Autistic Women Assemble! #2

[Nepmarthiturn]

Helloooo lovely people, a new thread for a us to continue to chat and connect with other autistic women (small talk and word mincing not required). 😊

As before, anybody newly stumbling upon this is very welcome to join us (even if still awaiting diagnosis). But we'd be grateful if others could leave us alone please, like the NT man we encountered in thread #1. 🤣

@camelCase to be honest if I didn’t have the dh and kids my only holiday would be to see family.

Your poor dd, we are having anxiety issues with ds also sparked by bullying. Is your dd in an ASD school, we are considering one for ds.

I don't go on holiday.
When I was working I would go away overnight about once a month, stay in a nice hotel (looking for a lovely bathroom) and see a band.
I'd hate to have to go somewhere for a long time.
Oh, a few years ago I did five nights in Ireland, travelling by bus eireann to see as much of the country as I could in that time. That was ok. There was no sitting on a beach or hanging around in a hotel waiting to die. It was busy, busy, busy.

As to ‘helping’ by washing up the wrong way..............................

Quite.
Enough said about that, I think. I am becoming enraged just thinking about it.

Moving on.......................

@Whatsthepoint1234
Luckily DH is the same, he's not keen on going anywhere, once your kids are grown up would your DH consider not going away? Or maybe going without you? (apart from the trips to see family).

DD was in a SEMH school that caters specifically to kids who've been bullied(and a large proportion of them have ASD), it was amazing. The school was so great for her emotional/mental health but academically not a good fit as she was meant to be doing A-levels or a BTEC and all they could offer was more GCSE's, which she happily did (the more the merrier) but she's so ready to move on. She is in a much better place mentally now than she was even 12 months ago but she will never cope in a mainstream environment the trauma is too ingrained. Luckily we've found an online level 3 course that she's starting next month and it will only take her a year so she will only be a year behind where she would have been if she was in mainstream. She's not sure whether she wants to get a degree, she knows she can't go to a traditional uni so it would have to be online with the open uni.

@StopStartStop
I think I could cope with going and staying in a hotel for the night, I'd probably enjoy it but by the morning I'd be so ready to go home. Do you think you'll ever go on another busy holiday(like the Ireland one) or are you done with holidays?

@TheShellBeach
Ha same, I can't watch DH do the dishes, the way he does it makes no sense. We have a drainer and he doesn't put the cutlery in the little holder or the plates in the little slots, he stacks it all in the middle 😩 it's making me feel quite angry just thinking about it, he doesn't know that's why I do the dishes 99% of the time.

I'm broke so the decision is taken for me! Maybe I'll go on another busy trip - Scotland has a lot of places of my ancestors, as Ireland has, so I won't rule it out. :)

Ds and I are currently sat in a cafe in the town centre with our earphones in on our phones 45 minutes into the worlds most dramatic shopping trip. He’s had another growth spurt and all his trouser (including school ones are too small) - I bought the only trousers that fit his brief in three different colours but he has a germ phobia (suspected contamination ocd) meaning three pairs isn’t enough. His specification is as follows: 26w34l (nearly impossible to find), no jeans, no trousers with a zip up fly, no trackie bottoms, not too rough material. He has his safe trousers at home but every trouser in his size has a zip up fly and is ‘too rough’ and all the school trousers are too wide (he won’t wear a belt). Add to this he can’t do up laces so the only shoes he will wear are wellies and vans comfycush slip ons (black ones for school and another pair for home). Vans don’t do size 13 men’s so he only has wellies. Sorry for my rant - the only thing we’ve managed to find on our lists is shirts before a meltdown in m and s ensued. I actually hate shopping, my husband took him a couple of days ago but the stuff he got was too small. I can’t find anywhere that doesn’t smell and Noah is too stressed to go back to the car. He won’t go outside as somebody is smoking across the street and he thinks it’s going to give him cancer and I’m overloaded by all the smells in the cafe and currently we are both plugged into our phones crying. Did I mention I hate Fucking shopping and the fact my boy is severely underweight (178cm and 42kg) and so anxious he’s not sleeping (he slept 3 hours last night and 2 the night beforehand) which is a risk factor for his epilepsy yet he’s sat on the camhs waiting list. When I called the gp earlier he told me to give him high calorie food (I do but he’s having a growth spurt and he has a diet of three main foods) and keep giving him his leviceteram (I can’t remember how to spell it) and his melatonin. I give him his meds he just purposely stays awake. He said that because ds first have anorexia and he isn’t a suicide risk the referral can’t be urgent. When ds has meltdowns he hits punches himself so bad it leaves bruises and says he hates himself and wishes he was never born.

Im so sorry for the rant we are both stressed and ds needs clothes.

@camelCase Im sorry if this is nosey but what rough region is the school in? We are in the East of England and that is our concern with ds - he struggles with spelling and handwriting but he scored very highly on the iq test by the Ed psych and is likely to get 9’s in maths, computing, history and the sciences. We reckon he is probably going to do a levels but he’s only starting his GCSEs in sept (year 9) so I’m not sure. I just don’t want him to end up like me, I’ve done ok with what I got however I was expected to do better. We are so similar it makes me worry he’ll have the mental illnesses like I did.

Whyyyyyyy do they stop pull up trousers at 10-11?
It's SO wrong. Like "ok, you're old enough to mask and hide your struggle now"

Got knocked out by a golf buggy at our resort tonight. Don't want to complain, because then I have to speak to people but don't want any one else to get knocked out. Thoughts?

100% - ds is really tall which doesn’t help. There is only one design of trousers from river island he will wear and they are £35. I’ve just spent over £100 on shoes as he can’t do up laces (neither can I and I’m 39) and he has size 13 feet. He’s now refusing to sleep again but it’s all my fault according to my GP. I also got my period this evening so I’m a grumpy old bag with stomach cramps. I can’t get myself comfortable and I’m fretting about ds. But because me and my ds have above average IQ’s and can talk we are fine and don’t need a ‘label’ - fml.

Leave a note so you don’t have to talk to them? If it’s a company find their email address and email them? Or my personal favourite - send a dh or dp or dw if you have one so they do the talking!

This is why it's so dangerous to go on holiday. 😂

NB I meant to quote @AuDHD4Me

BTW ladies and ladies - have y'all realized that y'all can edit your posts now?

Ooh really? That’s cool!

Ooo is it an app thing only?

It’s not app only! 😃

I feel the pain of the wrong clothing, @Whatsthepoint1234 , not to mention the pain of being dismissed as ‘fine’ if you are clearly intellectually able. As to labels…..some of mine have included ‘lazy’, ‘weird’, ‘attention-seeking’ etc, so a label that is factually correct is helpful.

Ds is fine now. Does anyone know if Stan Smiths are fashionable for teen boys? They seem to be the only Adidas shoe with Velcro. I don’t want ds to be bullied like I was at school for having no sense of style!

@Craftycorvid my labels were similar - along with BPD which was just a synonym for free depressed autistic adult

@Whatsthepoint1234

Have you / DS ever tried those no-tie laces? Link here. Just thought it would open up more shoe options for you both. Also, I'll pm you about the school, they have a few schools dotted about the country and also an online school for those who can't get to a physical school(either due to distance or anxiety).

@AuDHD4Me
I would send an email if you can't face speaking to them, if you word it in way that sounds like you just want others not to get hurt rather than it being a full-on complaint they will probably be more helpful.

Having a slight panic today as I have to finish my project by tomorrow so I have enough time to upload it and create a presentation over the weekend ready for next week. It means I'm having to reduce the interactivity of it all and make some of it pretty basic...I clearly created too elaborate a project to complete in just a few weeks 😆

Hello, is it ok if I ask whether anyone else has an unusual special interest? Im sorry if that isn’t the correct adult word but it’s what we call ds’s favourite topics. Also sorry if I post on this thread too much (I’m freaking out that I do) I just feel (rather childishly) excited that adult women with family’s are like me! Im obsessed with names of people and places! I also love accents and I spend way too much time learning about them (and their languages and dialects) - in simple terms I’m a linguistics geek!!

I also love accents and linguistics.

One of my DS's has a special interest in post-mortem procedures.

My own special interest is serial killers and their victims. I am very good at listing the names of the most notorious ones. Years ago, my sister (ugh - I stopped speaking to her a long time ago) told a doctor that I was very eccentric and needed hospital treatment because of my morbid interest in murder.

You would think I murdered people myself.

I have a specialised knowledge of Agatha Christie books, too.

I am always delighted when she comes up as a question in Pointless.

True crime shows are my guilty pleasure - my mother hates it. As a teenager my special interest was horror movies (90’s was peak horror time) - my mother was seriously freaked out. Your sister was being very OTT - knowing about murder doesn’t make you a murderer! It’s like people who talk about how they always thought xyz was a murderer because they were a bit odd. Im very odd and as far as I know I don’t have any murderous tendencies - the same with ds, school heard him talking about blowing up buildings (on fecking Minecraft) and called home with some spiel about terrorism and a safeguarding report (ds is very quirky and also half Iranian, half Ashkenazi) I went into full ‘Karen mode’ as my boys say, and demanded to speak to the headteacher. Safeguarding called me and apologised saying they get a lot of reports like that.

Post mortem practises actually sounds like an interesting special interest! Has your dc watched the coroner documentaries on either channel 5 or all 4. They are really good (also I’m not sure what age rating). Ds currently has two special interests - specifically in ww2 tanks and python (the programming language). He has a raspberry pi that he gets to do fancy stuff on. It’s much better than some of his previous special interests like guns (the historic kind, raised a few eyebrows at school), Minecraft (he still has multiple stuffed creepers in his room) and Dads Army (multiple trips to the Dads Army museum).

Ive just realised I’ve waffled!

I forgot to ask, I’m looking to get ds13 some books for Christmas and dh suggested getting him some classics like Death on the Nile but can’t remember if they are suitable for a 13 year old. He likes the Murder Most Unladylike book and its sequels which are apparently quite similar but for teens. Are the Agatha Christie books appropriate for a 13 year old content wise (basically no sexual scenes or very descriptive gore as he is quite sensitive and gets nightmares) - sorry to bombard you!