Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi all I’m new here and don’t know what to do next. Last year I decided to ask for professional help with my daughters behaviour as I was worried and struggling with her meltdowns. She has major meltdowns over clothes, this has become more of a problem as she started school last September and has to wear a strict uniform. My gp refered us to cahms and the outcome from them has been to refer her to community paediatric as they suspect neurological or autism. So the gp referred her but it has been refused on the grounds of her being ok at school and learning inline with her Peers. My issue now is she seems to be able to contain herself at school but when she gets home she explodes and her meltdowns can last hours, I don’t know what to do anymore as she is getting worse and more angry. It’s so hard to watch and nothing I do or say helps her.
any advice would be much appreciated thank you in Advance
Hi, welcome to the forum.
I don’t have any personal experience in this area I’m afraid, so I’m not sure I’m qualified to help, but could the GP possibly refer your daughter again and explain that their reason for refusing the initial referral is unacceptable (which it is as many ASD children appear to cope well in school and high-functioning children would be expected to learn inline with their peers, and professionals should know this)? Or could your daughter be referred to a different community paediatric service?
Do keep a record of the behaviours you are having trouble with at home, as this can be used as evidence for the need for a referral. You don’t say how old your daughter is - is she able to explain to you what is upsetting her at all or not? Does your daughter interact much at school or is she very quiet? - Often if ASD children are very quiet and well behaved in school then the teachers miss that something more is possibly going on.
Hi thank you for your replies
my daughter is five she is quite at school and well behaved.
the community paediatrician now wants a fact from the school which is ridiculous as she is showing now difficulty at school
im at a loss now as it seem before they will even see her she has to have problems at school which is what I want to avoid
I see, that’s a tricky situation for you. Is your daughter unusually quiet at school, because that alone could be an indicator of ASD. It’s funny because every single primary school report of mine mentioned how quiet I was, but my teachers never really explained to my mum that I was unusually quiet, to the point that I wouldn’t speak at all in some lessons. Like with your daughter, because I was well behaved and did well academically they didn’t find it concerning and just thought I was shy. I however knew early on that I was different from my peers and I absolutely feared all social situations in school.
The best I can recommend is to try and have a conversation with your GP about this, and I would emphasise to them that just because your daughter is doing okay in school, her other difficulties shouldn’t be ignored. It also doesn’t mean in itself that she doesn’t have a diagnosable condition. Clearly CAHMS had a clinical reason to refer to community paediatric in the first place, so I would also question why this has been ignored by them in rejecting the referral.
I hate to sound cynical, but a lot of all this comes down to money, so unless you push the issue really hard, or your child is having significant issues in school or with mental health problems, then you’re unlikely to ever get professionals to make a diagnosis. I have seen this demonstrated too many time to mention... They don’t like to diagnose because then they have to provide the support, and that costs money.