Hi everyone. I really need some advice on my daughter. she's nearly 5 and for the last 2 years we've had a bit of trouble with her. I can never quite work out if she has anxiety or if there's an underlying problem such as autism or Asperger's.
I will try not to ho on too much and try to explain the best I can. She has a brother he was born 2 years ago. There was never any jealousy,she loves him and they get on so well. since then though she's never been the same child with everybody else. She's gone from being happy in playing and dancing to quiet as a mouse and not answering people. She started to go mute when we left the house not long after my son was born and then she came out of that and started talking again to me as normal. but since then she won't talk to my parents, it's like as soon as we get in their house she freezes up, she's nervous and she can't bring herself to talk. The problem is my parents aren't very good with it and they take it personally and they get sarcastic and they throw comments at it and they make her feel worse. I've tried to encourage my parents to not draw attention to it and to ignore it and just treat her the same as they treat my son, but we always come away with me feeling absolutely terrible. today they basically told her Santa wasn't coming to her because she wouldn't speak to them. She acted up a little bit because they were fussing her brother and not her so she did some silly things and got herself in trouble. She then didn't want to go home and didn't want to get shoes on which resulted in my parents telling her she needed to start behaving. Then my dad told me I need to speak to the school about her behaviour. I am currently sat crying in the bedroom because I'm at a loss at what to do to solve this issue so we can enjoy being around family.
she started school in September. I was advised to see how she got on before I spoke to any health visitors or doctors. She was shy at first which I expected and I wasn't surprised when the teacher said that. But she also said she was a lovely little girl and always smiling. she also said she didn't do many of the activities and sticking to the art table a bit too much. It's been 2 months since the parents evening and she's now playing much more with her male friend that she's known since she was 1 and she is also doing a little bit more activity wise with other children. She has a female friend now too. I have been called to one side a few weeks ago because she was behaving silly in class and being lively and I nipped that in the bud with a behaviour chart and the teachers were happy and said she's calmed down. They are concerned s little bit about her routine and the fact she does go into her own world a little bit. I am getting her ears and eyes checked next month. I'm never sure if it's just her age and because she didn't do a lot of nursery she's just struggling to adjust to long weeks or is it that she should be doing more than she is and I'm just making excuses for her now.
socially she struggles still at times. Sometimes it's the fact she won't speak, sometimes she gets lively and excited around people she's comfortable with and then she kind of irritates them sometimes. sometimes she can play really nicely and get along very well with her friends. The school haven't said that she's a bad person with playtime and things like that, they seemed happy enough she's mixing with some children. before she started school playdates were just hell for me. She's going through a stage where I'm not allowed to pick up anywhere else's kids and I'm not allowed to look at other people's babies because she feels threatened by it. She gets so anxious if I'm around on a play date and she's just determined to keep me away from the other kids. The amount of times I've tried to explain to her that if she could just relax she could have a friend around and have more fun and she could get to have tea parties and sleepovers, but can't do that while she is not able to allow me to help other people.
routine wise I don't think she's obsessed with a routine she's not bothered too much about change. she's able to write a few letters now and a few numbers and she's starting to learn to read and she is very able to act out the school day. she does a lot of role-play where she pretends she's the teacher and sets up the classroom. She's been through stages where she's been obsessed with playing doctors and pretending she's pregnant by putting a blanket or put up fullstop and she's also been through stages where she's love being outside or playing with sand and water. she absolutely loves drawing but she never seems to look after her pens and she tends to ruin things like books and stuff without meaning to. In fact she breaks things quite easily and she sometimes will destroy something that she shouldn't have destroyed. she enjoys going out swimming and she enjoys going for walks and she's always up for trying new things. She loves a chance to do a new activity. She might not talk to the people running the swim class but she definitely likes to be there taking part.
she's definitely able to show emotions and feelings, she's happy to give cuddles and receive cuddles. In fact I think sometimes she forgets her little brother is smaller that's why he gets picked up more and I think sometimes she just wants to be treated the same way as him. I try my best to give her one-on-one and make a big fuss of her when I get chance. she's always made eye contact and responded to her name and she will look at things if I point them so I'm not concerned with any of that when it comes to things like autism and Asperger's.
I wonder sometimes if she is just massively anxious and she's got herself into a state that she can't get out of. I feel a lot of her anxiety is around me and me going away almost or just becoming attached to somebody else which obviously I won't do. the reason I think this is because she's always worrying about me socialising with other children. the reason I don't think that she's autistic at the moment is because she doesn't seem to ever fit into the box and I've looked at many things online. I've done a few quizzes and tests and she never scores higher than 9 out of 40 plus questions so she's very low on the scale. I'm not ruling out completely but it doesn't run in the family there's nobody in the family with anything like that at the moment so she would be the first. I know nobody on here can diagnose her or tell me she's autistic or tell me she's just anxious but I'm really at a loss whether I need to just stop focusing on my parents reactions and whether I should just give her time to change or do I need to get the ball rolling. Is it possible for a child to have extreme anxiety and if it is how do they treat it? if anybody's got any ideas please let me know. also ask any questions that you want to ask about her life and I'll try answer them if you think that can help us get to the bottom of what could be going on here little bit. I think I'm going to phone the doctors tomorrow and perhaps see if they will see us and tell us what they think is going on really because as I said she is still so young and It could well just be her age. I definitely Feel school has improved her and she's happy at school and it's exactly what she needs but obviously compared to some of the children she's not really showing that she can do things as easily as others. I'm sorry if this message doesn't make any sense I've actually just used the microphone to talk into the microphone instead of typing it