Autism??

[Boremance]

My daughter is 13 and has never been able to make friends. Right from nursery she has always spent her time by herself, rejecting friendship and becoming easily upset. She's now in secondary school and its the same but she's had other odd behaviour too like the tendancy to get REALLY obsessed with things. From when she could walk all the way up to being around 9 years old she was obsessed with Barney the Dinosaur but it wasn't obsessed like most kids get, it was true obsession. She would take the teddy EVERYWHERE with her, talk to it (even when she was 8 and 9) blame it for things, get upset if it got dropped, she would go on and on about it to people...in the end I took it off her and she became obsessed with the dreamcast console, talking to it, sat staring at it, laughing at it...rarely actually playing it properly, just "communicating" with it. This went on until she was about 11. Then we got burgled and it was stolen and she was physically sick with anquish over it, more than once she threw up.

Then she moved onto the crazy frog and would carry a teddy around with her, again talk to it, "Nurse" it, tell people it was looking at them, pretend to stroke people with it...the frightening thing is she is STILL on this obsessed at the age of 13 and would take the frog teddy to school if I let her. She doesn't seem to realise when she is boring people going on about it or when they're giving her funny looks...its like it doesn't register with her.

Anyway its come to a head now, she has always had another obsession with TV adverts, when she was around 5 she was obsessed with a norwich union advert and would sit with it being replayed over and over again for hours, just sat watching it, the same advert over and over again.

I thought she'd got out of that now but my other daughter has just found her youtube account and on it she has said that she enjoys watching the credits at the end of programs and she has actually videoed the credits going up the screen on our TV and put them on youtube ... ??? and then theres videos she's uploaded of production logos such as Dic etc... why would she do this??

She gets up at 4am just to watch Ben 10 and she has Cartoon Netwok posters on her walls etc...

My other daughter insists she has symptoms of autism?

Yes, she does. Is this the first time it's occurred to you?

The things you describe sound quite like it. and may be somewhere on the Spectrum; can you see your GP and get a referral to psychiatry services? this sounds scary but doesn't have to be, it would sort out what is going on and get the right help for her. A 'biggie' is not recognising facial expressions : some people with autism can manage a few simple obvious ones like laughing & crying but subtle stuff like 'bored' (as you mention it) and 'worried' just go straight past them. Avoiding or not understanding eye contact can be another thing. Obsessional behaviour can be many things besides autism, but the way that you describe it, there is quite a pointer to ASD.

does she hate change and prefer to have predictable routine? this is another huge one - and on the more 'able' end of the autistic spectrum they tend to think that they have a bad memory whilst in practice their memory is huge because they are unable to generalise and so learn things all seperately IYSWIM.
Any of this making sense? Oh - and lots of the young people I work with who all have autism have been mis-diagnosed with a whole range of stuff, dyslexia, dyspraxia and schizophrenia are frequent ones.

Autism has been mentioned a few times as she's been growing up but DH always gets cross and insists that there is nothing wrong with her so its never got sorted out. She has been refferred to a psyciatrist once (an incident at the school tuck shop, DD's usual flavour of crisps were not there and she couldn't handle it and went in a trance as if she couldn't comprehend it) but we were messed around horribly and gave up in the end.

She doesn't recognise facial expressions well, the other day she started waffling on about REALLY old games consoles, she was basically telling my other DD that she wanted to buy a Sega Master system but she didn't just say that, she waffled on and on and on explaining every precise detail involved and DD1 was blatently bored, nodded lots, gave polite but bored smiles and in the end attempted to end the conversation by saying "well, let me know if you find one" but DD2 carried on going on and on and in the end DD1 actually stood up and walked out of the room and DD2 actually followed her STILL going on about it.

The eye contact is funny, rather than avoiding eye contact she has a tendancy to stare at people but she doesn't look away when they look at her, she carries on staring at them...this could be while they're eating or anything.

It definately sounds like autism to me - I find it strange that your dh would not want her to get some help. My ds has aspergers and knowing about his condition can only help imo

Perhaps she would be happier if she had a diagnoses - she might begin to understnad herself then?

Good Luck!

This definitely needs investigating. Sounds like she's really struggling in a lot of situations. I would go to your GP and describe what you've said here.

well said yurtgirl, it would help her to understand it for herself too.
We have lots of things that can be incredibly useful to someone with ASD, there is some fantastic stuff out there, 'social stories' to help them to "know" what to do in all kinds of situations, like rehearsing something before you do it for real, and lots of ways to organise themselves - she has obviously found lots of strategies for herself as she is coping in the real world and at school.
some of our students get into a complete spin if they have a pile of clothes to put on - like changing after swimming, for example. We make sure that they have a list or set of pictures that show what order to do things in, like "take off swimming trunks", then where to dry and which clothing to put on like undies first etc. Where possible they have it in the way that they prefer to do it rather than trying to get them to do it "our" way.