ASD DSD mum keeps rejecting her

[Jadems9]

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the long post but I just need to vent this morning. My DSD (diagnosed ASD) has been living with me and DP for just over a month full time after her mum kicked her out. Since then she’s seen her mum once. She was supposed to see her another time but her mum stood her up. Today she was hoping to see her mum, but she had to do all the work - organising when and where, keep pestering her mum to confirm. Her mum went completely quiet on her until about 10 min ago when she finally text her back and said ok. Now they’re seeing each other for 4 hours, no longer because her mum doesn’t want to have dinner with her.

It just makes me want to cry. The whole situation is so frustrating because DSD is hurting so bad and just doesn’t understand. What do you say to a child about that? I’ve not said anything bad about her mum, I keep out because I think it’s not my place and because my own mum and step-mum slung mud at each other. It just pains me to see DSD constantly rejected like this.

Then there’s other stuff, because DP and I have taken over as her full time guardians we have more access to her SENCo and school. Before everything was relayed by her mum and we’ve realised so much was left out about her care. Her mum focussed mostly on DSD social skills but she has so many other behaviours that have been overlooked. She’s got anxiety and compulsive eating, no impulse control or sense of danger (she will light matches if unsupervised, randomly kicked my cat to get him out of her way, will talk to strangers) and struggles with mobility - often strains her ankles and bumps into people on the street. It’s stuff that wasn’t identified before so now we’re getting her reassessed. But it’s all just so frustrating because it feels like her mum has really let her down with her care and we didn’t realise the extent of it before. And she still is, because she’s just not bothering with her.

[MumUnderTheMoon]

Some people are just shit. It sounds like you really care about DSD so things are looking up. What age is she? If she is younger perhaps her dad could take over contact arrangements and then she won't end up being let down. For a lot of Autistic people anticipation is very distressing even if your looking forward to something and being let down after that will probably be very upsetting. If her dad can do the arrangements it might save some of the upset.

[Jadems9]

Thanks @MumUnderTheMoon, she’s 14 and in theory her dad could, but it’s a bit of a strained relationship between her mum and dad so we never 100% know what will happen when he contacts her. He has said that he wants to talk to her mum to tell her to put more effort into talking to DSD so we’ll see how it goes. It’s just upsetting because we want her to still have some kind of relationship with her mum, but when her mum doesn’t seem to bother it really affects DSD and is ultimately pushing her away from her mum. So much emotional stuff to deal with on top of the ASD!