Hello, Sorry for the long post.
I am the father of a 19 year old Autistic daughter.
My daughter is 19 and has recently had a confirmed diagnosis of Autism. It was clear from an early age she had Autism and it was mentioned to me and my wife when she was in pre-school. We saw it in the patterns of her behaviour and whenever she got excited she flapped. We have always accepted her as she is and when she was young we would help by letting her know when changes would happen in advance. When she was 8 years old around the same time as a death in the family she had an assessment at CAMHS and they said she had traits but there was no confirmation. For the years following we persisted and following a fast track diagnosis recently she had a confirmation. We all wanted this and we all believed having this would open up additional support for all of us.
Since sometime last year from when she finished secondary school to now many things have got worse. I want to focus on one specific issue at a time because as well as helping myself and my wife we believe it will allow her to grow in herself too.
She goes to bed at nearly 3am. It has got gradually worse over the year from 11pm to 3am. My wife and I have tried many things to change this from moaning (which gets us all frustrated), to praising, and at times it has changed but it's momentary at most a couple of weeks at a time and then it goes back to how it was
In addition to this she gets up much later. It used to be 7am but is now regularly 11am. The whole of her day is shifted with meal times later. She seems to spend most of her time on her phone/tablet which she says is part of her routine. When it comes to around 1pm she'll get ready and takes at least 2.5 hours doing various things as part of that so is ready around 4pm. Sometime in the evening when she chooses, probably around midnight, she has a shower and gets ready for bed which takes 2.5 hours again along with around 1hour alone in the shower.
We want to change this because it will then open up the day more for her. We hope it will make it easier to go to any appointments including in the morning and we hope she'll eventually be able to get out and eventually get a job with support. In addition to this my wife is the one who is the most impacted by this as during getting ready my daughter will shout out 'where is ..' and 'I am ready for my tea now...' so my wife's life is also shifted and we are all feeling drained. The shifting of the time and how long things take means we can't go stay overnight at my mum's anymore.
We have tried to engage with her but more recently her attitude is that we are not qualified and we don't understand and we are not autistic and therefore we can't help yet she asks us for help and then goes on to dismiss what we suggest with responses such as 'I can't do that' or 'that will not work' and 'I need simple step by step actions'. We are due to go to a Autism support group near us which has 1-to-1 chats but she is questioning if they are qualified and if they'll be able to help. She also says that moaning or praising makes no difference to whether she wants to do something or not. We often ask why and she doesn't know. She wants explanations as to why to do something otherwise she often dismisses it.
When she is on her phone she says she is researching about autism to understand herself as well as to help relax.
So I am reaching out for help.
What can we do to make some progress here?