tabz2711

Hi Suze thanks for your response, I will phone CAMHS tomorrow and ask them.

Hi Kathryn thanks for your message, the meeting went really well with the head of year and when I told her what were suspect about S she said it all follows with her behaviour at school, lack of eye contact and her seeming rude. I explained that S had not finished her dress in technology when she had told the teacher it was finished, she laughed and said that it was not the first time that had happened, she also said that she would talk to the other teachers about S not completing coursework because she thought she was going back to her old school. all in all I was happy with the meeting. The head of year said as soon as she gets Dx of AS they will be able to get extra help for her, but my belief is that it will take a long time to get a DX and maybe too late for her at this school. My other worry is "What if" she hasn't got AS. Is she just a very difficult child, who can be rude, unsociable and very blunt to everyone. I keep on reading articles about people with AS and some are just not S. But then I think about her childhood and how unsociable she has always been, needing to be prewarned if we were planning to go out somewhere, refusing to go on holiday and all the things she has said and thought We used to have mobile homes in France and Wales and S hated Wales but loved France one year we were going to Wales during the summer and at the last minute decided to go to France instead but thought we would surprise the kids and see when they would notice that we were travelling in a different direction. When they eventually found out everyone was happy but S, she went mad and wanted to go to Wales because she had not prepared herself for France. The other week we were talking about being spontanious and put some examples in place, I said to S "if my sister phoned up now and said she has 6 tickets to go to New york in 2 hours would you go"( S would love to go to New York) her reply was that it wouldn't happen because her auntie only had five in her family so she wouldn't have six tickets. I said just say she did have a six tickets would you go, she then replied "What would happen to the dogs we couldn't go because no one would look after them, then she couldn't go because her favourite jeans were in the wash, "what if we were given loads of money to buy new clothes at the airport" and it went on and on and on. Luckily S saw the funny side of it and we all howled with laughter. S always brings soaps into our conversation and believes them to be really life. I am really worried that it could be something else and I am totally barking up the wrong tree and if it is something else what could it be. We have not heard from CAHMs yet they said they would make an urgent appointment for her, the appointments are only on a Weds morning and we have an prearranged appointment before the urgent one came up to see the DR at the Paediatric clinic on the 4th July, I am really hoping the CAHMS one comes up first.

thank you I am going to see the head of year tomorrow. S said she will go to school on Monday, I won't hold my breathe lol. S problems were not helped because she changed schools at 14 and had to fit in with girls who had been there since Yr 7 and also she was at a mixed comprehensive before and then transfered to an all girls Grammer school.

Just to update all those lovely people out there that have responded and helped me over the past few days. I had a phone call from the attendence officer at S school, I had a long talk with her and said that S was school phobic and depressed. She understood completely and said that I was doing the best for S at the moment and she would talk to S head of year. I feel much better that the school knows now and hopefully I can arrange a meeting with the head of year to help S more. Please can anyone tell me if their sons or daughters dislikes their teachers( more in secondary school she was fine with her teachers in primary school) , S I think is scared of all the control and power they have(her words not mine) and this seems to be part of her problem in not wanting to go to school as well as it being to big of a change for her. S dad is a teacher poor man! many thanks will keep you all posted

Hi there My four all use MSN and I am guilty of not being with them all the time, but as a busy mum and foster mum I just can't be and they are old enough to be trusted. I think that your daughter probably saw others swearing and decided it was the done thing. There is lots of swearing on MSN. The good thing is you know about it now and have done something about it. There must be loads of parents that have no idea what their kids get up to on MSN. My daughter is always telling me that her old "friends" are meeting boys in other towns from MSN. Which puts me in difficult situations whether to tell their mums or not, if I am in close contact with them I do mentioned it, as god forbid anything was to happen I would feel awful and I would also like to know if my daughter was doing the same.

Hi Tracey thank you for taking the time to read my post and for sharing your experiences with me. I am going to PM you

Thank you very much JB for sharing your story with me it is much appreciated.

Hi Suze thanks for your response, S has a Stepping Hill appointment, do you know anything about the CAHMS there. I am sure that I will take you up on the offer of a parent Support group. The north west Autism society have been wonderful they are based in Northenden a few miles down the road from me, they have sent lots of information to me and mentioned support groups in the area.

Hi Karen, thanks for giving me some insight to my first meeting with CAHMS, I find these appointments difficult and they usually reduce to me talking like an idiot, too fast and a load of rubbish, so a memo for me will help. I am sure my mum, brother, Uncle and nephew all have AS traits that have never been diagnosed, especially my Mum and younger brother .

Thanks for that, can't wait to show my 15 year old it will be a laugh with the comments she makes. S questioned us over the pot noodle advert when the Welsh miners are down in the caves collecting the noodles. S knows that they are not allowed to use false advertising so believes that they must collect the noodles from underground otherwise the advert would not be allowed to be shown. Bless her life would be a bore without her.

Thanks for taking the time to reply on the forum and by pm I really appreciate it. The new school can't understand why my other two girls have fitted in at the school and S is like she is. They said that S can be rude at times and not answer questions when asked if she is ok by a teacher. S has made a few friends at Xxxxxx since we have put an appeal in to go back to XX XXXXX, it's as if she has relaxed because she knew there was a chance she would be leaving. S doesn't want to go back to XX XXXXX now because she knows the girls she left will be horrible to her. In fact what S really wants is the new school friends to move to XX XXXXX with her so the familarity of her old school and teachers with her XXXXXX friends who are more mature and accept her more readily, even through it has taken nearly a full school year to have a group of friends. The school arranged for her to see a "counsellor" which I was very pleased about being a counsellor myself. When we had a meeting things were mentioned that S had said to the counsellor and only told me about, I questioned that the counsellor had broken confidentiality and was shot down, so S has no confidence with seeing another counsellor now. Tthe problem with S is that she doesn't trust anyone, if anyone asks her to keep a secret she will but when she tells her "friends" to do the same they tell everyone and S can't understand why they have told others about her secret. She also gets upset when others are being bitchy about members in the "group" when they are not around, so Shan thinks that they talk about her when she is not around and this really upsets her as she wouldn't do it to anyone. If she doesn't like someone she just doesn't talk to them full stop. I totally agree that it is better to have a label that fits than one that doesn't. If S doesn't have AS then we will be looking for other reasons for her behavioural traits and her depresssion and anxiety

Thank you so much for spelling out the difference to me, S is definetely has school phobia, she feels ill and gets so anxious about going to school, already last night I noticed a difference in her once I said that we have decided that she can have the week off school(well I decided, Hubby does not understand but luckily will let me decided and trusts me, he is a teacher. We have always sent the children to school unless they were really poorly and they knew that if they were off they were in bed all day) my views have slightly changed since then lol. My husband is having difficulties in understanding S problems because he can't see them i.e a broken foot/arm but little by little he is coming round and realising there might be some problem with S.

Thank you for your sound advice, I will remember to go to A&E if she gets extremely depressed many thanks

Thank you for your advice, I will certainly get the Dr to sign her off as I am worried that I could get into trouble with the school without it.

Hi everyone, I posted here in Jan about my then 14 yr old daughter who seemed to have many traits of AS. Since then we seemed to have gone downhill all the way. My daughter changed schools in Sept 05 to attend an all girls grammer school as she was not achieving at a comprehensive and had many problems with friends there. My other two daughters who were also starting at the same school, one in yr7 and the other in sixth form. They both have coped well with leaving friends and making new ones, but the middle daughter struggled from day one and now is saying she is not going to school again. We are in the process of appealing to send her back to her old school but I know after a year out, her so called friends that she left, will make her life miserable if she goes back. She too has realised this and knows that she can't stay at her new school and can't go back to her old school and certainly doesn't want to start anywhere else. We have now realised that she has always had problems with changes in her life, i.e if I changed her bed round she would move it back.and wanting to wear the same yellow teeshirt. She has very few social skills and those she has have been learnt from tv programmes. People especially teachers at her new school think she is rude and blunt whereas my other two girls are sociable and pleasant. When we have family discussions if we are lucky to have S with us she will talk about the simpsons as they are real i.e Marge Simpson thought that too. This seems to be strange coming for a girl who is extremely bright. Last Monday S left the house at 10pm and would not come home we eventually managed to talk her to tell us where she was at 11.45pm and when we found her she was very distressed saying her life was not worth living and she hated all of it. There was no reason for her to leave home and we found out she had wallked over a dark field on her own she didn't seem to understand the danger at all, in fact told me that the boy in "catcher in a rye" came to no harm when he ran away. As S had been having trouble at school and getting very depressed I went to see the doctor a few weeks ago with a big list of S behavioural traits. She said she would refer S for an assessment. After the eposiode on Monday, I spoke to the local Autism group and they recommended that I spoke to the doctor again and get her refered to CAHMS. I was phoned today and asked questions and S has now gone on the urgent referral list and I was advised to keep her off school for a while as she has a frail state of mind and any anxiety about attending school might trigger her running away or something more serious. The autism group have been wonderful and phoned me many times over the past few weeks from what I have told them of S they seem to think that she might have AS. We have also completed online AS tests and we have all scored very low marks as S has scored a lot higher. Are these tests ok to give a slight idea if one might be AS. When S refused to go to school this morning I found her behind the bathroom door curled up and when she saw me she said was I going to hit smack her for refusing to go to school I have never smacked her even as a small child and it really upset me that she thought that I was capable of doing so. I just want to know whether I am barking up the wrong tree with trying to get an assessment for AS so that we as a family have an understanding of her difficulties and maybe so we can get her help if she needs it. What will happen in the first appointment with CAHMS? the lady I spoke to said that they would first try and sort out her depression and then see what is causing it. Everyone in the family has always said that S is "one of a kind" in a nice way as she is so different, they all love her and find her funny and she has the most infectious laugh especially when she finds something funny and we don't it is very contagious.( sorry for my spelling I am dyslexic) I am very worried about her and want to do the best for her, my family all say why do I want her labelled? I would hope that with it we would be able to help her more. I have been told that it is much harder to diagnose girls as they have more ideas about social skills and behaviour and can learn to copy/ mimic their friends, if this is so how will we be able to get the right assessement for her? If anyone could give me any advice or has been in a similar situation I would love to hear from you I am at a low ebb wondering what to do with her many thanks for reading my long winded post.

thanks Kathryn, I am sure there will be lots of questions to ask you,

what a lovely poem thank you

thanks Helen I have just printed this one off to look at. It is probably better than the geek one, 1. because of the name, no 14yr old wants to do a "geek test" and some of the questions are aimed at adults, i.e job interview and going to a club

Hi Again I did the test with my other two daughters and son and they scored 3, 6 and 12. I did sit down with her and she still put answers which we both no are not her, luckily I can get her to laugh about it.

thanks Daisy, just had proof that my daughter will not co -operate as I tried the test on all three daughters the middle one answered all the questions that I was sure about wrongly i.e loves crowded nightclubs and bars (she's never been in one) but can't stand mum and dad being in her rather large personal space never mind someone she doesn't know. She made me laugh though. I counselled a lad with autism a few years ago and noticed a couple of similar traits the same as my daughter, but didn't really know about aspergers then. I looked over the test and without her being here and what I know about her scored 32, what have others scored, I know its just a small test that can't be taken as a diagnosis but its a start. thanks for the welcoming you have all given me its nice to have support.

Thanks for all your helpful replies. I have two other girls ones who has gone through the awkard teenager stage and one who is hitting it now ahhhh. My middle daughter has behaved this way since being a toddler. at her birthday party's she would go upstairs and never join in she has always got overwhelmed in any sort of company. I think I have made so many excuses for her behaviour that I am now looking for other reasons. I will look at the links you kindly posted. thanks tabz2711

Hi I wondered whether I could ask all you experienced forum people whether you could give me some advice. I have a daughter aged 14 who I feel might have aspergers. As a new born I was convinced she had autism as she was so different from my other daughter, she screamed when held etc, when she was 3 weeks old we discovered that her collar bone had been broken whilst been born hence the screaming. My first daughter is very socialable, whilst daughter number 2 has no social skills, she is extremely bright quite excentric and a loner she also hates anyone hugging or touching her, i.e mum, dad or sisters loves the animals better than us and I found out yesterday that she turns her back on the cat whilst getting ready for bed. We are having lots of problems with friends at school having moved her to an all girls grammar school because she was bored in class, she is very upset and wants to move back to her old school where she has "friends" which I would question as being very awkard she would not have agreed to move if she was so happy with her friends. Over the past few months I having been reading about aspergers and have joked since she was little that she has autistic tendencies . I am beginning to feel that maybe her behaviour and social skills are more than her being a rude, difficult teenager who only listens to what she wants and cannot see anyone else side of an arguement . Firstly can anyone tell me of any tests that she could have maybe online at first just to see whether I am barking up the wrong tree. I don't like labelling a child but having the understanding of why she behaves in such a manner in which my other 3 children do not, then I could put stratagies in place for her and help her instead of moaning and calling her rude. thank you for listening tabz2711