Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi all,
I just joined this group to try and find some help and resources for my older daughter. We've not had a formal diagnosis for yet, but she's 18, and as a family, we have long suspected she may be on the spectrum. She is gifted academically and has always felt more developmentally advanced than her peers, which is where the problems come in. From primary school onwards she has struggled to make and maintain friendships and has low self-esteem as a result. She has self-harmed in the past.
We were really hoping that university might bring about a change and that she would 'find her people'. She started uni in September and this has not been the case. She has been through about 4 different 'friend' groups, with the same result: it starts well enough, then after a week or two, she gets ditched: they start making arrangements without her and ignoring her messages. Currently, she goes to classes, goes to the gym, then back to her room, alone. It's heartbreaking.
I've searched up the uni's autism support services this morning and it looks like they have some good resources that may help. But if anyone can give me some advice about what next steps we should take, I'd be most grateful. If you have any questions about our daughter that you feel might add context please ask.
TIA!
Is she trying hard to act ‘normal’? I found I didn’t really get a social life at uni till I found people I could stop acting normal around.
is she generally introverted or extroverted? I don’t mean is she out going or a social butterfly. Does she generally come away from social situations feeling tired or energetic.
if she’s extroverted she might try some of the ‘noisy’ nerdy society's. Anime, sci-fi, video gaming. If she’s more introverted she may prefer quieter ones like table top gaming, LARPing, chess etc. the important thing is that she picks a club with a lot of people who behave in ways that might be described as weird or odd. Its easier to fit in if your quirks seem less extreme than the people around you.
Hi Peter, thanks for responding!
My daughter is generally quite introverted - she talks about her 'social battery' running out after time with people. If she is on the spectrum, as her mum and me - and her - suspect she is, then she's very high functioning. She masks it well, but I think that her peers, who would have no idea she might be on the spectrum, feel that she comes across as aloof or 'fake'. Internally, she's desperate to connect with them, but struggles to know how.
We've reached out to the uni for some support and are waiting to hear back, and in the meantime are trying to encourage her to look for groups where she might find some like-minded people. It just feels like she's stuck in a really bad place at the moment, away from home for the first time and there are limits on what we can do to improve things for her quickly. It's really hard.
This basically reinforces my view that for autistic people very often getting a social life is about finding the right group of people or the right scene rather than learning how to behave a certain way.
masking can help you cope and manage with superficial relationships but for meaningful deep friendships you have to be able to be yourself. which means the people around you have to tolerate your weirdness in a social setting.