tortured by her autism

13 does seem to mark a transition in both pressure to conform with peers (showing up difference) and bullying (and I agree with earlier poster about puberty and resulting confusions). "Image" becomes very important. So I would recommend tbag finding out what is happening in school. Is your child being bullied or finding it harder to form friendships because other girls increasingly want to conform, and associating with a different child could affect that?

Finding out can be tricky. Teachers may be reticent, for professional detachment, or more likely aren't seeing most of what goes on. Other parents may be useful - they may even be telling their little girls to avoid your little girl, while being "nice" to you up front. Your daughters anxieties about losing weight may reflect image, and a notion that being slim and attractive might offset other reasons for being treated as different.

Secondly increasingly frequent meltdowns suggest complex underlying causes. Don't try to relate minor triggers to meltdowns, as they may merely be the last straw, against a background of long term pressure.

I like the theories of Digby Tantam about there being a bandwidth constraint or bottleneck in terms of incoming environmental and social information. Also people on the spectrum tend to try to resolve confusion about social incidents that non autistics might more easily forget. So very quickly a whole raft of confusions and hurts and misunderstandings and injustices start to take up space in the mind due to going over and over them.

While it may be difficult to get your daughter to open up about this, identifying and resolving some perceived hurts and injustices might reduce the pressure that leads to meltdowns.

Horse riding might help, although I worry that some riding stables cash in on autism as a means of filling gaps in bookings. It can be quite expensive buying hours on horseback, and sometimes borders on slavery using young people as cheap muckers out, however much they sell the value of getting to know all aspects of horses. There are riding schools round the country offering horse riding as therapy for autism and other conditions.

While relating to a horse might be easier than people, it doesn't change things if other girls wont ride with her because she is different.

But I think the real issue here is finding out what deep down causes underlie the meltdowns. There may be a lot of things distressing her that a mother can defuse or alleviate.

13 does seem to mark a transition in both pressure to conform with peers (showing up difference) and bullying (and I agree with earlier poster about puberty and resulting confusions). "Image" becomes very important. So I would recommend tbag finding out what is happening in school. Is your child being bullied or finding it harder to form friendships because other girls increasingly want to conform, and associating with a different child could affect that?

Finding out can be tricky. Teachers may be reticent, for professional detachment, or more likely aren't seeing most of what goes on. Other parents may be useful - they may even be telling their little girls to avoid your little girl, while being "nice" to you up front. Your daughters anxieties about losing weight may reflect image, and a notion that being slim and attractive might offset other reasons for being treated as different.

Secondly increasingly frequent meltdowns suggest complex underlying causes. Don't try to relate minor triggers to meltdowns, as they may merely be the last straw, against a background of long term pressure.

I like the theories of Digby Tantam about there being a bandwidth constraint or bottleneck in terms of incoming environmental and social information. Also people on the spectrum tend to try to resolve confusion about social incidents that non autistics might more easily forget. So very quickly a whole raft of confusions and hurts and misunderstandings and injustices start to take up space in the mind due to going over and over them.

While it may be difficult to get your daughter to open up about this, identifying and resolving some perceived hurts and injustices might reduce the pressure that leads to meltdowns.

Horse riding might help, although I worry that some riding stables cash in on autism as a means of filling gaps in bookings. It can be quite expensive buying hours on horseback, and sometimes borders on slavery using young people as cheap muckers out, however much they sell the value of getting to know all aspects of horses. There are riding schools round the country offering horse riding as therapy for autism and other conditions.

While relating to a horse might be easier than people, it doesn't change things if other girls wont ride with her because she is different.

But I think the real issue here is finding out what deep down causes underlie the meltdowns. There may be a lot of things distressing her that a mother can defuse or alleviate.