Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi,
I'm mother to a 15 year old girl who I suspect may have some type of neurodiversity. She recognises herself that she can have difficult regulating emotions, etc., but is totally against us seeking any further advice / diagnosis confirmation. I appreciate that only a proper ASD or ADHD test can diagnose her, but I guess I'm looking for some advice on whether I'm totally barking up the wrong tree on this or whether some of her symptoms sound familiar to those whose daughters have been diagnosed and hence I might be on the right track. I've looked at online test, and they don't seem to be asking the right questions which are relevant to her, yet I have mother's intuition that there is something more at play here than teenage emotions.
Examples of behaviours noted increasingly over the past 2-3 years:
- Constant knuckle cracking and an internal 'tension' / lack of relaxation that you can feel if sitting close to her.
- Physical contact: extreme aversion to being kissed. Hugs are just about tolerated (this has been since mid primary school)
- Excessive emotional responses / meltdowns
- Struggles to cope with a change in plans. What seems like a minor change to me and something aimed at helping her can send her in a spin if that was not her original plan.
- Room is a complete mess, but that could simply be laziness. Although disorganised with things like revision notes, she is organised in other ways, e.g. never forgets books for school, PE kit, etc.
- Despite being bright her grades are dropping since starting secondary school. She seems to struggle to effectively retain information for a lot of subjects (the exception I would say is languages - she seems able to retain vocab very well).
- In many ways is quite immature for her age. Doesn't seem to appreciate the importance of GCSEs, for example.
- As a counter to the above, she can learn and retain 'odd' information. E.g. she has an infinite capacity for remembering birthdays, dates of minor events (e.g. date she got sick on or had an injury), was able to learn and recite the entire periodic table much to her science teacher's astonishment.
- Can be very hard to emotionally reach: she is very closed and secretive (even about minor things, e.g. the kind of music she enjoys listening to is a closely guarded secret).
- We found recently a diary containing suicide ideation around boys and their thoughts on her. We're dealing with that, but including here in case of any relevant correlation.
Having said the above, she is very popular at school with a lot of friends across multiple friend groups. She is perceived by teachers as being very shy, but is not shy around family.
Am I on the completely wrong track here considering ASD or ADHD? Thanks
She sounds like she's a teenager who's taking it all to extremes, how long has she been like this? If it's just the last couple of years, then maybe keep an eye on her and see if she settles down. My daughter used to just lose it, she could of sulked for Britain had it been an olympic sport, doing anything with me was to embarassing, she was bored at school, but had loads of friends. My best advise would be to back off a bit, teenage years are all about finding yourself as a seperate person to your parents, so being secretive is all part of it, I'm mean you might like the music she listens to and how embarassing would that be OMG, she'd have to find something else!.
Shyness in girls can be a sign of autism, but sometimes shyness is just that and she finds it all a bit embarassing and hard work.
NAS96439 said:From what I've read online, at this age the advice seems to be that the teen has to be a willing participant to go down the road of diagnosis. Any thoughts around that?
I'm pretty exhausted right now, tbh, but I'll still take a quick stab at replying to your question, because it's been stuck in my head since I tried to step away :) (That's not meant as a criticism or complaint, by the way!).
A lot of us here were diagnosed much, much later in life than at age 15. If you were to keep an eye on this community over time, you'd soon see yet more of us joining, and sharing our late-diagnosis experiences and regrets - including grief, frustration, and anger about not having known sooner in our lives.
I, for one, can only dream about the many ways in which having had the benefit of a formal diagnosis at her age could, and would, have made my life so much easier.
Even just knowing, for and by myself, would have helped me enormously. For example, I could have been kinder to myself about my differences (including those that I wasn't even aware of, and/or didn't understand the significance of), not blamed myself for things that I found more difficult (or impossible), made much wiser and better informed choices (about so many things, including work and relationships).
The page that I linked above ("Deciding whether to seek an autism assessment") outlines some of the considerations that you might like to encourage her to take into account.
I don't know what her longer-term plans or aspirations are. But a diagnosis could also be very helpful to her in both education and employment. Whilst it's true that access to support (eg reasonable adjustments / accommodations) doesn't always require one, having evidence in the form of an official diagnosis is something that could be really helpful.
As you said, I also feel that "it would be useful to help both her and [you] us understand her better and how to really help her to thrive".
She might be worried about what others would think (I'm just guessing, of course). But, as the article in the After diagnosis section explains, she doesn't have to tell anyone unless she wants to:
NAS - Talking about and disclosing your autism diagnosis
I can only reiterate that knowing this about myself at her age is something that I can only dream about.
Obviously, this is only my perspective. I hope that it's helpful in some small way, at least. :)
Thank you for this useful information. As mentioned, my daughter is very opposed to us taking any further steps in terms of seeking a diagnosis. I'm not looking for a label, but feel it would be useful to help both her and us understand her better and how to really help her to thrive. From what I've read online, at this age the advice seems to be that the teen has to be a willing participant to go down the road of diagnosis. Any thoughts around that?
Hi and welcome to the community!
It certainly seems to me as though your daughter's traits / behaviours could be consistent with her being neurodivergent (an individual can't be "neurodiverse"), but of course a diagnosis of ASD and/or ADHD requires assessment by professionals based on a whole lot more information - and we're also not allowed to give medical advice here (per the community rules).
In order to get a better personal feel for / reassurance about the likelihood of being autistic and/or having ADHD, she / you can complete some tests online:
For ASD, the AQ-10 and AQ-50 tests are typically used by GPs as part of the screening process for making assessment referrals (mine used AQ-10). Some may also use the RAADS-R test. For ADHD, I'd suggest trying the two ASRS questionnaires.
All of these are available on the website linked below. They're provided in a format where you can complete them online, see your results, save them as PDFs and print them off. The pages also include explanations and discussions of the scoring criteria:
Embrace Autism - autism and ADHD screening tests
If you feel that your daughter's results merit it, then I'd suggest taking them to her GP, along with a list of traits that you and/or others feel might suggest that she has either or both of ASD and ADHD. There's some excellent advice from the NAS on requesting an autism assessment here:
NAS - Deciding whether to seek an autism assessment
NAS - How to request an autism assessment
You might also find some of the advice here helpful:
ADHD UK
For more information and advice about all stages of the process, from pre-assessment to post-diagnosis, there's a lot of other useful stuff in the diagnosis hub, too.
I wish you both all the best, whatever you and your daughter decide! :)