She has mild Autism Spectrum Disorder or high-functioning autism.
There are three levels of severity, which equate to the amount of support a child needs in order to function well in everyday life.
Level one ASD (mild) means she requires minimal support.
But it doesn't mean she is not autistic.
She is.
She does have Selective Mutism, but a diagnosis of Autism cannot co-exist with a diagnosis of Selective Mutism, even though they do co-exist.
She only scored a 79 out of the GAR III-85 & higher would have put her in the likely range for autism instead of possibly.
To be honest, I lied on the questionnaire and I didn't tell the psychologist the entire truth about how Daughter is.
I have a deep fear of having my children taken away from me, this goes back to when my cousins were removed by DCS, so I lied.
In addition to that, I didn't understand a lot of the questions.
For example, “does your child line things up?”
Daughter doesn't line things up, but she does stack things up-from talking to other autism moms and reading up, some autistic kids STACKS things up and never lines things up, however that is not an option on the questionnaire.
“Does your child stim?”
Daughter doesn't rock or spin, but she does constantly smooth her hair, twiddle her fingers and hack, again the questionnaire is geared towards more rocking and spinning which is more of a male thing.
“Does your child have meltdowns?”
Daughter has tantrums or at least I assumed she had tantrums, I'm more inclined to look back and see some of those tantrums may not have been tantrums.
If I had understood the questions more clearly, she would have scored considerably higher and would have been autistic, not possibly autistic or even mildly autistic.
The psychologist gathered enough from speaking with me and Husband, and from spending time with Daughter, to feel confident diagnosing her with Autism.
She no longer believes Daughter has Attention Deficit Disorder, Generalized Anxiety, or Social Phobia—despite those being her previous diagnoses.
The psychologist said she didn’t see any of those conditions. She saw only autism.
I did ask if it was possible Daughter is actually Aspergers and the psychologist said that yes, she thought Daughter was Aspergers but she could no longer diagnosis that.
The criteria for autism were changed in 2013 with Autistic Disorder, Asperger’s Disorder, and PDD-NOS all falling under the label Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Daughter was given several tests.
She went down, and she marked all the tests “no”.
The result of those tests showed that she is highly reluctant to disclose feelings and attitudes. She exhibits an extreme tendency to minimize problems. Her responses show that she experiences, at least, a moderate level of anxiety which may interfere with sleep or concentration.
Her restraint and detachment from others help to provide her with a sense of control, power, and importance.
The psychologist thinks this is typical Autistic behavior.
The psychologist summarized that Daughter's extreme reluctance to reveal her feelings and concerns combined with her selective mutism makes diagnosis very difficult.
Autistic Spectrum Disorder mild appears to be the appropriate diagnosis for her at this time.
Psychotherapy would not benefit her at this point in time.
The reason she has been misdiagnosed in the past is that autism is harder to detect in girls.
Girls are better able to hide their autism than boys, especially when they are on the mild side of autism.
Doctors also mistakenly believe autism is only a boys disorder, so they don't want to look deeper when a parent complains about their daughter.
The questionnaires that parents are given have been developed with males, not females, females present differently than males.
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A child with Asperger's is less severe than a child with classic Autism.
It's very easy for them to pass as normal, but a little quirky, especially in a female.
The doctors we went to in the past also had the mistaken belief that a child with autism couldn't make eye contact and couldn't interact with them, which is wrong.
Persistence and finding a good doctor who can recognize autism is a must.
We finally got lucky and found such a doctor.
She is wired a little differently than the general population
She will, however, live as normal a life as is possible.
It will be a little different from her sibling's lives, but it will be her life, in her terms.
I'm not going to lie and say that I'm OK with this.
No parent wants their child to have autism.
At least with her diagnosis of ADD, GAD & Social Phobia, there was a slim chance she could outgrow them.
You don't outgrow autism.
But at the end of the day, Daughter is still Daughter.
She's still this funny, loud, quirky kid and that's never going to change.
What has changed is that we finally have the answer we've been looking for since she was two years old.
We finally know what is wrong with her
With knowing, comes understanding.
I wish we had found out years ago, there is a lot we could have done differently, but we know now.
- Now we know why she has food aversions.
- Now we know why she has problems with sleep.
- Now we know why she threw tantrums.
- Now we know why she became unreasonably upset when she couldn't find certain outfits.
- Now we know why she has to have routines.
- Now we know why, when you place her in a room with peers, she hides in a corner or is off playing with twigs somewhere.
- Now we know why everyone assumes she's deaf.
- Now we know why she always has been in her own little world.
The puzzle pieces have finally come together
