How do I stop feeling disappointed about my DD?

[M3lon]

There is no need to respond to this telling me I'm an arsehole...I know. I would like to stop being an arsehole before it does any damage to my poor child, who certainly deserves better than me for a parent.

The problem is that I'm just constantly disappointed with her progress at basically everything.

I definitely love her....though its taken a while due to PND and depression, to truly understand that. She is now nearly 8 yo.

But I feel disappointed all the time. Obviously I try to hide it - but I'm sure it leaks through.

Both me and DH are musical, sporty and academic and I just don't know how to feel positive about DD who seems to have no aptitude or interest in anything.

So any advice on how to stop being an arsehole would be greatly appreciated.

and finally counselling/diagnosis. I think if it were just me then I would have taken her for diagnosis and or therapy/counselling probably around 2 years ago. That decision doesn't just rest with me though, and DH really hasn't felt it is the right thing for DD.

I think you have the right instinct here and your dh is mistaken. The point is not necessarily to force her back into school if that isn't right for her. What a diagnosis and some support might do would be to help you all to make her life less stressful and prepare her for life in whatever way fits with who she is.

Your dh isn't going to be able to keep her protected at home forever. The more support she has, the more she learns about how to handle the world around her and her reactions to it, the more options she is going to have in life.

As pp are saying, it takes a long time to get the process started.

Thank you for the new responses and suggestions.

I think a big part of DH's reservation is the impact the process might have on DD...and the fact that as she isn't in school it isn't obvious what the benefit of a diagnosis would bring.

That said we do absolutely need to accept who she is and how she thinks if we are going along that route.

DH IS very often over protective in my opinion...but we are trying to meet in the middle.

I completely agree about the only child interacting with the home -ed to produce a potential pressure cooker situation. I am indeed overly intense...but DH is not. He is very happy to spend all day wandering the countryside then do a little maths and reading when they get home.

It is 100% for the best that I work and he does the HE!

Hi, sorry to jump on your thread, but could i ask @corythatwas how/where do i start with starting the process of getting a diagnosis. I am sure my dd has ASD traits, but she is home educated, so i can't tap i to the school system. Thank you.

If by any chance she IS on the autistic spectrum, she might not be best served by constantly avoiding situations that put her under social pressure. Frankly, she probably needs quite a bit more practice in coping with people (though wandering the countryside to relieve the stress afterwards sounds blissful).

Does DH (try to) get her to buy things in shops, pay fares on buses, speak on the phone, do her own ordering in cafes, talk to other children at the swings, etc? Not massive terrifyingly unpredictable conversations but 'Please could I....? Thank you' interactions.

There were rather a lot of things we needed to practise specifically with one of my offspring.

Incidentally, unless your DH is inserting a screaming child into coat and wellies daily, I think one of her interests is 'countryside walks', which is no bad thing. She probably knows lots about her daily routes and things she sees, and would like to tell you about it even if it's the 13 types of buses rather than the interesting wildlife.

WhatIsThatSmell - phone the GP and see if you can start the ball rolling that way. I'd try to get an initial appointment minus the child so you can talk frankly.

Thank you @Lancelottie

By all means speak to your GP, but what is jumping out at me here is that the family rather than just the child needs to be evaluated.

The title of the thread was about the OP's disappointment in her daughter's lack of drive and attainment, rather than concern about her evident stress and anxiety. There have been various other comments which make me wonder how well ANY child would be coping in this set up. I think that needs to be looked at before there is any question of the child being diagnosed with anything. I hope this does not offend - as the mother of a child who is being assessed I know it is irritating to have people questioning your parenting, but it can be very useful in clarifying the situation.

One thing jumped out at me. You were asked what made her great and you answered that she was great because she is yours. Can you see the problem with that response? Your answer indicated that you only value her because you gave birth to her. Not because of any innate value she may have.

For what it's worth, my DD is academically inclined, which is nice for her (not me) as it's enabled her to earn a good living. What I value in her is that she is a loving and faithful partner/friend/daughter and granddaughter

Hello
Wanted to share my experience. DS (8) has HFA diagnosed when he was 5. His difficulties are subtle but centre around anxiety and poor social communication. He is keeping up/average academically (made all the more obvious in a high performing prep).
I absolutely agree with @lancelottie. It’s so important to put her in different everyday social situations so that she will learn to cope. I get ds to pay, to ask for things, to put things in the bin (eg at a busy airport) without me accompanying him. He’s an only child and one day I won’t be here. I constantly think about his future and try to make sure he has the skills as an adult. He’s made huge achievements with his anxiety but has needed so much reassurance along the way. School has been so important from a role modeling perspective but it will soon run its course as I don’t want him to face the academic pressure of a prep. Do not underestimate how hard things are for your child. Things that are normal for those without her challenges are huge achievements for her. I am a very high achiever and have felt disappointment as ds at times too but I think he’s accomplished so much. An ed psych assessmnt soon will help me to understand him better.
Please reach out through DM as I totally get your feelings.

tawdry I'm not offended at all - I think its a reasonable query. I posted about disappointment because that is the issue I am currently struggling with...and because its not something I can ask in RL and expect the honest and informative answers I have had here.

Her anxiety has been the major issue in our lives almost since birth - she was the kind of baby that screamed if she saw anything bright/patterned/colourful or smelled anything unusual. She wouldn't BF if I was wearing anything other than plain black/grey/dark brown and absolutely would not be held by anyone other than DH, or me if I actually had a boob out. She could only nap in a completely dark quiet utterly unstimulating environment and she has always met the unknown with a gut reaction of fear and retreat.

(typing this made me well up. I'm obviously not as 'over' the effects of those early days as I think I am)

BUT her anxiety is something I can and do seek support on in multiple different ways both online and in RL. Its not taboo to ask for help with your child's anxiety!

So please don't think that we are neglecting her mental health in order to push academic success.

I have a probably stupid autism related question. I feel like DD is so finely attuned to my emotions that I hardly dare think sometimes. Like she's watching me for the slightest sign of betraying a negative feeling that she can latch on to and take as further evidence that she is rubbish. I know that the whole 'autism means lack of understanding other's emotions' idea is a myth, but it is possible for hypersensitivity to other's emotions to be an autistic trait?

I too agree with lancelottie - ASD children do benefit from being exposed to social interaction as much as possible.
I hope that at very least she is in a few group activity clubs like Rainbows/Woodcraft/Cubs or dance/drama/orchestra etc to give her a chance to mingle and work in a team setting.

user and lottie thank you so much for sharing your experiences and ideas.

DD sometimes sets herself the task of interacting with shop assistants. She said she wanted to go ask for cutlery that was missing in the sainsbury's restaurant the other day.

She marched up to the counter and all but yelled 'excuse me but please could we have some knives'. Happily the staff responded positively to this attempt and of course I told her how well she did too. She was a bit shaky but proud of herself afterwards.

I'm afraid I've just been following her lead on what she feels proud of and doing my best to ignore the fact I can't for the life of me work out why speaking to shop staff is a big deal. This thread has made it so much clearer to me how she has been thinking all this time.

I'm pretty sure I've never belittled her achievements but I'm certainly going to see them more for the successes they really are now!

I think its great that you are looking a diffrent ways of doing things. My eldest is a little bit like your daughter in terms of struggling with things and I think my DH finds it hards sometimes as things come easy to him . Getting a diagnosis has been helpful as its switched his thinking - its not a lack of trying but a specific disability that makes things harder and its helped in getting DH to back off a little.

The other thing we have done is having a DS in charge day - where me and my DH do whatever he wants. Its really helped us to reconnect with him when things are hard and we just go with the flow. Good luck - this parenting thing is hard sometimes

For what its worth we had a genuinely lovely evening and morning. I think the key thing is going to be stepping back and taking in the world at her pace for a bit.

I was observing a lot of our interactions last night and noting how many times I wanted to rush her...or DH actually did rush her (I'll need to get him on board with this).

Or that one of us was trying to get her engaged with an activity when actually something else had captured her attention.

I'm pretty horrified to be honest.

But we did make a start. I sat for a good 5 minutes while she just studied my face....before eventually announcing 'your eyebrows have degraded while you were at work...you really shouldn't use eyebrow pencil, the make up is hiding who you are.' Then we hugged for another 5 minutes.

I did tell her that I thought she could teach me a lot about sitting still and noticing things IF she wanted to. She ran off to fetch a leaflet she'd recently acquired and showed me how she looks at pictures. Studying each bit then going back to the first part and finding even more new things.

She has always always collected leaflets and I never even knew why!

DS (as an older teenager) took part in a session intended to train ASD assessors and therapists.

It was startling how many of them attempted to interact with him in ways he had just specifically asked them not to as he found it distressing (interrupting him, or repeating the question insistently, being the main ones). And those were people who were meant to be training as experts. They couldn't step back and see where they were going wrong.

You are already doing way better than that.

SHe wasnt put on this earth to impress you. Shes not your muse, or your project. If you are disappointed in her, then the problem is much more likely to be with you, not her.
Let her be. We cant all be superstars, but its a shame and pretty toxic if our own mother cant find anything good about us.
I really hope you can work through this, because she WILL know.

lance how amazing that your DS would put himself through that for the cause. What a star!

I'm scared I won't be able to stick with it but I'm going to try and I'm going to keep this thread to remind me that there are answers and its up to me to make it happen.

Thanks again to everyone!

She doesn't like artificiality and pretence, does she? I used to feel the same about makeup and wince at hair dye because it 'wasn't real'. That may also be why she isn't convinced by your praise style being out of a book, rather than your real thoughts.

It does sound like she's a very sensitive, soft-shelled little girl (and her early days sound straight out of an Asperger's manual).

Thanks, he was brave to do it, I thought.

I didn't enjoy some of the answers he gave the more perceptive trainees (I sat in on the interviews, at his request): 'Do you feel lonely, DS?' 'Yes, actually, most of the time. And sometimes when I think people are still my friends, like from primary, it turns out they've grown out of it and I hadn't realised, and that's hard.'

Does your daughter have friends?

is it possible for hypersensitivity to other's emotions to be an autistic trait?
Definitely. DS2 is like this. It's uncanny how he hovers anxiously around me when I am upset about something and am hiding it from the family. DH (also ASD) and DS2 (NT) are entirely oblivious but DS2 is like an emotional barometer. He's massively affectionate too. he could sell his hugs, they are so good. Lots of stuff we're told about ASD is misinformed. ASD people are as varied as NT people.

hmm...she loves to play make believe and is heavily into generating her own cannon of magical lore (very internally consistent - but totally divorced from actual reality!)

She also athropomorphizes everything. I remember us getting her a couple of boxes for her pens when she was about 3 and she immediately named them, worked out what each would prefer to eat, then went about creating a whole list of treatable and untreatable diseases they may suffer from and how to avoid them.

She is also fine with fancy dress (plus or minus the fact she can't cope with most fabrics or anything with buttons).

So she will tolerate pretence in some areas. In others you are right, she is very intolerant indeed. White lies are totally inadvisable in her presence...she can detect them a mile off and reacts very badly regardless who they were aimed at or why.

I think I will have to read up on autism again. I have sort of avoided it for a while because I feel like most items in the various checklists are normal for someone somewhere and its hard as a non-professional to see the whole picture.

Wow. I see this kid having a lot of self esteem issues when she’s older. You should love her unconditionally and not care about all that shallow stuff.

I think she sounds like she might be aspie? That would explain a lot of the anxiety and sensory issues.
You say that the lack of feedback on progress with home ed is anxiety provking for you. Have you considered any of the online schools? My aspie girl couldnt manage mainstream but is flourishing in online school

Just has a read through this thread and lots of your descriptions of her are textbook female autism traits, and pathological demand avoidance in particular. Would recommend googling the latter - it will ring a lot of bells.