The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I am happy that you finally found out the problem, and sympathize with how difficult it was to come to the conclusion. For one thing, autism seems difficult to detect in girls. For another, all of medicine is like this. My grandma went to a nurse practitioner for pain in her hands, and told that it was not carpal tunnel. Turns out it was. My mom has been around the block about pain in her foot; first told she needs to go to a foot doctor, then the foot doctor uncaringly told her it was related to back pain, then the back doctor tells her that he doesn't know if he can help her but try this medicine and stop bothering him, then she goes back to a doctor for foot pain and finally is told that it's probably unrelated to her back and she needs to see an actual foot specialist (hopefully not the same one). Will they finally discover the cause? Who knows. I just feel bad for her because it's been difficult for her to sleep at night for a while due to the pain. It would probably feel worse if it was your own offspring that you saw this happening to, intense pressure to get them sorted out but being unable to do so because medicine is a fucking nightmare realm of people who don't know and don't actually care and need you to book several dozen expensive appointments that are all weeks or months apart for every single question that needs to be asked.
Related: it is helpful to hear about a confirmed case of autism. I see lots of stuff get called autism, even just differences in personality or being selfish in a conversation or being interested in a thing. It's wrong to do it, I think, though I used to call things like that autism, too. My boss makes a big deal about rising cases of autism, and keeps blaming the vaccines. The problem is that there are just so many possible causes because so much has changed in the last 100 years. Maybe some portion of it is just finally getting diagnosed instead of being mislabeled as "That's just what kids are like," maybe some portion of it is actually being overdiagnosed when they don't actually have it, maybe there's more TV, maybe people's genetics suck from having kids too late, maybe lack of community is affecting people in ways we don't know about, etc, etc...
But I feel your pain, and hope things go well for your daughter. Good work getting it figured out.
If it's of interest to you, I think the things that most made the neuropsychologist test for Autism were the following anecdotes:
Several times now, when I'm driving in the car, one kid will ask me a question. I will answer the question. A will then say, "Mom! I wasn't the one who asked you the question, C asked you the question." And my response is befuddlement, because I didn't use A's name, and I'm looking at the road not her, so why did she think I was talking to her?
She gets scared by figures of speech. "Make your head explode," made her scream and cry for a half hour. "I wish I could pack you in my suitcase and bring you back with me," made her run to her room and cry in her bed.
Funny movies scare her. George of the Jungle disturbed her, Pink Panther was scary, it's all scary to her.
She learned one knock knock joke in Kindergarten at a Pool Party.
"Knock Knock"
"Who's there?"
"Splash"
"Splash who?"
"Splash you!"
It's the kind of joke that only works in a swimming pool. It's the only joke she used for the next two years. She would repeat it everywhere. Over and over again.
However, on examinations, A would give the correct answers to, "What word do you use when you greet someone?" "When you talk with someone, where should you look?"
Z also has trouble figuring out who we're talking to, even when we're all in the room together, and we're clearly looking at and turned towards one daughter or the other. Her little sister can keep track easily enough.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link