Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi, My Daughter is 5 YO and has been through some trauma (family deaths and a messy divorce from me and her mother)
She's developed relatively normally (Almost above average for a lot of things)
Noticed from young age some sensory issues (Noises, textures, certain foods). Mother doesnt see these but notices them
Signs are included but not limited too, forgetting to use toilet, soling and wetting and being too embarrassed to tell, panic attacks around even moderately loud noises, fixation on things being right (spoken or positionally etc), quite ritualistic and demands control of play.
Fear of speaking to teachers/family if something is bothering her. Nervousness, generalised anxiety around the unknown.
Very possessive (would not use ear defenders to protect ears because they were not HERS).
My paternal family recognises signs, maternal doesn't.
Doctors unwilling to do much as say have to wait for school.
School are being evasive and stating that children presenting their needs more loudly/obviously are more of a priority
CAMHS service only offering parent-led cbt for trauma
I'm at my wits end and don't really know where to turn. Is there any charities i can get advice? my daughter is masking a lot of the stimming she does at home (running in circles, picking fingers, spinning, repetitive words) from school, where she tries to fit in, although after her nan died last year, the mask fell at nursery and they noticed signs, but school is unwilling to listen,
What can i do?
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Max B said:Very possessive (would not use ear defenders to protect ears because they were not HERS).
Sounds like my son in particular, we would try to buy him new shoes but he wouldn't try the new shoes on in the shop because they weren't his, we had to little lie and say we'd already bought them and it was fine.It does sound like she has a lot of traits and some of which she is trying very hard to mask so as not to rock the boat but that will result in burn out later down the line if she endleslly tries to blend-in as it works about as well as trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.My advice is don't go through CAHMS, they are frequently too little too late, and they have an awful history of ongoing institutional parent-blame. They were terrible back in my day too and I didn't want to put my son through that trauma of waiting on and then being failed by CAHMS, so I went on a mission to bypass them entirely with my son.Around July I did my research and found a private service not a million miles away that was willing to accept my son through the Right to Choose scheme with the NHS, I told the GP I wanted to put my son forward for an assessment based on some key traits and wanting to line up a potential support system for the transition to secondary in a few years. We got seen for the 1st appointment in October and the 2nd happened in the first week of November and we got the result at the end of that appointment confirming esentially what I already knew to be true. That my son is autistic like me (it's hereditary). I only won't name the private (right to chose) service we used to protect the privacy of my son.Find a private service willing to see your daughter under the right to choose and get the GP to make the referral. I might get picked up by the spam bot for posting multiple links but here we go:If your daughter is masking make sure the service knows you think that, and ask them to consider a childfriendly version of the Cat-Q and RAADS-R test rather than just the standard AQ50. https://embrace-autism.com/cat-q/https://embrace-autism.com/raads-r/
Two private services that are offering right to choose assessments for kids that I can remember off the top of my head are https://www.wellbeingasd.co.uk/services/right-to-choose/ Wellbeing, and https://www.psicon.co.uk/ Psicon. And https://www.clinical-partners.co.uk/for-adults/autism Clinical partners MIGHT do it under Right to choose too but you'd have to ask them.