Published on 12, July, 2020
Our daughter has recently been diagnosed as ASD, probably Aspergers at the age of 16.
We never suspected this and it came as a complete surprise when a counsellor our daughter was seeing suggested she might be on the spectrum.
I've worked with children on the spectrum and didn't for one minute consider my child might be ASD.
Went through CAMHS process, convinced that at most they would say she had autistic traits however they offered her a diagnosis.
I find myself questioning how we got to this position and feeling the need to justify the diagnosis to people I know.
Anyone else felt like this?
This sounds so much like the position we are in!
Our daughter was diagnosed with ASD (would have been Aspergers if our county still used that) a few weeks before her 16th birthday. The referral came from CAMHS because she wasn't responding to CBT; she had been experiencing extreme anxieties for three or four years which is why she was under CAMHS. We had not noticed any traits; the things that were highlighted on her assessment were just things about her such as her advanced vocabulary (all our kids have advanced vocabulary; I am a teacher and believe in encouraging good word choice). Since her diagnosis (just over a year ago), some traits have become more obvious but we have wondered if that's because she thinks she ought to be acting in a certain way.
We are more worried that her diagnosis has been used to justify her anxieties and that we've been told there isn't really anything that can be done about them as they're due to ASD; it seems like a cop out! We have told very few people about her diagnosis as we had quite a few bad responses when we were only aware of her anxiety problems; people telling us that she needed to just get on with things, grow up, not be pandered to ... I am sure you know the sort of thing! I don't want any extra negativity thrown at her as a result of her diagnosis. Having said that, she knows her diagnosis and she knows that she can tell whoever she wants; it's all about her, after all.
It's just a thought, having ASD myself, but perhaps the fact that your daughter's traits have become more obvious since her diagnosis is a good sign. It may be that, with her new diagnosis, she's starting to feel more comfortable being herself. Perhaps 'masking' less than she used to feel she had to. If this is the case, those times she's able to relax more and be herself could be helping to ease some of her anxieties.