Hiya newbie here on a daughter with Aspergers/Asd

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Hi am re-posting this as put it in the wrong section

Hi there

Am desperate to talk to other mum's with girls on the spectrum. My daughter is quite "complex" and is hard to pin down, some say Aspergers and others say no as she has language difficulties so hfa/asd. She also has Adhd, high anxiety levels and self harms.
She is in a fantastic specialist school which really helps but still going through a really tough period. She started her periods last year at just 10 yrs old and is very developed for her age but is very young with her emotional stuff. Her IQ is really high but she doesn't really know how to use it.
At the moment she is completely in her own world and spends the whole time on youtube as she loves art and seems to be making friends on there. It baffles me how she can communicate so eloquently on youtube but can't do the same verbally with us. I guess it's just easier than doing it face to face.

I really want to help her interact again but when I suggest doing anything other than youtube she becomes physically and verbally aggressive.

She is such a lovely girl and we adore her but we just don't know how to help her interact more and do things other than the obsessions.

Looking forward to getting to know you all BS

I have a son with AS who is 16 and a daughter who I'm sure is AS and is almost 8 but she doesn't have the diagnosis yet.

It sounds like she definetely has "You Tube" as her current special interest. You need set some boundaries with her. Maybe a chart or something where she needs to earn her "You Tube" time. Otherwise, she won't be able to work on other things to help her get better. My son who is now much older than your daughter has learned that he needs to make sure he has several special interests he goes between because otherwise when he only has one and looses interest in it he becomes very depressed and unmotivated.

Hope this helps.

Every woman with ASD's I ever met has had horrific PMS as a teen including myself. Something just goes haywire before my peroid and I am just not even rational. However I can totally understand the you tube thing. I write soooo much better than I speak. When I talk to ppl in person...I am shy and introverted and cautious, but when I write, I am in my element and I feel more abler to communcate.
Mostly, on you tube....you video yourself without really having a in real time dicussion. Maybe it is the unpredictability of having a conversation with someone that seems to throw her for a loop. I know conversations do that to me. I just dont think as fast as most conversations seem to play out...therefore I end up with a dunced look on my face and trying to keep up. However, if I had time to know what ppl are going to be talking about, I could probably be alot more eloquent too....which is why forums are the mest method of communication for me.

other than that, welcome to wp!! !

My 9yo daughter is obsessed with youtube. She doesn't talk to other people online - she watches videos of her other favorites - Pokemon, various animes and cartoons and finds self made videos by kids her own age incredibly funny. She also watches alot of game walk thrus to learn how to defeat her video games. She is an only child and as long as her homework is done, and she doesn't give us a hard time about eating dinner, taking her shower and going to bed, we don't really restrict her time. Much of her time onine is spent reading so I don't see it as all bad.

There are free programs you can download that are essentially timers. Once the time is up it locks out the computer. That would probably need an introduction period, lots of pretalk and time reminders once you put it into use. Before trying to cut down her computer time, I'd probably try to identify another special interests. You mentioned she loves art - see if she'd like to take a class. Or go to the library to take out books. If youtube really is it - maybe interesting her in making her own videos could help. Maybe her own video of a museum trip or even of her school art show... combine her interests.

I wouldn't stress too much over helping her make friends. There is this assumption that people cannot be happy without making skads of friends. ASD kids usually have low desire to make friends. Sure, you should teach social skills and offer opportunity but you can't really force it. You can lead a horse to water... Besides, you did mention that she is making friends on youtube. Online interaction is probably MUCH easier for her and online friendships do count. Perhaps some of her extreme reaction is because you are trying to pull her away from her social group! Ask her. Let her know you're curious and you'd like to learn what she does. Maybe making it less a point of contention and more a shared interest would help take some of the defensiveness out of it.

Taking the obsessions out of AS and ASD might be a bit too high of a goal! Work with what you got. Special interests are always gonig to be a part of her. Teaching her how to incorporate them into a higher goal or purpose might work in her favor. You never know - maybe one day she will be a world reknown art scene blogger with an international following. You might not be able to take the obsession out of her but you can show her how to diversify it, use it and make it work for her. She's still quite young. You've got time!

Welcome to WP!

My 6 year old Autie is also obsessed with youtube. She has known how to do google searches since before she could talk. Her conversation level is still about at maybe a 2 year old level but I really can say that she is like a 2 year old because her speech is very indicative of Autism. A lot of scripting and speaking of obsessive interests. Her interest is Strawberry Shortcake. She has gotten very narrow in her interest as of late, this is all she cares about and basically all she talks about. So lots of SS videos on youtube!
Her speech and communication has really degenerated since moving here which upsets me a lot. It is hard for her to hear French all day when she only just learned to speak English in short sentences when she was 4.
Anyway, I know it can be really hard to get them off their interest, but sometimes you need to eat and go to bed LOL, We had a lot of therapy back in the US so my kids have learned about timers and the fact that they have a certain amount of time to do the computer (youtube whatever) and then there are other things that they need to do. They are resistant at first to the "time limit" idea but after a few times they do accept it. You may want to start with taking her out of the house, like to a park or on a walk, this sort of removes temptation and they get some fresh air and sun at the same time. She may still talk endlessly about youtube but that is ok and you can always try to distract her slightly by talking about other things or pointing out things on your walks.
Once you get her used to the timer her meltdowns will decrease and it will just be routine to her. You also might want to try a schedule....my kids respond better to picture schedules but your daughter may like the written word so you can make a schedule just with words. It is a big relief once you get a system into place because fighting with them all the time is hard on both kid and parent.
Just as a side note....my kids also tend to get stressed when they are removed from their interests and they both like to chew. We have lots of chewy toys and also squishy stress ball things. It helps if they can release stress in a more healthy way than becoming violent. I know with my 8 year old son (aspergers) sometimes it is hard to avoid the anger and explosion....Ive learned to stay calm if he is screaming, this helps him to get himself under control. We have also used lots of breathing exercises and sometimes he likes me or my husband to squeeze him really tight. The only time we have to get "mean" is when he hits us. We have made hitting in our house completely unacceptable for anyone and we make a big deal out of it. We would very firmly tell him that it is wrong to hit us (or anyone else for that matter) and we would put him in his room or physically block him from leaving his bed. He could throw himself around and work it out that way. Its good that we have taught him to have better control because I now have a disease that is fusing my bones and I am in chronic pain.....hes getting big (will be 9 in July) so Im glad we have him better controlled now than we did a few years ago. He still gets very angry and will sometimes throw things (not at other people) and scream and yell. He can also be disrespectful to us verbally during these times but we mainly ignore this because we recognize that it is part of his meltdown and if we get wrapped up in the fury with him this will just make things worse. We had an incident recently where he put his hands around his sisters throat and squeezed....we spoke to him and made a big deal out of it and let him sit in his room for awhile. He was very quiet and upset about what he did but we still made a point to explain that he could have hurt his sister very badly and people who do these sorts of things to other people have to go to jail and we never want that for him. I think its vitally important to teach our kids self calming techniques....I know that sometimes kids who are very severe have a hard time grasping this but our aspies are typically more logical and you can reason with them and help them understand.
shesh, sorry about the long post! If nothing else you can talk to me. I have a 18 year old daughter with Aspergers, my 8 year old son (aspie) and my 6 year old daughter, as Ive mentioned (HFA) so if you need someone to talk to Id be happy to help out if I can.....Oh, and I have Asperger's as well

My 13 year old daughter has ADHD and was just diagnosed with AS yesterday (though I knew she had it before) and she's also obsessed with YouTube (as well as primates/apes). She also does talk to people online and we have lectured her *ad nauseum* about internet safety. The people she's talking to seem to be other teenagers and seem to be safe, as far as I can tell, and as such I don't have an issue with it, given that she has so much trouble socializing in real life (much like me...I have a better time socializing online than IRL). Although she hasn't started her period yet, I have AS and I had horrible PMS when I was younger (not so much as I'm in my 40s...it lessened after I had my children). Given that I have AS and recognize how futile it would be, I don't really try to mess with her special interests too much (mine became a career for me), but rather try to moderate them and incorporate them into a functional day.

~Kate