Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi there,
I was wondering if people had any advice or experience to share regarding my 16 year old daughter. She was diagnosed with high-functioning autism / ASD / Asperger’s a few months ago.
Annie has always struggled at school - we went through phases of her being quite bossy, aggressive, demand-avoidant, with frequent meltdowns as a small child to becoming the studious girl at the back of the class, polite, quietly confident and getting top grades, but still quite isolated from her peers.
Things at secondary school didn't work out great… the environment was completely overwhelming, though she kept her chin up for a long time. Long story short, she became extremely low (talking/planning suicide), completely withdrew in class from any sort of friendships she had with people, started having anxiety attacks / meltdowns every Sunday evening at the prospect of returning to school. We decided to scrape the funds together and put her in private school (this was halfway through y10). Problems seemed to solve themselves for a while - Annie loved the teachers and environment and everyone was really nice… then lockdown hit! The lockdown itself was bliss for Annie, but the transition back to school was very difficult. I think the fact it was GCSE year helped her hold it together - she made it through the year and smashed the exams with straight 9s, but the complete lack of structure of the summer triggered a mental breakdown and rock-bottom depression which had probably been waiting to happen for a while. She was having frequent meltdowns, controlling her food, self-harming and had zero motivation to do anything. This got even worse going back to school for sixth form, though they are very understanding about her needs/diagnosis, but she is finding it increasingly difficult to attend.
At the moment, she has been off school for the last week (and things are continuing to spiral down), staying in bed all day in her imaginary worlds. She seems to oscillate between reclusive shutdowns where she won’t speak more than a few words to me for days and manic episodes of hysteria (where she stammers and talks nonsense and seems to be seeing things that aren’t there, I suspect more imaginary than hallucinations).
Was wondering if anyone had any similar experiences to share? She is a very bright girl and has her heart set on studying physics at Oxford, but right now the pressures of the school day drain all her energy and she’s falling behind in class.
We don’t know whether to move schools, homeschool, take a break and repeat a year, or keep pushing through with things as they are… any thoughts? From what I’ve heard Annie is a typical Aspie girl in the way that she masks to cope with all sorts of challenging social and sensory environments, but this results in severe depression, shutdowns and meltdowns. Does anyone have any methods of tackling this, as well as the other issues mentioned?
Sorry for such a long rant! Any advice or second opinions would be so much appreciated.
Thanks,
Carly
Hi Carly
This is virtually identical to my 14 year old daughter. Sudden onset of tics and spiralled into being off all of y9 pretty much. Received her diagnosis of ASC yesterday and still watching possible ADD. Can't believe how she has masked through school and how hard she has worked to do as well as she has done. Main flag was problems with understanding friendships, being so single-mindedly into performing arts (although she is very good at it) seeing everyone else as competition and lack of empathy at home. I'm sure there's lots more but they are the main ones for now. She's now at a specialist performing arts state school and loving it! She's been accepted into a big group of like minded people and is thriving! We're working through a balance for workload and I suspect she will need to drop a subject to be able to cope with 8 and do them as well as she'd like to (oh yes perfectionism was another thing!) as masking continuously through the day is too much.
The thing we are struggling with at the moment is burn out. Either from full days at school or from training in London on a Saturday which is the most important thing to her at the moment as it's what she wants to do. We're finding that if she does a good week in school then the next week she's burnt out. And she seems to pick up heavy colds easily and that's her wiped out and unable to do anything because she's exhausted for up to two weeks. At her assessment they said her high levels of stress hormone are making her physically vulnerable and I'd like to know if there is anything that can help her regulate this stress hormone or calm it down once it's activated?
Thanks for any hints.
Donna
Hi Donna, thanks for your reply. I find your experience very relatable, for so long it never occurred to me that Annie was autistic, but as you say, looking back it is easy to spot the flags, though not in the classic "barn-door" presentation. Masking has been such a major thing - it was only last year when the mask finally broke that I saw a whole side of my daughter that I barely knew existed. I can imagine how stressful and strenuous masking is and it's no surprise to me that this has caused depression, anxiety, etc. Annie pointed out to me the other day that without masking, she would not have been able to function at all in mainstream school. It's brilliant to hear how your daughter is thriving with her performing arts, I am convinced that it is hobbies like this which keep people's mental health afloat. Even at the best of times, Annie still finds school incredibly tiring (she has always needed 10 or 11 hours sleep each night which now finally makes sense...). I heard it said once that for aspies, they not only have to navigate the academic curriculum, but the social and sensory "curriculum" as well... i.e. work twice as hard as everyone else. So basically, something has to be cut down in order to find balance. Please do let me know how things go with your daughter... we are in exactly the same boat trying to find a sustainable routine and avoid these crippling burnouts.
Thanks, Carly.