Newly diagnosed ASD 15 y/o DD

[ProfessorInkling]

My daughter has just been diagnosed with ASD... my head is spinning and I feel totally unprepared, despite pursuing the assessment of course.

She is 15 and stupidly I feel both that I have always known, and at the same time I feel really stunned by the result. Can anyone relate to that?

She is not in school, though attends an alternative provision, so I'm not sure anything will really change day-to-day, yet it feels huge.

My daughter was diagnosed at 13 and I felt the same, she was out of school at the time and is now home educated. I really recommend the charity Autistic Girls Network, on their website they have loads of info and also book recommendations for you to read to help understand how you can best support your daughter. They also run face to face groups for girls.

Completely relate. My daughter was diagnosed with ADHD and (soon) autism at 17/18. It has been a big eye opener because we are very similar, and all the things she described to me are what I do, so I was very surprised about the diagnosis. This has led to two more children being assessed this month for both ADHD and autism, and I am looking to be diagnosed too.

It has made some of our ‘strangeness’ (hermit tendencies) a little more understandable now, and also explains my inability to cope with being sociable at my age (apparently something to do with perimenopause and inability to mask as well). This has dramatically changed the perception of myself and my children, and I wish I knew earlier so I could figure this out myself and help them.

Thank you for both replying

@DaftNoodle how old is your daughter now? How different does life look for you? I've requested to join the FB group and am looking on their website. I have tried to avoid doing this before diagnosis as honestly had no idea which way it would go. I've got some catching up to do.

@WishfulThinkingToday thank you for sharing that and it really resonates, I wonder if I have autism/ADHD. And my son. And their dad!
I just want to help her to be happy and live a full life.

She used to find joy in the world but now I think that as she got older and needed to mask so much more just to function at a basic level, a lot of that joy has been forgotten about and left behind. She has her moments of course. I feel like she perhaps hit burnout (which is why I withdrew her from school in the end) so need to find a way forwards that supports her as she is.

I very much want to get it right. I don't think I always have. Life with her has been brilliant but also frustrating and demanding. I have probably had a hundred battles that I needn't have. Which means she has had a hundred battles that she needn't have :-(

I feel a sense of time slipping away, and a need to catch up. There are so many decisions to make. It might sound drastic but I have been thinking for a while about stopping work for a while to focus on her. This feels like a priority now.

@ProfessorInklingshe is 15 now nearly 16. Life looks very different now…after all the issues around school and her not coping. I resigned from my senior full time role to focus on her. For the first 6 months she was in burnout and not able to leave the house so our lives became very small. I’ve learnt - through a lot of trial and error!! - what she can cope with and that she needs rest days regularly. I found a fab private tutor who totally gets autism and she is planning to sit English and maths gcse next year. Her confidence is growing all the time and we lead probably quite an unconventional life and I’ve learnt not to listen to outside noise about what she should or shouldn’t be doing.