Hi, we are new here. I'm here because I want to help my daughter, she was diagnosed at 8yo with Asperger's, she is now 12. She has been through a lot of changes in the past 2 year and a half. We moved from Tijuana, Mexico to San Diego, CA on Dec/19, my daughter was in the middle of 4th grade. She started on Jan/20 in a new school in SD, she only attended 2 months and was being assessed, but the pandemic started and the school never finished. She didn't wanted to go back to school in SD, it was to overwhelming, her school in Tijuana only had less than 100 students and in the new school they have little less that a 1000, so we started homeschool but it was very difficult because I have another son on the spectrum, a 7yo beautiful sensory seeker boy, who is always all over the place and my daughter is hypersensitive, sensory avoider, so it became really hard to study, plus I had to translate everything to her from English to Spanish. A few months later I found a school in Tijuana that is enrolled in the US system so I started crossing the border to take my daughter to their school and everything was going very well, she finished 6th grade and now has started 7th. The problem is that she doesn't like teenagers, she has had bad experience with them in past, her cousins made fun of her and she never forgot, so now, any teenager she sees she blocks her self, she can't overcome the feeling of being uncomfortable. Her teacher, my daughter and I agreed to do online school, but now she is struggling to the point of meltdown with mathematics and her teacher I feel she wants to help and understand my daughter but doing it from her own perspective, I don't feel she is putting herself on my daughter's shoes. Since the diagnosis I've taken a step back on trying to fulfill other people's expectations on how my daughter should be and on how I should raise her. She is a very smart girl, loves to paint, listens to music, loves anime, marvel, Harry Potter, loves history, Greek mythology. She is sensory sensitive, when comfortable she is very sociable, has a lot of interesting topics to talk about, but if you put her in a room with a lot of people, or if they want to hug her or kiss her hello, or with teenagers, even if she hears or sees then through the school video chat, she closes up, she blocks herself. I understand this is anxiety and what I want to do I help her learn how to identify a feeling, what triggers it and what can she do. Her teacher is suggesting a psychiatrist, maybe take anxiety medication. She took from 8 to 10yo Risperdal and Strattera but after 2 years I saw no improvement, she was waking up in the middle of the night starving and her attention deficit was all over the place getting very overwhelmed with simple tasks. At the present she is receiving 1 hour a week of early psychosis intervention, frankly I don't see them to committed but we are in a contract with them for 2 years, so she'll keep receiving this 1hr session a week. I apologize for my long post, but I wanted to give perspective. I don't know anymore if I am doing wrong by having her at home and do school online, causing isolation, still she enjoys and loves to be in her room, besides school, she paints and reads and socialize with me, her dad when is home from work, her big brother when he comes to visit (he is 25yo) and when we go visit my parents, she can have great conversations with grown-ups, a kid her ager or younger, but no teenagers. Thank you for creating this space and I would love your insights. Sincerely, Ileana.

Posted by Ileana at 2022-09-06 07:40:45 UTC