Self Harm in Children

Over the 10 years of teaching I have come across a range of pupils and the way they see themselves when it comes to work.

You have pupils who really work hard and have pressure to achieve from either themselves or their families.

I have also seen pupils who watch the room and put themselves under pressure because they feel that they are behind the rest of the class in what they’re doing.

In both cases I have seen one thing time and time again:

Self-Harm.

I know that I have only worked with Primary School aged children but it is alarming how many self-harm. (One pupil as young as 5)

The truth is that there is no real statistics to measure by because so much of it is kept quiet, missed or ignored but according to ChildLine self-harm calls have increased by 41% in the last 2 years.

Recently I was teaching a 9 year old pupil; they are lovely, fun and friendly and in so many ways a stereotypical child of their age. They’ve been playing the piano for just over a year and have shown great promise within their ability. However, two weeks in a row they started to show ‘Negative’ behaviour traits and hence why I wanted to write this post.

Every time they played a note wrong or made a significant move to the wrong place they stopped and hit themselves on the head often with the phrase “I’m an idiot”.

Now I know when you look at it you won’t necessarily see this as self-harm.

You might see this as is a child giving themselves a bit of a telling off because they wants to do better; something that I am sure we all do when we are trying to achieve something under pressure.

In the second week of doing this I stopped the lesson and asked why they were doing this and the answer was “I just can’t get it right, I’m rubbish” I did take time to talk to them, encourage and eventually we stopped what we were doing and did the remainder of the lesson with fun exercises. (Something we always do but not for the majority of the lesson)

Self-harm can take lots of physical forms, including hitting themselves, cutting, burning, bruising, scratching, hair-pulling, poisoning and overdosing. The problem is that it is the extremes that we usually think of, isn’t it?

The horrible truth though is that it has to start somewhere.

The NSPCC say:

“There are many reasons why children and young people try to hurt themselves. And once they start, it can become a compulsion. That's why it's so important to spot it as soon as possible and do everything you can to help.”

Rather than being a cry for attention or a suicide attempt, self-harm is usually a way for young people to release overwhelming emotions: Loneliness, sadness, anger or lack of control over something.

Sometimes it can be a way for them to punish themselves for something they've done or have been accused of.

Something like hitting yourself because they have done something ‘wrong’ is such a minor thing when we look at a list that mentions cutting or poisoning and I don’t want to take away from the severity of these. However, I do just want to highlight that children don’t, always, jump from being happy to cutting; I know I didn’t!

 “There are links between depression and self-harm, and quite often a child or young person who is self-harming is being bullied, under too much pressure to do well at school, being emotionally abused, grieving or having relationship problems with families or friends.”

We are living in a world where Homework seems to be pilling up, extracurricular activities seem to fill a lot of ‘home time’ and scoring children with exams is now something that is being pushed in schools to ‘keep up’ or ‘increase’ the performance of the school altogether; these all have their place and if it wasn’t for extracurricular activities then I would be out of a job.

For me the pupil’s well-being comes first.

I have two main rules that my pupils must know:

1. Music is Easy

2. Music is Fun.

I don’t take pupils who want grading because I want the pupil to enjoy playing as much as I do; with graded tests I’m not really sticking to rule 2.

The exact reasons why children and young people decide to hurt themselves are not always clear. In fact, they might not even know exactly why they do it; it could be their own added pressure or something that they have witnessed.

I know there are situations that can’t, necessarily, be avoided such as SATs, 11+ Exams and Homework. Amongst it all remember the fun and make sure they have an enjoyable outlet to the pressure that’s on them.

Think of things they can do well and be praised for; it doesn't matter, as long as they enjoy doing it.

If you would like to know more or would like advice on this please follow the links below.

NSPCC Home

NSPCC Self-Harm

ChildLine