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Lying & controlling impulses - urgent advice please

Deb70001

Hi, I've not posted on here before but I'm lost and in need of help and advice.  I have a dearly loved 17 year old daughter who was diagnosed a year ago with autism (aspergers was the description).   She is also dysgraphic, dyspraxic and dyscalculic and generally has a complicated learning profile yet despire all of that has just achieved 7 good GCSE passes which is amazing.   She is now at a FE college studying for A'levels.  My specific question for the forum is about lying and controlling behaviour impulses.  So many children lie and teenagers particularly (I'm the Mum of 2 adult neurotypical sons too so have got through it twice!) but my daughter lies about everything to everyone.  It could be telling us she has had lunch at college when she hasn't, to  more serious stuff like creating multiple personalities and life histories which she tells everyone from friends at college to people she has met online.  She has so little life experience having been alone so much as she has struggled to make and keep friends that she makes things up to pretend thats not the case but is attracting the wrong people and making the wrong claims (for example of sexual experience when she has none).  Also even more worrying she has been engaging with an online anime gaming community and we discovered she had been talking to a man online and it turns out he got her to take her top off etc etc.  Grim stuff.  She is telling people he's her boyfriend but they've never met and i think he may be in the US (but dont' know this).  I recently found her without enough clothes on talking to him and so have taken away laptop and phone and am now beside myself with worry about what I've found and trying to figure out how to protect her.  Of course I've talked relentlessly about this over the years to her and of course now again too about the terrible danger she could place heerself in. Unfortunately when I took her phone away I squeezed arm gently in the struggle as she didn't want to give it up and now she has told friends I physically abused her.  She even wrote to her tutor at college at the suggestions of her friends, so I've had to talk to the safeguarding person - who ended the conversation telling me I was amazing - as i sobbed.  Her 'best friend' suggested she go to a run away shelter yet she can barely speak to people or function when anxious - her flight and fight is to shut down so some friend. 

My husband (her Dad) and I feel completely out of our depth and are so worried about her and just don't know what to do when she goes back to college on Monday.  We know she will lie to everyone and I just don't want to give her her phone back, but I also want her to be able to reach us.  We gave her the laptop back to do college work briefly and she has recontacted the man online as she just doesn't get it.  We don't know to protect her as she just doesn't get the inappropriateness or risk.  In addition and perhaps linked, before this, we opened a bank account for her to try and teach her budgetting (she can barely count money) we thought being able to tap a card would help her and we wanted her to pay to get home if she needed as her college is a distance away.  However as soon as she had the account, she spent everything we put into it on junk items she bought online and then despite us talking to her about it, when we put a bit more money in so she could buy her lunch at college or some cash in an emergency she did it again.     It seems like she can't control her impulses including to stop lying.  This is all made worse because i's almost impossible to talk to her about it as she shuts down and becomes mute.  She finds expressing nay difficult emotion or experience very challenging so its hard to make progress but occassionally I seem to break through andthen the she goes straight back to where she was  

My husband and I are trying to work out next steps and wondered about looking for a clinical pscyhologist  - although she will lie to them I fear so they will need to be good to get through that!  But is that the right approach?  I wondered if anyone had experienced anything similar and if you have any tips or ideas of what we should be doing.  My beloved girl is awesome when she is her and doesn't need to be anyone else.  She is bright, kind, compassionate, prinicpled and funny but the tragedy is too few people see it and I'm so fearful she will come to harm now she is officially nearly an adult, yet so far from it.

Any ideas so very welcome.  Thank you.

Parents

  • She is still young so she may still be experimenting or she may have a different issue. A book I've read to try and help me understand and deal with this stuff, is "People of the Lie" by M.Scott Peck who is an american psychiatrist. I'd read it first then get her to read it...

    I was dead lucky, I started out that way (mostly, I tended to keep my fantasy stories to myself, I've always valued "truth" because of it's relative rarity and durabilty. I like my savings to be held in gold for the same reason) but I lied and stole and "made trouble" with gusto for a while. 

    The most destructive thing though, is not lying per-se but wilfully believing your own or other peoples lies and holding them up as reality. If you can teach her one thing, it must be to avoid "mendacity". That is cancer of the soul.

    I've been there, I walk the walk, I wear the badge. Trying not to be a liar, yet still getting along in this day and age, is a hard but rewarding path to follow, and very suitable for us Autists as we are generally very detail oriented..

  • in reply to I Sperg

    Thankyou so much for sharing and giving me some hope - I will check out the book.

Reply Children
  • in reply to Deb70001

    I think Scott book is hopeful.  I suggest the locus of lies in more likely with yourself than the daughter.  Scott Pecks book I recall has a chapter on a parent who refuses to face their loneliness and the harm and evil and lies the daughter experienced because of this.  This may or may not be your story as a parent, with the clinical fixations you have and tha lack of privacy your daughter is subject to.

  • in reply to Deb70001

    I'd like some feedback if you do check it out.

    I like to give out quality and useful advice, (I've received plenty of the other kind in my life) and it is always good to get a bit of feedback form time to time, particularly when I've weighed in on a serious matter like this one. 

    Noting the reply above, where a referral to an external agency is recommended, I'd still recommend trying to get a private DIY solution to this issue, if you can. Lying really is a very poor and imperfect solution to life's problems. Once a person grasps that simple basic fact, the rest starts to fall into place. Some poor people never do, and over time their life experience just keeps deviating from reality, which is really, really sad to see form an outside perspective. Some lies are easily as destructive as drugs or a gunshot wound...

  • in reply to Deb70001

    I see this is old but I recommend a self-referral to Adult services with your County Council. In North Yorkshire it’s called Health and Adult Services for individuals who have disabilities.  Your daughter’s lack of learning from experiences is common autism trait and leaves her extremely vulnerable.  If you’re at a loss I would go back to the further education college and asked to speak to the special educational needs coordinator “SEN-Co” to

    (a) nudge you in the right direction with accessing the county council adult services. NB: if she has a special educational needs plan then she may still qualify under child services until age 21, however, even then you need to get her on the waiting list to access adult services because she will need long-term support and help with independent living at some point if you are you spell I no longer able to provide the level of support you do now and/or she continues to resist your input.

    (b) help at college with ensuring her tutors understand her vulnerability (due to extensive social naivete and not learning from experiences or being able to generalise lessons, especially in the social realm).  no disrespect to the tutors but most teacher training programs over the decades have not provided education about the presentation of autism —especially for those individuals who seem a little socially adept (possibly called Aspergers or sometimes so-called “high functioning autism“ or “level one autism“) who, on the surface, can appear Neurotypical.