Hi, I’m new here, hoping to get support and offer it where I can. My 5 year old daughter has been referred for work up and diagnosis. I’m quite familiar with ASD because of my profession and noticed isolated signs in my daughter since she was just over a year (tiptoe walking, etc) but she was developmentally sound and even ahead in some parameters so I didn’t pay much attention to it. She progressively started showing more signs (fear of loud sounds, playing alone, obsession with cats). I raised it with her nursery but they didn’t see any issues, even when she began regurgitating foods of certain textures to the point where she was only eating specific flavoured yogurts and sweets. She began reception this past year and I feel her behaviours deteriorated significantly with the increased demands. She’s become increasingly anxious and obsessive. She’ll recall single, insignificant events that happened ages ago (she has a very impressive memory) and become anxious over these (going in elevators after being in one that rattled), but this is paradoxical as she shows no regard for actual dangers (climbing, busy roads, covering her face with a blanket or pillow overnight). In fact she’s quite rebellious and will sass us if we try to ask her to avoid dangerous activities. She avoids other kids but will meow at adults, when she gets to know them better she will talkincessantly about cats and become frustrated if not acknowledged. She doesn’t have an internal dialogue so one can imagine how exhausting this can be. She has a one year old brother who adores he her but she’ll shriek and become distressed when he approaches her. She’s very sensory, especially to loud or persistent sounds and tactile stimuli. She is distressed (to the point of flapping, throwing her body around, crying) over things like detangling hair, showers nail clipping. She’ll say we’re hurting her or pushing her depending on the context. She’s extremely sensitive and will blow out if her hair tie out, if we don’t open her car door first, if there’s a fruit fly around, etc. The reason for the long background with several examples of her behaviours is that we’ve been having trouble with school. Her first school put in a safeguarding referral after she told her teacher I pushed her. This, I believe anyways, was after I moved her by the shoulders when positioning her to brush her hair. She also told them I punched my husband after we had a convo about some trauma to a patient, with me doing an example of the potential mechanism of injury without actually hitting him of course, but him pretending to react jokingly (we noticed she was covering her ears after but assumed we were laughing too loud). Nothing came of this as we’re both attentive parents who take care of her, we don’t believe in corporal punishment and are admittedly quite bad at discipline in general. Occasionally I’ll shout if she’s doing something dangerous. She switched schools as we had to move for work. Her new teacher was senco and picked up on a few concerns so they put in a referral for assessment. These behaviours are indicative but innocent and no where near how she behaves at home, seemingly because she masks. She’s very gloomy in the morning and likes to count how many days until the weekend, sweet albeit a bit aloof and vacant at school, then completely frustrated and angry at home. The most recent incident involved her running directly through a puddle before school after I asked her to avoid it. I scolded her because I didn’t want her to have wet feet day, and because she removed the extra clothes I left in her bag. I informed the teacher who kindly said she could swap out her socks. But my daughter was pouty and crying after this and said I scare her. She claims that everything untoward scares her though (tags on clothes, fruit flies, homework and school itself, certain towels, nail clipping, cleaning her room, eating burgers off the bbq instead of from McDonald’s). They had a meeting with me and said she’s potentially being emotionally abused?? Apparently we’re not responding to her sensory needs? We don’t call her names or swear at her. We don’t tease or threaten her apart from saying we’ll not give her dessert. We rarely yell. We give her attention and do hobbies she enjoys with her such as gardening. This has us worried and uncomfortable as they’re always looking at us like we’re neglectful. I don’t think they believe us how things are at home so we started covertly recording things for proof which is no way to live and doesn’t do my daughter any good. She’s clearly feeling distressed at school too because as soon as she’s near or in the car she’ll have a meltdown about a series of things that happened at school that day, nothing that indicates she’s being mistreated there but the usual stressors she oversensitive to. I’m sorry for the long post but we feel overwhelmed and like we’re doing all we can for her but still being deemed awful people. Surely we can’t reasonably be expected remove all the things that distress her because that would basically leave us with a house devoid of everything apart from blankets, cats, unicorns, and flowers (with the walls painted rainbow because the grey ones distress her too 
) We’re not sure how to help her stop becoming distressed and sensitive over everything, this is partly why I began pushing for a referral so we could take advantage of CBT to help with this.
