Can’t believe I almost finished typing this and the page refreshed and wiped it all. Here I go again.
i could really do with some advice/info.
my 13 year old daughter was only recently diagnosed with autism following a screening for what we mistakenly thought was adhd.
as a small child she had occasional meltdowns and at times would attack her siblings, but generally she was quite happy go lucky and very energetic, also very fidgety (hence our adhd suspicions).
things started getting worse while we waited 2.5 years for the adhd assessment (we live in the uk) and she started to develop ocd and torrets (facial and vocal tics) as well as more frequent meltdowns.
these days things are becoming unbearable and getting worse. Everything needs to be done exactly how and when she says or she will have a full on meltdown. Shes now taken to smacking her own head as she builds into a complete and total meltdown. She spends her entire time after school and the weekend in her pajamas binging on certain series and has claimed half the sofa for a bed that she made up out of the cushions and some blankets. No one can move them and no one else gets a say on the tv. So we barely even see our other children these days.
she ruins pretty much every single thing we try to do from days out to simply watching a film as a family, no matter how hard we try to keep things happy.
I think I could take this more if she’d always been like this, but she wasn’t. She had her problems but nothing like this.
what I need to know really is:
is this a common issue with girls of this age that are on the spectrum?
will this likely continue to worsen?
is it possible this could get better once shes through puberty?
will this get even worse once she starts her periods?
we are trying to get whatever help is available, but here in the uk that help is scarce.
thanks
tom