To not be able to work my DS out

[ChristmasIsComingRealSoon]

Can anyone diagnose my DS?

11 years old
Extremely loving.
Affectionate.
Adores cuddles.
Very generous with his love, very easily expresses love and affection.
Smiles often.
Laughs easily.
Brilliant sense of humour.
Makes others laugh.
Emotionally intelligent.
Brilliant conversationalist with me and DH.
Excellent eye contact with me, DH, sibling.
Clever at English, history, geography, science.
Horrendous at maths.
Loves swimming and cycling.
Loathes team/competitive sports.
Appalling conversationalist with peers.
Poor eye contact with peers.
Poor eye contact with my adult friends.
Poor conversationalist with my adult friends.
Incredible interest in weather, weather forecasts, weather patterns, weather in all different areas of the world, historical weather, floods, heatwaves, hurricanes, storms, temperatures. Spends hours searching online about weather.
Wants friends and enjoys company but really struggles socially.
Struggles to maintain friends.
Suffers quite badly from sensory overload.
Repeats words and phrases, to the point of driving the family mad.
Low self esteem.
Cannot listen to the word 'stop'. Won't stop when told to stop repeating words and phrases. Won't stop when told to stop winding sibling up on purpose. Won't stop when told to shut screen down.
Really, really hard to motivate to get ready for school/bed/clubs.
Gets highly, highly irritable when using screens, to the point where screen time changes his mood and he becomes really rude and snappy, despite being usually polite and well mannered, even after only half an hour of use.
Gets sucked in to screen time, cannot log off, cannot stop searching Internet about focused interests, Gets really cross at me limiting his time online.
Highly sensitive.
Seeks endless reassurance that we love him.
Has tics, vocal and motor.
Touches and taps windowsills, sinks, taps, walls, fences, bins, doors, furniture.
Walks forward, back, sidesteps, then repeats the pattern before continuing to walk normally again.
Petrified of shower water going in to face.
Petrified of shampoo going in to eyes.
Won't shower himself, insists on me showering him but then shouts at me in the shower through the sheer stress of being showered. Unbelievably remorseful afterwards about shouting at me, says it's really stressful in the shower, can't help it, and says "I feel bad about myself now" afterwards.
Smiles at himself in mirrors.
Kisses 10 cuddly toys and a clock in a ritual before bed every night.
Gets sudden onset anxiety attacks, to the pointvof chest pain, hard to pinpoint cause.
Gets anxious about all sorts of things.
Sometimes sleeps soundly through the night, other times lays awake for hours in the night.
Gentle.
Kind, so unbelievably kind.
Doesn't know how to start conversation with peers.
Doesn't know how to initiate friendships.
No interest in music.
No interest in pets.
Retains random facts.
Incredible, quite unbelievable long term memory.
Appalling short term memory.
Calm when not shouting about the shower.
Really amazingly good at explaining and articulating his thoughts, feelings and emotions.
Incredibly in touch with how he feels.
Has a soft, kind face.
Unbelievably loveable.
I have such a strong feeling he's different to his peers.

You've mentioned he gets anxious. I'd be looking at any online or free resources in relation to that. Eg

www.camhs-resources.co.uk/downloads#:~:text=The%20Anxious%20Child%20is%20a,supporting%20a%20child%20experiencing%20anxiety.&text=The%20Little%20Book%20of%20Mindfulness,help%20with%20stress%20and%20worries.&text=I%20Gotta%20Feeling%20is%20a,to%20help%20cope%20with%20stress.

Nobody online could or should offer any kind of diagnosis about what might be underlying some of the behaviours your DS shows. I'd concentrate on the areas that most concern or affect you at home and look to find different approaches and techniques to dealing with them, using whatever resources are available from places like the school SEN team (even tho he is fine at school), the LA local offer, etc etc.

But even if someone could come along and unofficially 'diagnose' your child right now, how would that make a difference to you/him? Other than giving you a 'why', what would actually change? What would/could you do differently?

He's on the CAMHS waiting list, there's no problems at school, so you just continue to support him and make adjustments at home as needed until CAMHS can see him.

Everything you have said makes me think he’s on the spectrum and has OCD.

I agree with this. The vast majority of that list aren't problems to be solved, just aspects of his unique personality as an individual.

If he hates showers, let him take baths several times a week and just sink-wash the rest of the time.

Why overthink it, just address each actual problem. The shower is one, with a pretty obvious solution. The tapping on things and smiling at mirrors are not problems.

Finding it hard making friends, being shy around unknown adults, awkward conversionalist - well he's a preteen boy. Don't pathologise these fairly common attributes...!

Are you being serious everything op has listed sounds like autism and OCD. Don’t be such a knob.

Sorry you've had some harsh replies OP. I'm not qualified to diagnose but it sounds like your son is Autistic.

A 2 year wait is unfortunately very standard. In my area it is 3 years and in some areas the wait for cahms and assessments are so long they have closed the wait list for anyone who isn’t deemed an emergency.

My area has a parent forum for anyone on the waiting list. So even if you don’t have a diagnosis you can still access the same support that parents get after a diagnosis. You can also join local parents groups to hear the experiences of others to see if your dcs behaviour resonates. I have a local asd and adhd parent group which is mainly full of parents on wait lists.

Totally agree with you there @5goldenrings

OP it sounds like he's on the spectrum

I recognise a lot of what your DS has in my DS

But also quite a few characteristics my DS doesn't have

I'd hazard a guess at autism / Aspergers

The scale is huge and one size does not fit all

Generally so long as your DS is loved and safe and his school is good with dealing with any issues to help him out at there then he should be ok

Obviously it would be great to some sort of diagnosis but most schools are fairly clued up these days abd can support DC without an official diagnosis

Fortunately you have a fantastic list of things pertaining to your DS which will help them come up with a decent immediate plan.

Contact the school, once you're put in touch with their SEN or whomever then provide your list they'll have a discussion with your DS and give him a timeout card if he needs it, special area to learn if need be and allocate TAs to his lessons if required

The most important thing is that you love him and he knows that

He's probably happier than you think even though he's not behaving in a way that's perceived as normal

With my DS in yr 7 so a similar age to your DS 11 both I and the school noticed he had Aspergers / autism.

They were brilliant and put loads of things in place for him.

I was told by the school that they were not allowed to tell me they thought he had Aspergers but breathed a sigh of relief on the phone when I mentioned it so they could agree and we could all move forward and put a plan in place

Print your list off and take to GP if you're concerned

To me read lots of signs of autism especially repeating - echolalia

Have you not been to GP about tics?

Gosh op some stunningly unhelpful replies on here.

I think aibu boards are not going to give you a useful response for the most part. I strongly suggest you ask Mumsnet hq to move this to special needs topics; a children as people there tend to be knowledgeable and pleasant. Unlike most of the above posters.

You have described my ds3 (17) very well. Mine is actually very musical, very into animals and weather is not his specialist subject but otherwise, your description is perfect. My ds has Developmental Coordination Disorder and ASD. The jury is still out on ADHD. We waited over three years for assessment but I spoke to the school and got quite a few things put in place for him long before his diagnosis. Since he has had more support he has been less anxious and things have improved massively. His ticks have gone completely and he no longer displays the ritualistic behaviour. While you wait for assessment it would be worth doing a bit of reading, trying to work out what he is most anxious about and see what can be put in place to help him.

Nobody knows why kids do anything.

He's an odd duck.

If you live in a stately home and own half of Wiltshire, he's eccentric.

If you're like the rest, of us he's a bit strange.

So what? Not everyone is good at maths or wants to be. Let him be himself and see where that takes him. Julian Clary once said that there was nothing wrong with men that turning 30 wouldn't sort out. Only 19 yrs left to go.

Anxiety

ignore The meaner replies OP. You clearly have concerns about your son. My son was diagnosed autistic earlier this year and I recognise some elements of what you say about yours. The thing is a diagnosis doesn’t actually bring that much more help, unless they’re having major problems at school which it sounds like is not the case here. from your list can you identify the top 3-5 elements that concern you most? For me it would be stuff verging on anxiety and OCD. Then read widely about those behaviours and see what you can learn. That’s what I would do, especially with the teenage years coming up. Good luck!

Ok, but what is "wrong" with DS? The boy you describe is doing well at school, is socially acceptable, has interests & hobbies and is happy at home.

I don't see why you desperately need a diagnosis right now. Have you thought of just letting him get on with life as a slightly kooky kid, then seeing what CAMHS make of him when his appointment comes up?

Sounds like anxiety, and if i am being honest being a little spoiled and babied.
For example even if we take the spitting problem at face value, why is he doing it all over the bathroim rather than just in the sink?
Also showering the boy at 11, sounds highly irregular!

Sensory issues can exist on their own. It's possible he has OCD or anxiety, or social communication disorder, or Autism. It's also possible this is just who he is and he's not ND and doesn't have MH issues.

He does remind me of my DD a bit. She's 11 and Autistic. She also has anxiety. She probably wouldn't have been diagnosed yet if her brothers hadn't been Autistic and I could see the similarities underlying their behaviour. She hit every milestone on time and I've never noticed an absence of eye contact at least with family and friends. The reason I pursued a diagnosis with DD was mostly because she felt different from everyone else and this was really distressing to her. She was really relieved to know why she felt this way. Distress aside she didn't really need a diagnosis, she's smart, doesn't need accommodations at school, has friends, can function fine out and about in the community unlike her brothers, but it was important to her and her sense of who she is to know this.

If you want to pursue this you need a good paediatrician who has experience diagnosing things like anxiety and ODD as well as things like social communication disorder and Autism with non typical presentations in children that mask well. Where I live you'd want a developmental paediatrician, I don't know if it's the same where you are. It's common for children that mask well to struggle more as social interactions get more complex. This happens naturally as children become tweens and then teens. If he is Autistic I'd expect to see him struggling socially more over the next couple of years.

FFS why are people being such arseholes? It’s fascinating how the first reply often sets the tone - in this case it was mean, so that seems to give others permission to be mean. OP is worried about her son, quite reasonably. If people have nothing helpful or sympathetic to contribute why respond??

OP many aspects of this sound like my 17yo who’s recently been diagnosed with autism. Honestly all this has really done is given him a reason he responds to things differently to most people. There’s no actual treatment, but just having a name for his issues has helped him.

So I guess you just need to wait out the 2 years (which is pretty shit btw), knowing that he may well have some form of neurodivergence and being alert for tics or anxiety or compulsions getting worse, in which case take him back to the GP meanwhile, or his coping at school to deteriorate in which case talk to the school about what adjustments they can make.

It's common for children that mask well to struggle more as social interactions get more complex

This was absolutely my DS, and the reason he wasn’t diagnosed until 17. It’s good that you’ve got the ball rolling while he’s only 11 OP.