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?
It is possible that it is the anorexia that is uppermost in your daughter's reaction to her autism diagnosis, at least for some of the traits she is describing. Autistic traits about food texture are a useful method for avoiding eating, especially eating higher calorie foods. Insistence on eating alone allows greater scope for the avoidance of eating. Using noise-cancelling headphones is the obvious remedy for misophonia related to eating sounds, or the use of earphones and music, so eating alone is not necessary, even if it is a genuine sensory problem. Lack of focus is more an ADHD problem than an autism problem - hyper-focus is more usual. Problems with using telephones are a more common autism difficulty. I think that you have a mix of genuine autism-related problems and the use of autism as a pretext for avoiding eating and having her lack of eating being noticed. I am not a psychiatrist, however.
Thanks, I had been thinking she may be using her diagnosis to avoid eating. Thanks for taking time to comment.