High Functioning ASD

[peppapig79]

Hi
My daughter is 5. We are awaiting a diagnosis but the school approached me over a year ago about her having ASD. To me I thought she was quirky but it all then made a lot of sense.
She's very very bright and has excellent communication but she is very very sensitive, emotional, can be very scared, has lots of different quirks, hand flaps and jumps a lot, cannot keep still, obsession. I am still waiting to be seen by health professionals but her school is fantastic. I am in the older adult side of healthcare and I feel clueless about children with ASD. Since starting year 1 it's been a struggle every morning to get her to school which ends up with me having to physically put her in the car and carry her into school while she is crying and screaming. It's heartbreaking and as I suffer with MH this also leaves me really anxious every day.
Any advice and sharing of experience of children with high functioning ASD would be really appreciated x

DS sounds pretty similar. It isn’t always easy. I’ve found the collaborative problem solving approach that’s often recommended here can help a lot (google ross greene). Doesn’t work quickly, but does work.

Yes Ross Greene is excellent for helping anxious children.

My DD was similar when she started school. She loved school but found saying goodbye to me and going into her classroom super difficult and we had tears every day. For her it helped to have a real routine that we did every day to make it all more familiar.

A key thing was having a familiar adult from school for me to hand her over to (in our case it was one of their class TAs): does your DD have that or does she just have to queue up with everyone else? Often for autistic kids it helps if they go in a bit early and help the teacher set up the classroom or something like that - so they can settle in quietly before the other children arrive. Could you suggest that to the school? Otherwise all the craziness of everybody arriving in the morning can just be totally overwhelming and a terrible way to start the day.

Other things we did was a "hug button" and a silly wave (to make the actual point of departure funny rather than upsetting - we both tried to be as silly as possible while waving off). After a while we just did the silly wave and she didn't need the TA or the hug button (but that probably took at least a term or two to get to that point).

Is it just the transition she finds hard? I.e. is she OK after you've gone, and is she happy after school - or does she show signs of school itself being overwhelming? If the latter, it would be worth trying to figure out with school whether there are any particular things she finds hard that could be changed.

Thing I tried recently with a friends' similarly aged ASD daughter to help her communicate her feelings a bit better was to start to use one of those flip octopus toys (they're about £7 on Amazon) to show when she was starting to feel anxious or unhappy. Was very telling really - octopus was smiling and happy... second she went to get in the car - octopus had flipped over.

It was helping us start to identify where the trigger points were for things starting to kick in during a day while the family were staying with us - and it's a fairly common "trendy" toy so cheap, accessible (cos usually if the words special needs get attached to something the price trebles) and an easy thing to try.

I could have written your post op and you are certainly not alone in your experience or your feelings. I am currently off sick due to the impact on our family.

4yo dd, bright, articulate, she was an early talker, has met or exceeded all milestones, socially great, confident, leads and initiates play, wide circle of friends, teachers have no concerns.

But. Extreme demand avoidance since starting school, refuses to get dressed into her uniform, refuses to get out of bed, refuses to get into the car, refuses seatbelt, OCD type/ sensory processing behaviours (touch related), fixates on routine, control and order. We've been given visual aids to help her with routines. Her reaction? One of the pictures was the wrong size and needing cutting down to fit better with the others and there weren't enough steps in the visual process to satisfy her. Otherwise, she totally understood what the pictures depicted and the order in which they should be arranged. Significant meltdowns during any kind of transition, significant impact on the whole family, significant risk to her (we are running out of ideas to get her to keep her seatbelt on) and yet she is fine at school.

I just wanted to update this to say I am still awaiting a diagnosis! Finally have an assessment this week!!! Hoorah