7yo extremely anxious and scared. At my wits end!

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Sorry this may be long!

My dd is 7 and is the sweetest little girl but we are having major problems with how anxious and scared she is. It seems to be escalating as she gets older and I am struggling with how to deal with it.

She is extremely sensitive and takes everything very personally. She is quite paranoid and thinks that her friends and teachers hate her, or that they are staring at her, talking about her etc. Her teacher has referred her to a 'confidence building' group at school but it doesn't seem to be making much of a difference.

She is scared of absolutely everything, and has been very cautious her whole life. She was a late walker (20 months) and has always seemed a bit hesitant/behind with physical stuff compared to her friends. She was never a climber or anything like that when she was a toddler. I took her to soft play when she was very small and she wouldn't tolerate the feeling of the squishy floor. She won't go down slides or go on a swing at the park. I think she has some sensory issues as she really struggles with loud noise (we can't go bowling or to an arcade for example), has problems with the feel of things such as particular clothes or feeling unsteady on her feet. Or her newest thing is she hates the feel of her hands touching her skin in the bath, so I have to help her out of the bath by holding her elbows as she freaks out if I touch her hands. There's lots of small examples of things like this and I could go on forever!

With the anxiety issues, she worries about everything. From very small things happening, to big things like the history topics she is learning about at school. They learnt about the great fire of London and she spent the whole few weeks of the topic worrying about fire. The new one is the titanic and she's now worrying about boats etc, constantly throughout the day. We also get panic about bugs, flies, moths, spiders, shadows, various normal household noises. Any slight noise she panics and we have to explain what it is.

If anything happens which freaks her out, she gets in to such a state and there's no calming her down for a long time.

I know some of this is usual childhood stuff but it's getting to a point where it's affecting her life. She's missing out on experiences and doing things with her friends at school because she's terrified of everything, and unfortunately some of the other kids are picking up on it and calling her a scaredy cat and other things. She's so sad sometimes and says she hates herself

Does anyone have any advice on this? I really don't know what to do to help her.

I would get an appointment with the GP. Having read up on how ASD presents in girls, I think you have reason to ask fir a referral to a Paediatrician to have her assessed.

If you post in the SN Chat Section they may be able to give you more responses and see if the MNers in there also think that an assessment is worthwhile. They should also be able to talk you through the assessment process.

Your daughter sounds a lot like mine. She was also highly anxious by the great fire of london topic at school and refused to watch the fun lesson when they set fire to cardboard models of the houses. She was the only one this was an issue for. She was anxious about this for weeks. She is also terrified of insects bugs, dogs cats, horses, llamas, bees, wasps, flies - causes regular problems. She is awaiting autism
Assessment and school are confident she will get a diagnosis.

Thanks @BunnyRuddington and @TankFlyBoss, I appreciate the response.

She gets on ok in day to day life, has plenty of friends/is very sociable and does well with her school work. Her teacher said she often misinterprets social situations (ie. the paranoia etc which I mentioned in my first post) which rang alarm bells for me, added up with everything else.

I am really struggling with this as I have a couple of close friends who have children with ASD, and they are very different to dd. Although I do understand that there's so many ways it can present. One has battled for a long time to finally get a diagnosis and another has a dd who is currently jumping through hoops to try and get the support/diagnosis she needs, even though both of them display very obvious traits. Which makes me think I'd get laughed out of the doctors surgery if I brought it up with the GP.

Just to add to this, my DH has some signs of ASD and he was thinking of speaking to his GP about it as it's not something that was ever picked up on as a child. But he decided not to as he didn't see the benefit of it at this point in his life. I'm not sure if 'high-functioning' is a good term to use (apologies if not) but this describes him very well. He's got on well in life but does have some issues which cause a problem sometimes. He and dd are very similar personality-wise.

One has battled for a long time to finally get a diagnosis and another has a dd who is currently jumping through hoops to try and get the support/diagnosis she needs, even though both of them display very obvious traits. Which makes me think I'd get laughed out of the doctors surgery if I brought it up with the GP

Well, it's not called a spectrum for nothing

Definitely see the GP and as for a referral so that she can be assessed. I'm not sure if having school behind you would help, like I said before, you might benefit from asking about getting a referral in SN chat.

You are concerned about her behaviour enough to post on here asking what others think, I think the next step is trying to get her a referral

@BunnyRuddington

One has battled for a long time to finally get a diagnosis and another has a dd who is currently jumping through hoops to try and get the support/diagnosis she needs, even though both of them display very obvious traits. Which makes me think I'd get laughed out of the doctors surgery if I brought it up with the GP

Well, it's not called a spectrum for nothing

Definitely see the GP and as for a referral so that she can be assessed. I'm not sure if having school behind you would help, like I said before, you might benefit from asking about getting a referral in SN chat.

You are concerned about her behaviour enough to post on here asking what others think, I think the next step is trying to get her a referral

Thanks so much, honestly it's really helped to have someone who understands where I'm coming from. I've just been browsing the SEN board (didn't realise it was there!) so I will post and see what everyone thinks. I think I'll email her teacher too and see what her thoughts are.