My daughter is slipping away, help, advice please

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Wow, my heart breaks for your daughter. Are there any other schools in your area you could look into? That does not sound like a healthy place for her.

Have you considered homeschooling? Even just long enough to help her get her anxieties under control?

Thanks for posting so much detail. It's been incredibly helpful to me to me to read other people's personal experiences with AS.

In many ways your daughter sounds similar to mine. She scores very high on standardized achievement tests and therefore does not qualify for any special treatment from the school system. But while she's good at things that are difficult for many kids, she's also incredibly stressed out by things that come easily to "normal" kids. And for most of the past 4 years she begged not to go to school.

And my daughter is poor at articulating her feelings so it's often difficult to understand her actual school experience. So many times she told me:

"I don't want to go to school"

why

"because I hate school"

why

"because people are mean"

who is mean

"people"

And it goes on like this with extremely little revelation of any information about what actually happens at School. One thing that seems to be a recurring problem is that my daughter has troubling understanding any kind of criticism or negative feedback. If she gets a bad grade on an assignment then she decides that the teacher is "mean" and therefore the grade is beyond her control and maybe there's no point completing any future assignments in that class because the teacher will just grade them with that same "mean" attitude.

I found it very helpful to observe actual class sessions to see the manner and extent to which my daughter participated. Your posts show a high level of involvement in your daughter's education, sometimes there's no substitute for personal observation and the school may or may not have allowed that.

Ultimately, I found some individual teachers more helpful than others when it came to accommodating my daughter's AS. The great teachers seem to find a way to connect with each student. The weaker teachers need some guidance.

They have not allowed me to observe. They have said it would be "too disruptive" to the class. I have at times shown up a little early to pick her up and can observe then. But they are usually at the end of the day so I can't get a true feel of what may be going on.

They haven't allowed you to observe? They are hiding something.

You need to find a different school. Period.

So many great replies to your post, wow!
I would also stress the diet thing. My son is on GFCF diet, it really helps with the anxieties etc. If you haven't read Luke Jackson's " Freaks, Geeks, and Asperger Syndrome: A User Guide to Adolescence" I totally recommend it. He is a 13 year old with AS, he writes in detail about how the GFCF diet helped him and his family. It's also a very enjoyable read, highly recommended!
My son is now so sensitive to casein he will throw up when he eats it. Gluten is more difficult to notice, as it effects him like a narcotic. I also stress it took a year to get all the gluten out of his system and reap the full benefits. Also, my husband who had been diagnosed with IBS, found that the GF diet cured him!
Udi's Bakery makes gfcf bread and bagels which is just like the real stuff, my family loves it!
Good luck
PS schools suck!! I am with you on that one!! Learn more about IDEA and FAPE- your school district should be legally required to do more for your child!
If all else fails check out homeschool online options.
And be sure to encourage her to egage more in her "special interest" to build her self esteem. Self esteem is my sons most challenging (and I think the most important) thing. With that he can do anything, regardless of what others think!!
Children who are different should not be penalized for "not fitting the box". People who don't fit the box often go on to do great things, they just need teachers/mentors to help them realize that!

That's a good point about the special interests, mamatograce, what is your daughter's special interest?

She enjoys drawing. She will draw elaborate designs and painstakingly get them "just perfect". This may not be her "special interest" as in her obsession but it is definitely her enjoyable hobby that she is very good at. Her obsessions seem to peak and wane. Right now she is very into iCarly. She told me she can't go to sleep at night because she thinks of iCarly. She scripts the episodes and wants to watch the same one over and over. I think it's because it's somewhat slapstick and dramatized. Before that she was fixated on American Idol and had elaborate charts and lists of who was in who's favor from episode to episode. We had to limit that because she became very upset when people were voted off. I am unsure about letting her watch (crap) tv, it doesn't seem "good". One year ago she was outside exploring everything and now she wants to watch tv all the time. She also watches Food Network, especially Iron Chef and has memorized all the Chefs and knows their "stats". People do a double take when in casual conversation she wants to talk about Masaharu Morimoto.

So basically she is new to the "zoning out" on shows like iCarly. She likes shows with statistical value like competitions.

I let her engage in these things. the only one that bothers me is the iCarly (I feel it's useless data being fed into her brain) but perhaps she's learning the social stuff by watching it. I don't like all the words she's picked up like "Duh"