Published on 12, July, 2020
I am so thankful I found this Web site. I have learnt a lot in the last 2 hours!
My daughter is nearly 17. She had / has anorexia and was not responding to the usual therapy. An experienced nurse wondered about ASD and arranged an assessment which to my surprise gave an autism diagnosis.
Since then my daughter seems to have totally changed. All of a sudden she now says she has sensory issues with food textures, this is the same girl who age 10 was enjoying everything from sushi to snails and steak. She is now saying she can't eat with us as she needs total silence in the kitchen, although she had been eating in busy noisy restaurants before. She now says she can't focus on school work and need decompression time. She studied so well for her National 5's (scottish gcse) She now says she can't speak on the phone, the list goes on.
I am so confused, how can getting a diagnosis change her so much? Has she always had these issues but now the diagnosis has given her permission to reveal them?
The diagnosis has given her permission to stop pretending. She’s now able to tell you what she does and doesn’t like. No doubt her eating problems were due to texture, taste and smell sensory issues. Or she could have ARFID and not be anorexic at all. I think I read that a large percentage of girls are diagnosed with anorexia, when in fact they are autistic, but that’s another post… Also, controlling her eating might have been something she needed to do to cope with all internal frustration she was dealing with.
My daughter are everything as a child. I can’t remember when things changed, but probably around age 13. I did know she was autistic at 11, but no one would listen to my concerns. I used t9 be confused as to why she now didn’t want to eat toast, or lumpy stew, red peppers….! And as time went on, if she did stay at a friends, and had cereal for breakfast, I would roll my eyes, because she wouldn’t touch it at home lol. And all this time, I didn’t even know I was autistic myself!
I remember my son say I was more autistic since my diagnosis this year. I don’t think I’m more autistic, I’m just unmasking.