Hi,
My name is Gem, i am new here and joined up for hopefully some advice with our situation as a family. ( unsure if this is the correct part of the forum to post in? )
We are a family of 5, my husband,myself and our 3 daughters ( aged 16,13 & 9 ) , we are a very settled, happy family with no major issues or problems and all generally get on very well, apart from the usual family sqabbles all families have.
But basically we are convinced our eldest daughter has ASD as she has always been different and has had tests in primary school by some specialists as they thought she had mild learning disabilities etc but nothing ever came of it apart from a little extra support through primary and secondary school. Shes coped ok with school and is due to take her GCSE's this year - so far it looks as though she will get decent grades ( C'S,D'S,E'S ) which are all passes. Although she has no interest in education and has never really enjoyed the learning part of school so its been a constant effort on our part to push and encourage her with homework and so on.
Autism or Apsergers were never mentioned to us by any of the specialists or teachers throughout her school life as they seemed to think she was doing ok, not as well as the rest in her class generally though.
It has only been as she has become older ( the last couple of years ) that we have decided to look into other possible causes to the way she is sometimes. And i stumbled upon ASD, she has so many of the signs and ways that i am pretty certain she has it. As it is becoming even more obvious as she gets older, people would put things down to shyness or being lazy for her ways in the past.
But my main question is - Is it worth us going to the Doctor to get her diagnosed officially?
We havent mentioned to her yet that we think she may have this as we have not wanted her to use it as an excuse for some of the normal teenage ways ( tantrums or being spoilt ) or for her to feel as though she is different in a bad way.
So we really dont know what to do, the last thing we want if for her is to be labelled or treated differently so she stands out and cant make new friends when she attends college in Sept. But we are so confused as to what to do next.
She has difficultly keeping friends, so now at 16 has no social life and tends to either watch tv all day or tag along with us and her little sister. She doesnt seem to have any desire to be independant or do things other 16 year olds seem to be doing.
Our 13 year old has a very busy social life and we hardly see her on the weekends as she is so busy!
Any advice with this would be appreciated as we are really very confused and dont know what to do for the best.
Thanks in advance
Gem 
