Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi, my 9 year old daughter has suspected high functioning autism and SPD, we have her assessment coming up and could do with some advice on how to broach the subject and explain it to her. She's not aware yet these assessments are happening and I'm aware they will mention autism, so will need to explain that to her too. She's likely to get very upset and angry, so I was thinking of addressing it more from the angle of 'Mummy and Daddy want to be able better understand how you might feel sometimes and what we can do to help... '
We've also been offered ELSA sessions at school, but she masks at school, apart from 'OCD/routine' type habits the teacher has picked up on so it's not necessarily an issue within school . She mentioned a friend who was called out of class every week to go and speak to a lady, she said she thought it was because this girl is shy and doesn't like to talk to people. I then used this lead to ask her if she ever thought talking to someone else sometimes might help her, and she got very angry, shouting how she is happy at school, why would she want to do that.
Does anyone have any help or advice on either aspect and maybe share their experience?
Thanks in advance :)
My daughter is younger (nearly 7) and she made it easy for me (I think, we've not actually got to the assessment yet), but maybe this will help. She was talking about how hard she finds friends at school and playtime and I told her that we were going to take her to see some people who would like to spend some time with her to understand how her particular brain works and that they might have some ideas on how to help make things easier for her. I also mentioned that they might decide she is something called "autistic" but that we're hoping they'll be able to help us even if they don't (because I really don't want her getting hung up on getting the diagnosis/label and then being disappointed if they say she isn't, even if I definitely will be). I think I'll have to give her a bit more detail closer to the time (I'm now starting to panic because 2h for ADOS feels like a bloody long time but I guess I have to trust that they're professionals and know what they're doing). But that's how I've talked about it to her so far. With your daughter if she's convinced she's happy at school I think you're right that framing it as about being for you and daddy to help her better, particularly when she gets angry. I don't know whether you'd even be able to talk to her about whether she likes how it feels when she's angry, and these people might be able to help her understand why she gets angry and be able to change things so that the world isn't so upsetting? I'm probably rambling now so will stop. I hope it goes well :-)
That’s really helpful, thank you