Advice please

[Doowop]

My daughter is 11 and we�re awaiting diagnosis, hopefully later this year. She didn�t know we were looking into this, things came to a head on Saturday, she displayed behaviour in front of her only 2 friends one of whom recognised signs as she has an autistic brother and we felt we had no choice but to tell her we suspect she is autistic.

She went mad, made threats, tried to run away and then after a few hours her temper broke and she just cried and begged us to tell her we were lying.

Yesterday she carried on as normal, as if nothing had happened, so I want to know what you would do next? Carry on as if nothing happened or do something?

I�m also not feeling well myself, I can�t stop shaking and crying after this, although not doing it in front of her, just sat in work crying

[Lostbrain]

Be kind to yourself. I work with children some of whom have autism. When I was training we looked at a chart drawing out an anger episode, essentially once you get to a certain point you lose control, hormones take over and you hit full fight or flight mode. There is no point discussing anything until this moment has passed, which can take hours. People on the autism spectrum generally have much higher levels of anxiety and are normally closer to this point, people with reduced language capacity are also closer to angry outbursts because they lack an internal voice.

The best thing to do is to reduce the chances of getting to this point, do this with a combination of reducing general anxiety levels and actively teaching people to monitor their stress levels and take action when they get close to boiling point. A scale of 5 can be really useful, identify feelings and reactions at each point.

I would ask school if they have an ELSA (emotional literacy support assistant) who can work with your daughter on this. Good luck.

[Doowop]

Originally Posted by Lostbrain

Be kind to yourself. I work with children some of whom have autism. When I was training we looked at a chart drawing out an anger episode, essentially once you get to a certain point you lose control, hormones take over and you hit full fight or flight mode. There is no point discussing anything until this moment has passed, which can take hours. People on the autism spectrum generally have much higher levels of anxiety and are normally closer to this point, people with reduced language capacity are also closer to angry outbursts because they lack an internal voice.

The best thing to do is to reduce the chances of getting to this point, do this with a combination of reducing general anxiety levels and actively teaching people to monitor their stress levels and take action when they get close to boiling point. A scale of 5 can be really useful, identify feelings and reactions at each point.

I would ask school if they have an ELSA (emotional literacy support assistant) who can work with your daughter on this. Good luck.

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Thank you, I will look into this. I know school have attempted to work with her before on breathing exercises and relaxation but she refuses to use them as she knows the �type� of person this is aimed at and she doesn�t want to be that person

[Lostbrain]

That sounds really difficult. There is a woman on Facebook called �Agony Autie� who is very cool and has done a few videos on stimming to self calm, might be worth a look to see if your daughter may see a more socially acceptable version of autism. Very difficult for girls still. I have ADHD and didn�t get a diagnosis until I was 38, such a relief as an adult to understand myself better and have validation that I�m not neuro typical, as I�ve always suspected! I wonder though how I would have felt at 11 with my diagnosis. The stereotype of ASC and ADHD is still the difficult boy. Which is nonsense, but a challenge for people.

[Doowop]

I don�t want to push her too much now, we opened the discussion and I hope she�s processing that, maybe then she will feel ready to talk.

I�m in a support group so i�ve contacted them and they�ve sent me a list of books aimed at her to read to accept herself, i�ve ordered 3 from the list for now and will leave them
lying around for a while before I read them to her, I doubt she will read them herself but she does listen when i�ve read to her about anxiety before

[Button17]

Are there any books that you could leave lying around that she could read, so she knows she's not alone. Her anxiety is probably because she's scared. She knows she's not like her friends but can't figure out why. She'll probably quite relieved when /if she has a diagnosis as it will explain a lot to her. Difficult process to go through for you all though. Could you speed up the diagnosis process?

[mandco]

there is a quite good you tube video called Animated Explanation of Autism by dustin chandler which might be worth looking at with her
as it explains things in a fairly simple way

[Doowop]

Thank you for your replies. I contacted the support group i�m In and was sent a list of books aimed at her, i�m reading them at the minute. Even if she doesn�t get diagnosed I feel they would help her to start liking herself.

Thank you again

[Maryj]

We have a 16 year old who has a diagnosis of ASD, which we got just over a year ago. He initially didn�t want to say the word autistic, but from things he said, he has discussed it with his friends.
He has just been prescribed with Ritalin, he keeps asking why he needs to take it, but from our POV it�s made a huge difference to his behaviour.
It�s a huge learning curve, it certainly takes time for them to get their head around what is happening.

[sam7]

My DD is a teacher and had a student come to her in tears because she has just received the diagnosis of autism, my DD pointed out to her that she is exactly the same person she was yesterday, last week, last year and this has not changed who she is in any way - it just help explain some of her existing struggles and helps those around be able to appropriately support and help her. Maybe something like this will help your DD once she has processed the thought a bit more - good luck