Apologies for the title, but I did not now how to formulate myself shortly, haha, and English is not my first language.
We are a family of 4, and autism has suddenly become very salient in our daily life.
My wife and I are both in our mid thirties, and we both got diagnosed with ADHD within the last two years, and now the suspicion of a autism diagnose suddenly came lurking as well. I think it’s a quite normal progression, as the ADHD medication have had a lot of positive effects, and made us more calm, which might have given more space for our autistic traits to stand more out.
We’ve suspected our daughter of having ADHD since she was a toddler and perhaps also being gifted. She’s blowing our minds all the time by her reasoning capabilities.
It’s a bit unrelated to my post, but my daughter is stubborn as hell, and has always been like that. Her speach development as delayed quite a bit, but when she was two years old, she got angry with my wife and said to her: “If your mom, when you was little, did not listen to what you said, you would also have gotten angry”. While she was complete red in her face, both feet solid placed in the ground, and her arms in her sides and tears falling down her face. Mind. blown… That was so impressive of her. In general she seems more emotional intelligent than many of the adults I know. We’ve also taught her a lot about emotions, to help her navigate her intense inner-self.
My wife is kind of the same way, and every day my wife have this mirror put up in front of her, and it’s quite intense.
We “blamed” our daughter’s intelligence for her intensity, her repetitive role plays, her justice sensitivity and insane memory. But we are now seing that many of her traits are more likely to be caused by autism.
My wife is in a study group where there are others with autism and one day they got to talk about it, and they were surprised that she did not think she had autism. I started reading up on autism, and I read this AuDHD book that compared many of the shared traits between ADHD and autism, and it became clear that my wife’s challenges are much more related to autism than ADHD.
I might also have autism, but I don’t think I am as far out on the spectrum, and it is not really affecting my life I same negative way, as my wife. She’s always had issues with anxiety, depression, burnout, low self-esteem, more burnout, sensory overload and she fears she will never be able to hold a job, which she has not done in the last 6 years.
We are not in a financial situation where we have the option to get professional help, but I’ve always been good at education myself on topics we’ve been struggling with, but somehow I’m kinda of overwhelmed, as I think it is really difficult to find reliable materials on autism in girls.
What I’m looking for is advise on books, educational material, your experiences, kind words, that everything will be alright, and what to do from here.
We are in the process of involving professionals for our daughter. Our municipality have this free service where you can talk with a psychologist about your children and they can help with support in kindergarten and later on when she starts in school. But, I prefer to also find out as much as possible about autism myself, and also in order to help my wife and our everyday life. We are stressed and kind of burned out all the time, and we need to do something to help ourselves, as this does not seem sustainable.
Hope it all makes sense. I’m sleep deprived and my brain is not really functioning at the moment.
I was a gifted AuDHD kid who failed hard (in year 8) when I couldn’t blow through everything with low effiort any more, and truly hated school because I had taken my ability for granted, didn’t know about burnout, executive dysfunction, and all these lovely things we cope with.
When I learned to read at age 2, my parents figured I was smart enough to sort myself out academically. They were wrong.
I am so glad you have the information you have about yourself and your child. You have a great chance to help her through some of the things you and I and your wife had to deal with on your own.
Not because she isn’t smart, quite the opposite, but because she doesn’t know the right way to approach things yet. But she will! You will help her find out!
And let her know that school is important, but not for showing how smart you are, but for learning how to learn.
She will know the facts really quickly, but she needs to know lots of ways to learn the facts, not just one.
How to decide which facts are true, not just believing them if they seem true.
How to decide when someone knows what they are talking about, and are worth listening to. Even if they get a few things wrong, or they don’t listen, or they know nothing about your favourite topic, they probably know something about different topics, and they might give you different views on things you thought you knew perfectly.
If I had known to be more patient with many teachers, psychologists, etc (and been medicated or done therapy enough to learn how to be patient) I would have had a different life.
Sorry, just venting on my own failed dreams, I guess. Everyone is different. I am just very glad that your kid has a better chance.