A few years ago I thought my daughter was having some severe problems. I found a poster by her desk that had all these hateful messages to herself written lightly in pencil so no one could see them without being very close. I caught her several times hitting herself in the head with a brush when frustrated. It seemed hard for her to make friends and she started to show signs of having little to no ambition.
My first thought was severe anxiety and maybe some depression. Her hormones had just started to rear up at that time and I thought maybe she wasn't coping or adjusting well. It took some time to convince her father that therapy was needed. He has been anti-therapy his whole life despite most of the people in his family having some form of mental illness ranging from anxiety and depression to Tourette's and schizophrenia. I understood he was in denial at the time. He did not want to think his only child was not "normal".
I took her to therapy, cognitive behavior therapy, in hopes that he would be able to give her some mechanisms to deal with her frustration in a better way. After 4-5 visits he didn't seem to think there was much more she needed so we stopped going. At the time, I was suspicious for Asperger's Syndrome. I printed out a check list and she really had about 90% of the listed signs. I presented it to her father and he insisted I was over-reacting and that it was "just a phase".
In the interim, we signed her up for classes to meet other kids. She never wanted to go and it didn't change much at home either. If she went out to play it was alone. Everything she liked to do was a solitary function. To be honest, I did not push the issue with having her evaluated for Asperger's because I was frightened....not just for her, but for myself. Inside I felt defective and guilty that my own genetics could have possibly put her in such a lonely place.
My daughter is now nearly 13 and at the height of social happening yet she remains the same. We had an incident this summer where she started stealing and her lying has increased and there was question of self-harm. I revisited the idea of Asperger's a bit more specifically for teenage girls and what I found was astounding to me. There was my daughter on the page. These girls fall through the cracks mostly unnoticed because they have learned to mimic people and make themselves invisible. They stay out of trouble at school so the teacher's won't notice them.
Again, I relayed my findings (there are more details than I have given that lead me to believe she has Asperger's, but there isn't a need to list them all) to her father. This time he was devastated, but cooperative. He agreed that if she needed therapy then she should get it. Before we entertained that, I knew I had something very scary and important to do. I had to speak with my daughter about these possibilities.
We went for coffee (her favorite) and sat side by side in the parking lot. I asked her if she had ever heard of Asperger's. She thought it was a hysterical name and laughed quite a bit. I explained to her what it was and she sat there biting her lip until I was done. I asked her if she thought it sounded familiar. She nodded her head as she hung it down. I assured her she wasn't a "freak" because of it, that there was nothing she could have done to prevent it, and she smiled letting out a sigh of relief. I explained that it would just be harder for her to understand a person's body language which tells you things that words cannot. We talked for nearly an hour and she said that she would agree to be evaluated and that she felt better knowing she wasn't doing something wrong all the time.
After we got home I had to go for a little walk and cry. I felt so horrible I had been so in denial of this possible diagnosis that it put her in a lonely, frightening place. I felt horrible that we were pushing her into situations that scared her to death and she had no way to tell us that it did. Being a parent is such a hard job. There are so many delicate things to face without knowing how to handle them.
Since we had a talk, she has been less anxious and has looked more peaceful. She asks me questions instead of hides from me. Daily she tells me "do you want to hear something weird?" which is code usually for a social situation that she didn't understand. We would discuss the situation and how most kids my react to it. This makes her feel better. The biggest changes will happen with me and her father as our parenting style will have to be altered to help make her successful.
We don't have a diagnosis yet, but my heart tells me this is what we are working with. Thinking everything is right with the world or imagining your child is in the throes of depression everyday is a tiring existence. Knowing is half the battle. I'm not sure who said that. They weren't kidding.
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