Hi all. I am struggling to decide or know what to do for my 15yr old daughter. She isn’t diagnosed autistic and I hope I don’t offend anyone by sounding like I’m looking for an online diagnosis.
Basically, she’s struggled with bullying through secondary school which has ended with us removing her for home education in Dec 2020 (I have two other children who are home ed). She struggles massively with anxiety, it was a problem at school which made sense with the bullying. But over a year later the anxiety is still affecting her quite a lot. She tried to go to college to do core GCSEs last Sept but only lasted two days. And I struggle big time trying to get her to be productive at home.
She has struggled with sleep for a long time. She doesn’t have many friends at all, has struggled with friendships (but her friends have acted like complete idiots so I see the fault is with them rather than her). There was never anything obvious to seek a diagnosis, but she’s always had “oddities”. Some sensory issues with clothes at primary school. Dislikes physical contact. Has always said she doesn’t fit in. As she’s gotten older I am worried about her, she doesn’t seem to want to grow up. I don’t blame her, but most teenagers want independence, to go out, more serious relationships etc whereas she is so childlike in some ways. She doesn’t like people and prefers to isolate in her room. At school she would feel suddenly exhausted, lights would make her feel sick, she would stop talking to her friends until she felt better. She used to say these were panic attacks, but they didn’t sound like typical panic attacks.
She has this big fear of failure which stops her from doing things. I find this one frustrating because it can be something as small as opening a tin with a tin opener. If she’s not sure how to do it she will make up silly excuses as to why she can’t in order to get someone else to do it. If she’s pushed to do something she will get really upset. She hates to touch the dishwasher, cloth or bin and washes her hands a lot. If she spills something she calls for me to sort it out rather than do it herself.
Another thing I have found frustrating is her silence when something is wrong but she won’t speak. This happened yesterday, nothing obvious had happened but she went to her room and wouldn’t talk to anyone except to quietly say go away to her sisters when they asked what was wrong. She completely ignored me. Eventually she barricaded herself in the bathroom. She’s done this in her room quite a few times, she’ll sit in front of her door so I can’t open it and won’t speak to me. As long as I know she’s safe I will just leave her alone and eventually she’ll appear as if nothing’s happened.
These behaviours are frustrating for me, sometimes I feel like I’m still looking after a small child not a nearly 16 year old. I swing from feeling that it’s my fault, that I’ve encouraged this helplessness by caving and doing things for her, to feeling like it’s just not normal behaviour and I’m failing her by not getting some help or advice. I’ve been to the GP, referred to CAHMS but sent back, pointed to a mental health charity and told to refer to the school nurse service, who never replied to me, or just told to go back to the GP. My own mental health problems mean I am struggling to cope with everything to do with this, and I end up completely indecisive and disorganised and very stressed and am letting my daughter down in the process. My boss was the one who said I should look at getting her assessed, but without anything obvious to go on I am dithering.
Can anyone here help me to decide whether I need to pursue an asd assessment, if anything I’ve said above would be pertinent? Sorry it’s such a long post!
