Published on 12, July, 2020
I am the Mum of an autistic 17 year old girl, who was only diagnosed in 2022, following two suicide attempts.
She amazingly masked so well.
She is with CAMHS and currently on medication for her high anxiety. They are really nice people at CAMHS, but keep focussing on the anxiety, which I think is never going to be totally un control because of her autism.
She tries so hard to go to college, but the noises, smells and lots of people generally peak her anxiety and she either faints or throws up. As you can imagine, this becomes a vicious circle, as she then becomes anxious about fainting or throwing up.
Her attendance is not good at all and the college, whilst they have been good and made lots of adjustments for her are quoting the 'fit to study' policy and exclusion. She is very academic and achieves As and Bs in her mocks and did extremely well in her GCSEs (despite not going to school for the last 7 months of the final year). I think she has PDA.
It breaks my heart seeing her struggle each day, only to feel like she's failed at going in and she is really worried about keeping her friends, due to her not going in much.
Does anyone know of alternative options for her to do her A Levels, that doesn't involve going into big group settings. I have looked at the apprenticeship route, but that doesn't appeal to her. Like is there an online way, whilst we work on developing and desensitising her to day to day challenges?
Any guidance or advice would be much appreciated please.
We had a similar situation and in the end our daughter did all her studies at home. Her teachers gave her a breakdown of each lesson on teams. Exams were done in school in a room on her own. It took a lot of perseverance as the school initially said it wasn't possible (and we were given all sorts of excuses) but we insisted that all the smells, noise, changes etc were too much for her to continue to come into school. I think it helps to find the teacher in school that really understands and is willing to think outside the box. Don't give up at the first hurdle (or second or third!)