Advice / feedback on child diagnosis

Hi all, I just joined the forum having been watching for a while and deciding what to say.

I was wondering if I could get some advice on our children and navigating the system for diagnosis.

We have two daughters who are 11 and 7. The eldest has always displayed some autistic tendencies as she’s been growing up, things like lots of organisation and lining up of toys, walking on her tiptoes a lot, extreme anger at small things that she’s unable to control, and difficulty trying new things. Also a lot of refusal to do things like wash or brush her teeth which can cause her to meltdown if pushed too hard. However she’s always been good at school so the teachers have never mentioned it or suspected it of her, mainly because she loves structure and rules and school has lots of both. Generally she is doing well there though we've had many issues at home with her.

Youngest has always been challenging, she has issues with communicating her feelings and needs, tends to grunt and make noises or make up words a lot, is completely unable to say please or thank you to anyone (I think she feels like it sucks a bit of her soul out!) She is however a fluent and articulate speaker at many times, and will only stop talking when she is anxious or stressed in some way.

She has issues with sleep, bedtimes regularly take two or three hours. She won’t stay still, runs around a lot, can’t be calm etc. She has a lot of problems with trying new foods or going new places, will strongly resist and kick off easily about small things, then refuse to do go out anywhere.

However she is of normal or above average intelligence, was an early fluent reader (but could not read out loud to her teachers so they made her learn again through phonics). She is currently having big issues with school refusal at her last term of infants. She’s had issues with it since reception. Because it’s affected her attendance and she is often late her teacher who is also the senco has talked about it with us and mentioned suspected autism. However in the last year or so she has got better at fitting in so they have started to provide less help (like the calm box and tablet time she was getting last year). I suspect she may be autistic or have ADHD (or both) and would like to get a diagnosis earlier rather than later so the school will be able to help more when she goes to junior, if and when she has problems there. Considering going to the GP and trying the right to choose process to speed things up. I’m concerned that they will be dismissive though. My wife has been working with local healthy families who’ve given her a course to do on challenging behaviour, but nothing much beyond that and no promise to put her on the list for a diagnosis.

Our older daughter is doing OK at school at the moment but fI don’t SATs very stressful. I am concerned that when she goes to secondary school in September she’ll find it a lot more emotionally challenging.

I felt the same way myself and had a lot of emotional issues when I was at secondary school. No one ever mentioned autism as I was OK socially and tended to bottle it up, though I’ve had social anxiety my whole life, and just started putting the pieces together about just how much I have always intellectualised things to cope with socialising. I’m now 43 and have adapted my life to fit my personality, work at home in tech and do my socialising in small and controlled doses! I’m not that worried about getting a diagnosis myself, though I score fairly highly when I do the online tests.

I’d just like some advice on navigating the system really, and what’s the best way to be taken seriously about our children’s needs, given the huge waiting lists there seem to be at the moment. When I spoke to my boss about it at work (who has an autistic son) he was dismissive and said that everyone was autistic now!