To not believe that my daughter is autistic?

[lionsandtigers21]

I know that may sound bad, but my dd17 seems utterly convinced that she has autism and ADHD and I just don’t buy it. She wasn’t always an easy child, but I don’t remember her having significant sensory issues or huge trouble with socialising. Now she’s a teenager, I think she may be depressed because she self-isolates so much but I think that’s the crux of it. She changed schools a lot as a child and I’ve also had issues in the past, so I accept that that may have caused problems. But I really can’t see how she would fit onto the autism spectrum. Her main argument is that, as a little girl, she would frequently go off on her own to collect stones (her special interest) and talk to herself instead of socialising or playing with toys, but she did definitely also have friends at that age. What she seems to remember as meltdowns seemed to me more like tantrums, and would normally occur if she was taken somewhere she didn’t want to go, although she did have unexplained tantrums as well (usually saying that she wanted to go home when she was already in the house and wanted to go back to being a baby) and I remember that she would cry dramatically as soon as I picked her up from school and all the way home at a certain period. She also told me that she would do things in class that would definitely been deemed socially inappropriate, liking uninhibitedly touching her private area in front of everyone until relatively late on in primary school and ignore the teacher who told her it was inappropriate, but I think a lot of kids are uninhibited? Things that might be considered ‘stimming’ she has always done to an extreme (she once scratched her face so much that I was convinced she had scabies!), but she could definitely make friends at school if she wanted to, even if she liked to be alone sometimes. Sensory-wise, I can’t really remember any issues aside from her hating me resting my head on her shoulder and putting my chin on her head, she also found things like nail filing very uncomfortable to witness. She insists that she struggles with social cues/situations today and engages in ‘masking’ behaviours where she unconsciously finds herself copying the speech and body language of those around her, but don’t we all do that? No one is the exact person at home and at school. She’s done things before that would suggest she’s a bit clueless, like exposing a lie that I told to my parents in a very excruciating situation (which I blamed her for at the time). There’s also more stuff that I could list, but does any of this override her apparent social competence as a child? I think the issues she has today are a result of lack of experience and isolating herself in a dark room rather than autism/ADHD? I don’t know, maybe I’m being facetious. Has anyone experienced this?
Thank you :)

People shouldn't be so dismissive of self diagnosis or rather, the idea that it may resonate with yourself.

I've always known something wasn't right. I have been diagnosed with anxiety when I was early 20s.

Until lockdown happened and my symptoms became so much worse, of all the issues that I had. I researched a lot on autism and adhd in females and I realised I was ADHD.

That revelation was truly amazing to me as I always thought I was just stupid and lazy deep down even though I have evidence where I aren't stupid at all.

One week ago I received my diagnosis from a consultant psychiatrist in my late 30s! Inattentive ADHD formerly ADD.

I wish I had access to the information that your daughter does now, when I was young. It would have saved me years and years of misery. I could have had help all those years ago and no one, not even myself knew about female adhd.

We mask a lot and my own father didn't know half of the things I suffered with. Part of the masking for me was not letting people know how truly weird I was or so I thought back then.

Support your daughter. Get her an assessment and go from there. If she isn't then you can deal with it from there.

Good luck to you both.

There’s loads of signs of autism in your OP. I would encourage her to seek an assessment. They can answer the question better than you can. Also, have a look into the presentation of autism in women and girls. As an aside, autism tends to be genetic so you may find it enlightening yourself.

I Don't think you are unreasonable to doubt the diagnosis - but it could be as other posters have said that she has self diagnosed on social media - as she is 17 there is probably no point in referring her to child services. Wait until she is 18 - then she can refer herself if she wants too - if she feels she really needs a professional assessment. Also before that you ask her if she wants a Gp assessment for depression in which case she will be offered a counselling assessment for this if she wants it.

My son has similar traits and has ADHD, possibly autism. He is very very sociable and makes friends in no time at all and seems to have friends wherever we go. He is probably hyper aware of social cues. He has masked all his life and has only been the last year or so that he came to me and said he thought he had ADHD. It might be worth her getting an assessment.

I’m autistic and have friends. I’ve also been married, have a current boyfriend and a very senior professional job. I can’t tell you if your DD is or isn’t autistic but it sounds possible and if she feels it would benefit her she should look to explore a diagnosis. It helps me to understand myself.

Poor girl being dismissive and invalidated by her own mother. Apart from the touching she could be my twin behaviour and feelings wise. Take her to the GP. Assessment takes years due to the waiting list times. No one ever considered I was autistic either but looking back it's so obvious.

I see a lot of potential red flags for autism in your OP.

Autism can present in a more subtle way in girls, so your interpretation of her being socially competent as a child and not having sensory issues doesn’t mean that she doesn’t have social and sensory issues - only that they’re not glaring.

dd17 seems utterly convinced that she has autism and ADHD

I have the same but in my family and even DH there is neural diversity and she always had some sensory issues - I strongly suspect she similar to me diagnosed by Educational psychologist dyslexia and dyspraxia at every least if not more though ADHA in all it forms seems a bad fit. We can't afford private diagnosis though for anything and DH never been keen to pay for private testing and most teachers have dissuaded us as well.

So when at 17 she started saying she though she might have this I was supportive - sent her to GP who put her on a list she's now aged out of - and have given her information she needs to peruse and she already in touch with uni support who will do tests immediately - so I've tried to be supportive even when I don't have the money to spend on diagnosis for her.

My concern in mean time she taking on all these traits that "proves" she is - someone says something is a thing for it and bam suddenly she has it - it's very performative and directed at me - not DH - and worse still suddenly she can't do things she managed perfectly fine before.

My hope is university support people can help her sort out what's there and maybe get her on wiating lists to be tested.

I'd suggest reading round the various conditions and how the present and being supportive when she tries to talk to you but also keeping in mind that it may not be that but something else.

@Proudgypsy and I agree with both your posts too (except that I don't see the possible signs of over-ticking of boxes that you saw in the OP's post, but that's just a difference of interpretation rather than a disagreement on anything substantial).

The self-diagnosis scene is an important potential factor to be aware of and I'm glad you brought it up.

I just wanted to also put that information within the context of the risks of disbelieving the DD and missing a diagnosis if the reality is that she does actually have one or both of these conditions. Being an undiagnosed autistic who's unsupported and disbelieved by the people close to you is incredibly hard.

Being autistic is hard enough — the most recent stats I can find suggest autistic people make up 1% of the population but 11% of suicides. Autistic women seem to lose at least some of the female protective factor, too — autistic people without LD have something like 7 to 9 times the suicide rate of the general population, but autistic women are 13 times more likely to die by suicide than non-autistic women. And autism plus ADHD raises the risk even further. Suicide is the second leading cause of death in autistic people.

Given that these statistics must be for diagnosed people, I guess it's obvious that getting a diagnosis doesn't magically fix the problem. I'm not bringing the stats up as an argument against you or the points you made, which are useful and important, just to emphasise to the thread in general how high the stakes can be if the DD is genuinely autistic, and how that biases me towards treating as potentially autistic (i.e. encouraging a thorough and credible assessment and in the meantime keeping an open mind), just in case.

I’m no expert but all I can say is that my daughter has always been suspected by school and professionals to have ASD (I don’t actually believe she does, for the record) and she presents with many less ‘traits’ than you have described in your daughter. She has never had any sensory issues, has no difficulty with transitions, doesn’t stim and has a rich imagination and great pretend play skills. She does, however, have fairly severe ADHD (which to me explains her challenges) and has always found making friends difficult. I think she does have some autistic traits but am not pursuing an ASD diagnosis for the moment (and she herself would not welcome it).

As your daughter is 17, why don’t you let her decide whether she wants to pursue an assessment or not? She is old enough to understand the pros and cons of this and whether a diagnosis (if warranted) is likely to benefit her. I would argue that if she doesn’t have it she won’t receive a diagnosis and, if she does have it, a diagnosis will help her understand herself better and how to move forward.

She sounds like my autistic daughter. She needs to get an assessment.

I’ve an adult friend who is autistic. She was diagnosed a few years ago. She is very sociable, no indication of any problems with concentration, eye contact or typical traits. Some of her children are autistic so she decided to get the assessment. Gave her a huge shock.
Better now than later.

The problem with self diagnosis is the lack of skill and capacity to understand what the problem may be. The OP's DH believes there is something wrong and the OP should listen to her. The best way to listen is to get the medical professionals involved.

Her daughter may be right and be on the spectrum, or have an anxiety problem. Or a depression one. Or a social/adaptive disorder. Or being a teen struggling with depression.

There are different diagnosis with different treatments and approaches. I don't live in the UK, I live in Australia, and here the best way to go about it is to make an appointment with your GP and get a referral to a psychologist to get to the bottom of the problem.

The important thing is to listen to her and not dismiss what she’s saying.
Yes, she may be depressed or anxious but she may also have ASD which only a diagnosis can really confirm

Its not unusual for teens to attribute how they feel to being neurodiverse or trans, when in time it turns out they were depressed or gay/lesbian and don’t understand their feelings.

Certainly your list indicates possible autism so I’d say it’s really important to not tell her she isn’t and to look into getting a diagnosis.

I would like to know this too.

Childhood trauma (it doesn’t have to be huge this like SA) can lead to ND like ADHD.

Unless you somehow embody an entire multi-disciplinary assessment team, you're not really qualified to judge. Support her accessing assessment, be honest when you're asked about her development and characteristics, you might be surprised or you might not. But, in the event she is autistic/ADHD, diagnosis can be really important.

A lot of what you are describing sounds exactly the way autism presents in high functioning girls though.

Oh I detest this phrase
I tried to explain to a tutter that my son was autistic and got the line "aren't we all a little autistic" she got angry when she insisted on getting closer to him and he screamed and lashed out at her ...... exactly why I had explained his diagnosis while he was stimming so she didn't get any closer to him

This. Please listen.

I don't live in the UK, I live in Australia, and here the best way to go about it is to make an appointment with your GP and get a referral to a psychologist to get to the bottom of the problem.

It may vary in different parts of the UK - but that what the SEN department at college told us to do - head to GP talk to them and from that DD1 was put on a list.

In this area there is no adult diagnosis's services on the NHS - at least that what DD1 was told so at 18 she aged out of the waiting to be diagnosed list. Area she is moving to does seem to have adult diagnosis and University has services she can try and access.

If she in education with SEN support try there OP- as they should not the pathway - if not try GP.

I don't understand why you wouldn't simply take her at her word and speak to your GP. If my child was telling me something I'd be inclined to believe them?

If your child told you they were in pain or struggling with physical discomfort that you couldn't see, but you could see some subtle or mild indicators of pain/discomfort, you'd believe her. Why treat this differently?

Why dont you buy it, or more accurately based on what youve said, why don't you want to buy it? You seem very dismissive of your daughters feeling now, and her behaviours as a child.

Autistic people can have friends you know, many autistic people crave friendships and relationships.

Just a note about ADHD too, my adult DD has dozens of friends, shes extremely social and smart, halfway through a sience based PHD and has a very full social life. Shes also been referred for an ADHD assessment. Please dont stereotype and assume a person cant be A simply because they can cope with B. It's much more complicated than that.

Thank you for all the replies. It’s really made me consider the situation and my own behaviour. I just want to make a few things clear, as I think I may have given off the wrong impression about my daughter. She is not trying to self-diagnose and is actually very against self-diagnosis. She is conscious of social contagion and claims that she has often tried to convince herself that she is exaggerating everything, which I find concerning. She is also by no means a social butterfly and friends have been one of her main concerns throughout her school career. Her main struggle is not making them, but keeping them. I’ve had another chat with her and she told me that part of the reason she lives in her own head is because she finds everything about the outside world so overwhelming (including the noises) and tends to focus on individual objects and thoughts when she is walking down the road. She is also very, very prone to daydreaming. Almost as soon as she walks in the door, it’s upstairs, headphones on and rocking/swaying/jumping on the bed, which she says helps stimulate her daydreaming. In answer to another question, she does spend a lot of time online and probably has ample access to people self-diagnosing on TikTok. However, other things like her chronic disorganisation, abilities to go an entire day without eating or eat a hell of a lot in one go, extreme food fussiness, constant lateness (despite being late often provoking an extreme reaction) and determination to avoid demands, which, now I think of it, caused her to miss what could be considered milestones, are definitely red flags. A lot of them I have already seen in family members so they do appear normal to me, with some exceptions. I will seek out a GP appointment.