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Worried about 2yo daughter

liamw879

Hi I'm new here after finding this website on google.

My daughter is 2 years old and I'm not with her mother anymore. She had meningitis at 3 months old. So she has had every follow up check from hearing to speech since that time.

I didn't see my daughter for nearly 2 years afterwards. So I'm just getting used to seeing her more again on my own. Basically my concern is that she has autism and that I'm the only person to have recognised this!

I wrote a list of the things that I have noticein every time that I see her ranging from no eye contact to repeating the same nursery rhymes over and over.

I feel that I'm in a bad situation because her mother and me don't really get along and she never tells me anything. So does anybody know a way to go about it without arguments about how I'm wrong When really I'm very concerned and know it needs to be tackled early! 

Thanks x

  • It sounds as though you are in a really tricky situation and are clearly very worried about your daughter. I think the best thing to do here is:

    (1) contact your daughters health visitor - they are usually based at your local health centre. explain your concerns and request they complete their 2 year check (development assessment) and 'chat' assessment. If they recognise the same behaviours / concerns they will discuss with mother about referrals on to local teams for further assessment (usually a speech and language therapist and paediatrician - specialist children's doctor). 

    (2) quickly enrole her in a day nursery. Staff there can play the impartial role between you and your daughters mother. They will quickly identify the behaviours you describe if she exhibits them in their setting and have a duty to feedback their concerns to parents and seek advice from Area Special Educational Needs CoOrdinators (SENCO). Make sure you build your own relationship with the nursery staff at pick up / drop offs even if only once a week and liaise with them by telephone. it is usually really helpful to arrange regulat meetings between both parents and nursery staff to openly discuss progress and concerns. Be involved as much as you can. 

    Hope this is useful?

    linzi 

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  • Hi again - sorry, but I don't know what to advise, apart from keeping up + hopefully improving your relationship with your daughter's mother.  I don't know if your Dr is also your child's dr.  A lot of GPs don't know much at all about autism anyway.  If her mother has custody then decisions would be up to her, I wd presume.  If your daughter goes to nursery they may pick up on any behavioural issues as time goes by + alert her mother. 

  • I spoke to her mother after I posted this yesterday.

    her mother reckons that it's because she doesn't know me, she's been seeing me week in week out since September. My mum works with people with autism so I can see the signs. Basically she's formed it off. I don't really know where to take it from now as I have strong concerns regarding the whole thing.

    would it be best to make an appointment with my doctor and explain my concerns or would that make it worse?

    thanks for your reply

  • Hi - have you + her mother got anyone you both trust to act like a go-between?  I don't know if your daughter has autism or not, that would be decided after she'd been assessed.  Also she had meningitis so I don't know how that may have affected her in the longer term.  It is possible that her mother may have concerns, whether or not she tells you.  If you feel it would all end in arguing if you raised your concerns then analyse your relationship + see if you can approach things differently from usual in the hope it might avert the discussion deteriorating.  If you think that whatever you do, raising it will turn out badly, then perhaps making off the cuff remarks, such as mentioning how she doesn't make eye contact might open things up a bit.  You could ask if she looks directly at her mother, for example.  You could ask if her mother thinks your daughter might be shy.  Perhaps not mentioning autism first off might work better, to get a conversation going?