the spectrum, where speech and understanding is generally better than J's.
If myself and J's school could work together in stopping his self harm, why wouldn't this girls school? Even if they had tried the talking or distraction approach to no avail, they should have continued on, or tried another no harming method.
I can speak from personal experience of being a self harmer. I started around the age of 9, but to me it wasn't wrong, it just felt good to do. I continued for many many years, but my reason for doing it was from a long term childhood trauma. .
I rarely talk about my self harm as there is such a stigma attached to it, usually by those that have never had a self harm thought in their life. It is like a dirty secret.
So I can see all sides of this debate.
But I just cannot agree that giving a child the tool to self harm can be of any long term benefit.
You can read the article here
