Autism in girls

[Giraffeelephantgrape]

Hi

I have a six year old daughter who I suspect has Autism. Her older brother aged 8 has a diagnosis of Autism.

*My daughter has met milestones at the later end of expected milestones.
*She is very shy and will go mute if she is feeling uncomfortable.
*She has been referred back to speech therapy (3rd time) by school who said she is very shy, has trouble forming friendships and has poor understanding of written language.
*Her speech has improved but people do not always understand her, even close relatives.
*she is very clingy to me all the time
*she has sensory issues including adversion to noises, crowded places

• she has tantrums
  *she flaps her hands when upset
  *she has mobility difficulties including falling over, banging into things, dropping things all the time possible dyspraxia.?
  *she needs lots of assistance with self care, I am still dressing her
  *she is becoming obsessional about certain topics however these are relevant to her age just she is overly obsessed with them
  *she is struggling academically and has 25 hrs 1:1
  *she gets very overwhelmed and is extremely sensitive
  
  It’s taken me a long time to fully recognise all her difficulties because she is quite different to her brother. I know Autism presents itself differently in all children but any
  experiences or opinions regarding Autism which people can share would be great.

[parrotonmyshoulder]

I’m in the same process of realisation about my 9 year old DD. All her symptoms have always been explained away by lack of maturity, ‘shyness’, personality, dyslexia (by me as much as by relatives etc).

But I think her difficulties are becoming more apparent. And now I’m worried about it being put down to ‘preteeen’ behaviour. Looking back to early years, I can see more pieces of the puzzle that add up.

Plucking up the courage to tell DH I want to start the assessment process.

[parrotonmyshoulder]

It’s taken me a long time because I’m a teacher of autism... I think now that I’ve just helped her mask better.

[ittakes2]

My son also has ASD and my daughter only has a couple of the symptoms you have listed and yet two separate therapists agree she also has ASD. Please get her assessed as soon as soon as possible. Puberty for ASD girls is much worse, plus increased chance of eating disorders based around rules around food rather than necessarily body image but restrictive rules all the same.

[Giraffeelephantgrape]

Thanks very much for everyone’s replies.

Ittakes2- we are definitely going to ask for an assessment for her as soon as she goes back to school after holidays. She’s on the waiting list for physio and will hopefully be on the waiting list for OT again soon. So hopefully she will get more support.

[Blossom4538]

She sounds very similar to our DD, 7. She eventually had a diagnosis at the end of last Summer. Assessments took a long time and after being inconclusive, she saw OT and CAMHS, who also viewed video footage with Paed and ASD was diagnosed.

Dd can struggle with Mutism as part of it.

[LightTripper]

Our DD has a Dx despite not having many of the "classic" symptoms (she tenses or jumps when excited rather than claps, is a little but not particularly sensitive to noises, smells, textures etc. - e.g. has never had a problem with seams or labels). It can present very differently in girls so it's worth looking into even if you don't recognise much from your DS. I have the opposite issue: my DD has a Dx. DS is not yet 2 and pretty behind on his speech (which DD wasn't) but otherwise is hitting his milestones and even communicates well in other ways ... so while it seems possible he's autistic too if he is it will be in a very different way to DD and the ways we have learned to do things with DD to minimise anxiety will not necessarily be the right way to do things with DS!

[BishopBrennansArse]

Unfortunately we girls are often overlooked in autism assessments - DD had the paed continually assessing her over 2 years despite showing the same traits as her brothers and I wasn't diagnosed until I was 38.