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.