stressedmum

A friend recently recommended this site to me http://www.btbetterworld.com/developing_sk.../free_resources She said the free DVDs are really helpful with learning social skills. I've ordered some myself and we're just waiting for them to arrive. Hope this helps.

Thanks for the warm welcome and I do feel better now I've written things down (I've also bought some St. Johns Wort to try to give me the kick up the bum that I need). I decided to write today off and just relax with my son a bit because he's been badly affected by these strange people knocking on the door. He knows it's got to do with the times my daughter doesn't attend school so thinks, because he doesn't go to school at all, they will also be coming about him and trying to make him go back to school too So we've just pottered about in the library and picked up some more modelling clay for him to take his frustrations out on. We don't have a social worker or any other professional support. We did have a paediatrician who we saw about my son but we haven't seen her for the last couple of years and she has left the job anyway. We have been in touch with the local clinic to get an appointment with the new paediatrician and that has just come through and we'll see him/her in the half term holidays and while I'm there I'll try to get some advice about what's happening with my daughter. When she was about three years old she started doing the telling people I was hitting her thing aswell. Her usual trick was for her to lie on the hallway floor screaming things like "Mummy, stop hitting me mummy, you're hurting me!" knowing full well that the lady next door could hear her. She carried this on for months and I kept trying to explain what was happening to the neighbour but she didn't believe me until one day when it was happening, she came banging on the door. I let her in and offered her a cuppa, then my daughter started screaming "Mrs. C (the neighbours name) stop hitting me, you're hurting me!". She started believing me after that! She can be very loving but it's like someone keeps flicking the light switch on and off and you never know which side of her you're going to get from one minute to the next. I do talk to her about the problems she's having and she does try to communicate what's happening and how she's feeling but she finds it hard to verbalise everything. We keep trying though and we're always making slow and steady steps. Anyway, I'll stop typing now because I'm rambling again lol Thanks again for the welcome and support, it's really appreciated

Hi all, I found this forum a couple of weeks ago and now I've plucked up enough courage to make my first post and I'd like to apologise in advance because it will probably end up a bit long and a bit negative. Anyway, here goes! I have two children, an 11yr old boy and a 13yr old girl. My son has ASD, delayed development and dyslexia. He attended school until he was eight but his needs weren't being met (we had comments like "He can't have ASD because he's not like the other autistic child I've taught", he was forever in lunchtime and break detentions because he wasn't getting his work done and when he got home from school every day he went into complete meltdown) so I took him out of school to home educate him and things have been a lot better since he came out. Now onto my daughter. She has always had problems including never sleeping, violence, refusing to go to school, not dealing with her emotions etc. I used to have to carry her to nursery/school and she had to be restrained in the classroom to stop her from running away. I was devastated having to do that to her every day but at the time I didn't know we had any other options. Over the years things calmed down and she wouldn't try to run away once I'd got her into the classroom (I still had a job getting her there though) but it was like she was bottling everything up through the school day then letting rip once she got home. Myself and my son have got several permanent scars to show for it lol As she's got older and bigger (she's a lot bigger than me now) it's been physically impossible to make her go to school which has led to quite a bit of absence. Over the years I have tried to get help for her with no success. One time, a few years ago, we had yet another incident of her trying to stab us and once I'd managed to get the knife off her I really felt, at that moment, like stabbing her (I know that sounds like a really horrible thing to say but I was at the end of my tether) so I phoned the doctor and asked that he either give her something to stop her violence or give me something to stop me losing the plot when she was violent. He said he couldn't give her anything but could give me anti-depressants and then I was to go back in a months time to see how things were going, he also said that he believed she had Aspergers because she was just like his two sons that had it. Unfortunately, I missed the follow up appointment with him due to a bereavement so had to see the other doctor who, when she saw us, turned round to my daughter and said "You've got to be good for your mum because she is poorly". I was so shocked and upset about what she'd said that I decided to give up trying to get help. Moving on to more recent times. My daughter started her periods in February last year and really didn't deal well with it. She started banging her head on walls and door frames (this is something she used to do but hadn't done it for a few years) and she also started threatening to kill herself. I suggested various people she could talk to about it all but she refused to talk to anyone but me. This also had more of an effect on her school attendence aswell. Anyway, we were sort of getting things more back to normal and she was improving her attendence at school when I had a knock on the door just over a week ago from a police officer and a truancy officer. I told them everything and, because I felt awful telling complete strangers personal things about my daughter I started crying. Then out of the blue they asked me if I was on medication. I didn't know what to say to that at the time except no but I've since reported them for asking that as it was irrelevant to the situation. Since then I've had the education welfare officer turn up at the door, the school nurse on the phone and had to attend a meeting with someone at school. The meeting didn't go too well because he produced reports from her primary school saying that she loved school (they weren't seeing the melt downs after school), they said that according to her file there were no concerns about her behaviour at her current school (yet she always seems to be getting detentions, being told off for fiddling with things and being sent out of the classroom for answering back etc.) and that she had only had three detentions since October (we've managed to count seven since October. We believe there are more but she destroyed her first planner so we can't check it). He also implied that because most of the problems happen at home, the problem must be home. He is now talking about getting her a mentor, getting psychiactric help for her, getting on to our doctor etc. I just feel so stressed by all this and it has also had a negative effect on my daughter. We needed the help years ago but now, when things had started improving, they all come charging in at once. It just feels now that the whole situation has rapidly gone out of our control and I'm feeling pretty lonely and up against it all at the moment. Anyway, sorry that was long (it could have been longer but I decided to give the condensed version lol) and hopefully it all made sense. I just needed somewhere to offload it to and hopefully feel a bit better just by writing it all down.