Hello,
This is my first post on here.
I’m a mum to a brilliant 10 year old son who was diagnosed two years ago. The diagnosis has opened our eyes to so many things and our relationship with him is the best it has been. We know how to help him and we are able to teach him how to help himself.
In learning to understand autism we have come to suspect (well I’d say we are very very sure) that his older 13 year old sister is also autistic. In many ways we are finding it so much more challenging with her. She suffers from extreme anxiety and significant social communication challenges, stimming and trich. As is typical for girls she masks and her ‘public identity’ is massive for her. We can see that she is struggling to sustain this identify - she can be very detached and defensive so it feels so hard for her to understand what we want to help her. I’m so worried that if we let it go that something bad will happen, but when I try to speak to her she is defiant in her view that she doesn’t need help and that she will not see a professional. She threatens to leave home and worse. How do I get her to see that she needs help and that it can be a positive thing, as it was for her brother (she doesn’t have a good relationship with him so those comparisons we don’t make often)? Or do we just have to take the action on her behalf and force her into it?
We’ve been recommended a therapist who works with autism (she practices EMDR which we felt might be better since our daughter would struggle to talk to a stranger). We’ve spoken to her and she agreed that there appeared to be some worrying signs, however she has said that our daughter needs to come to therapy willingly.
We would really appreciate you advice or experiences.
TIA
