Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi
I'm new to the site but in need of some advice. My beautiful daughter started College last year after a very difficult time at secondary school. I thought things would finally look a little better for her but unfortunately things got worse.
My daughter has a diagnosis of ASD and very bad Anxiety which we didn't get until year 10. The build up of constant panic attacks and not being able to sleep for more than a few minutes at a time or not at all, awake for days or going the other way sleeping for days, she would also go none verbal which made things very difficult as I didn't know what the problem was or how to help. College did try to help but she just found the whole experience so traumatic that she had to take a medical absence. I'm not sure she is going to be able to return come September as this was the plan.
I don't know what to do! I'm not sure if she could even do an apprenticeship. I am not sure what we do from here, she has weekly psychology sessions which had to be put on hold due covid. They also agree that college might not be the best choice.
What happens now? If we don't do college or some form of work? I know that young adults are supposed to be in some for of education until 18 but that clearly isn't right for her.
We would be grateful for some advice if anyone has any.
Many thanks
Jo
Most ASD people have their fight-or-flights system set to 100% - their brain is overloaded with stimulus looking for the danger - like a tiger jumping out - so their brain is also processing thousands of potential escape routes and risk assessing everything. There's nothing left to be able to cope with additional stress.
She needs to develop a strong foundation of guaranteed safe outcomes for most predictable eventualities - you might have to put in considerable effort making sure nothing ever goes wrong for her or implementing safe escape plans to build the success.
These can be little things like guaranteeing to pick her up from a certain place when she goes out or if a bus doesn't arrive.
Do you know the sequence of 'out of control' events that lead to a meltdown? Write them out as a list to work on - and then spend time engineering them out with robust plans that she can be relaxed about.
Once she build a pattern of solving the easy stuff, it will allow her the excess brain capacity to cope with the next challenge.
She might feel comfortable to try things if she can feel comfortable with her immediate world.