Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello,
I’m not even sure I belong here! My 9 year old son struggles with handling socialising and emotions, while being completely obsessed with animals, wildlife and conservation issues. After years of making excuses “it’s just a part of his quirky personality”, “he is the youngest in the class” etc etc I decided 18 months ago that things definitely weren’t right, spoke to the school and took him to my GP to talk about my concerns regarding autism, possible Aspergers and anxiety. School thought (and still does that I am making a fuss about nothing, he is meeting all his academic milestones ) GP was more helpful and referred us to CAMHS They said it could be handled at school and referred us to step 1 which was basically councelling. Back to the GP and we were referred to paeds. In December we were seen by paeds who said the referral went to the wrong place he was a hospital consultant and we should have gone to community paeds but he was certainly on the spectrum and we needed to be screened. Last week we were seen by CAMHS step 2 who gave us some helpful CBT exercises for the anxiety and told us we needed to be screened for ASD. We have now waited about 18 months in total. Has anyone else waited this long?
No one understands what we are going though. We are losing friends that we have had for maybe 20 years. People see what they want to see. People see a child who doesn’t behave and parents who don’t discipline effectively. What they are actually seeing is a child who doesn’t understand the details of acceptable social behaviour and parents who are at the end of their coping mechanisms. I wish I could make people understand what we are going through.
Please tell me other people have felt like this. I’m having a bad day today and I feel so lonely and stressed that I have had to fight the system every step of the way.
Thanks
New to this forum too but just read this and felt that you need to hear that you aren't alone. Everyone's story will be different but the frustrations and battling are common to many.
Trust yourself as you know your child - those judging his behaviour don't. Let today go if it's been a bad day.
Assume from your post that he's ok at school but the behaviour impact is outside. Think it's common that children hold it together in one environment but the effort doing that often leads to meltdowns elsewhere.
Be kind to yourself. You are doing the right thing in trying to get an assessment. Keep going.