I’ve vaguely wondered this for a few years now, but things have come to a head with DD(13) and I’d like to start the process of determining whether or not she has Aspergers. Having said that, she’s in the middle of her third running December crisis, so I don’t want to upset her and don’t know how to raise this with her!

General background:

• Struggles socially. Seems to only be able to cope with one friend at a time but this friendship becomes unhealthy with DD being very possessive/obsessive about the friend and it invariably falls apart at some stage so she moves in to someone else.
  

• Likes to live in a fantasy world a lot of the time. Gets obsessed with one TV show at a time- either the whole show or particular characters.
  

• Only wears jogging bottoms, t-shirts, hoodies (comfortable clothes- has problems with tags, I have to buy the super soft sensitive school shirts etc). Always wears odd socks.
  

• Used to be very girly when little but fought growing up (went through a period of speaking in a baby voice). Now has announced that she is non binary, asexual and wants to change her name to a gender neutral one)
  

Lots of other examples, but hopefully that gives a bit of a picture.

For the past three years running, she’s hit crisis point in December. Each year she’s gone back to school and has seemed very happy but everything seems to explode in December with her either running away or threatening suicide. Last December we took her to her GP who said she felt the crisis was situational (friendship problems as above) and that once removed from the situation, she’d be fine.

She also saw the school counsellor but after the second session he told her he felt she didn’t need to see him and she agreed. They seem to have spent most of the time discussing her synethesia and not the underlying social/friendship problems/suicide threats.

After this, she seemed OK mental health wise- like she’d needed the release but we’ve just had another crisis and DH and I are in agreement that she needs some long term counselling. She’s reluctant about this, but says she’ll speak to someone “for us”.

As part of this, I’d like to have a discussion about the possibility of Aspergers, but given everything else, don’t want to upset her further so am not sure if I’m best raising it with a counsellor first or how to raise it with her?

Anyone with a similar experience?