Dd is 6. She has daily meltdowns, lasting anywhere from a few minutes to waves and waves all day. She will throw things, kick out and slam doors but has never smashed a tv or trashed a room, so I would say that her outbursts are mild. She has recently started to say that she wants to kill herself, live with a different family and never see me again.
We have an autism gateway assessment coming up in 4 months’ time. We went to one on Wednesday, and her father attended alongside me. He is adamant that she shows no signs of neurodivergence, and any issues are 100% down to my parenting. He countered everything I said in the assessment, and the consultant has now asked that we both attend separately a week apart in 4 months’ time. While we were there on Wednesday dd tiptoe walked the whole time, paced the room and squeaked like a fox whenever she was spoken to. She refused to make eye contact or respond to her name.
I am really worried because she mainly shows signs of PDA as opposed to “straight” autism. She toilet trained early, her speech is good (although she is very monotone and has a strange turn of phrase, for example will say “put your hand to it” instead of “touch it”) and she will make eye contact. She doesn’t have any special interests unless you could being able to name every breed of dog. She doesn’t play with toys and mirrors her friends at school and is very happy and jovial when in the presence of other children, although she doesn’t know when to stop and so regularly gets too giddy and too silly and they have to tell her to stop.
When she is at home with me she can flip on a coin. She gets so angry at any suggestion, be it food, activity or anything else, which is met with an instant “no!”. You cannot ask her to get dressed. You can’t bring her some toast in the morning. You can’t tell her to do anything, she will lose it if you do. Everything has to be her suggestion on her terms. I never know what she is going to be like, I can’t plan meals because she won’t eat them because unless she has decided what the meal will be it will end in a meltdown. I can’t put her to bed and sneak downstairs after she is asleep, because if she wakes up (which she does every 30 mins) and I’m not there next to her she loses it and that is it for the night. She controls everything and I am at an absolute loss.