Little Aspie, Big Worries!

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My daughter is four and has AS. She worries (and talks incessantly) about things most kids wouldn't even consider.

"Mom, do we have enough gas? We should stop and get gas so we don't run out."
"Mom I think you're driving too slow, we'll never get there in time. Can you drive faster please?"
"Mom, I'm hungry. If you don't feed me I will be hungry forever and I'll be too weak to play because food gives me energy."

Let me say that we've never run out of gas, I was driving the speed limit, it's very rare that we're ever late and she has never missed a meal. I keep things pretty routine around here, so she always knows what's coming, so I don't understand this. Can anyone shed some light on why and what I can do to help ease her constant worrying? That's a lot for a four year old to carry!

Could you tell her that?
I told my NT son that there are some things kids don't have to worry about, that I would do the worrying. If he bought something up, I'd remind him not to worry and to trust me. (Had I ever let him down? No.)
I think he was around that age or maybe a little older, and was starting to work out how the world worked. Understanding means worrying!
My son still can get anxious, it's part of his nature. I still tell him to trust me!

I think she's being more helpful than worrying. She's heard you, or someone else, say you need to drive faster or you'll be late, so now she keeps an eye out and reminds you to drive faster so you won't be late.

She's heard someone say that cars can't go anywhere without gas, so she wants to make you have enough gas. Likely she's also heard someone complain about how fast they use gas given that alot of people are griping about gas prices right now


I know when I was younger, around 6 or 7, and I tried to start a conversation with an adult, I would begin with something I learned in school like asking or telling them about Amelia Earhart. And i would expect them to know all about her - after all they wree adults and adults were the ones who told me about her in the first place.

At 4 years old she still believes that everyone knows what she knows and everything that applies to her applies to everyone else. If she met a stranger she would think he was joking when he said he didn't know her friend Sarah's dog Fido. Its that same concept that is applying what she is hearing to her reminding and encouraging you to do things to keep from getting in the situations she is hearing about. 9i hope that makes sense because I dont' think I explained it very clearly)

Oh god, she sounds just like my friend's sister!

She's not on the Spectrum, but I'm fairly certain she has OCD. She worries about absolutely everything. It's annoying, but innocuous--hey, it might even help you out one day.

On the other hand though, if she gets into the advanced classes in school, she may worry and stress herself sick. I go to a science and math magnet school, and I think it's safe to say that half the students there are stressed permanently.

I used to be worried that my heart was going to fall out, when I was 8 years old.

Yeah, I'm not convinced it's innocuous. I had major anxiety as a child. The difference was I had no routine and the only thing I could count on was that I'd be let down frequently. My anxiety made sense, and lessened with age and distance from my family. My husband and I love calm and try to create that type of environment. Our daughter seems to be even more anxious than I ever was, and I can't come up with a reason why. I do want to nip it in the bud before it becomes a major anxiety problem. Stress isn't good for anyone.

And yes, I've tried explaining that these are "mommy" things to think about, and she doesn't have to worry. There will always be gas in the car, we're unlikely to be late (and I'll work things out if we need to be) and so on. It doesn't make a difference.

Mikomi, the funny thing about becoming a parent is that we start off with this sense we can actually control our children's destinies better than our parent's did ours, that we are "wiser" and know more of the problem areas to watch for, and so on. And then life keeps proving us wrong, lol.

I guess it's easier to think some traits were caused by environment, because that allows for the idea they can be fixed or changed for the future. If we assume certain traits are genetic or endemic, we might feel defeated before we start. And, yet, so much seems to be completely outside of our control.

Just keep on working to make your lovely daughter feel secure, and have trust in you. It may be her natural chemical balance to feel anxious at this stage in her life; if so, you aren't going to be able to squash it, but you WILL be able to mititgate it.

I do think it's natural for children to start trying to exert control over their environment, especially Aspies, and your daughter's particular worries seem to be related to that. Like she wants to keep the unexpected from being able to happen. She wants to be IN CONTROL.

...proving the apple doesn't fall far from the tree

I don't care to be in control of people (I avoid people when possible), but of myself and surroundings. I like to be prepared. I don't like it when my cheese gets moved, so to speak. I suppose I hadn't considered nature much, I wondered what I was screwing up. It's easy to blame the 'rents. Life was, let's say, not ideal during childhood (understatement of the year). I'm always on the lookout for flaws I may have carried over, so as not to pass them along.

Good perspective.

my son does this too, to a certain degree.
he always asks how much gas we ahve in teh car and if it's on the red line then we need to go for gas.
he also asks me how fast we are going and tells me not to go over the speed limit.
and he doesn't like to wait for stuff, if we have to wait "it will take like an hour" is his answer to that most of the time that seems to stress him out a bit.

i feel like it's his way of helping me and don't see it stressing him out, just checking stuff out.
maybe i'll have to keep a better eye on it to see if it causes him great stress.

Momtobax: I spent some time thinking back to when I was a kid, and realized a point which is perhaps very valid to the situation (daughter and I are both aspies). I was always far more content and comfortable discussing adult things (weather, gas prices, etc.) than child things. I preferred adults. I felt like one, trapped in a kid's body. I was just remarking to my husband days ago that I feel the same inside, like I have gathered additional knowledge and experience, and my body has changed, but I'm not really different. If that makes sense. Perhaps it is just the desire to communicate as equals. I suspect, like me, she does not understand social structures. I was always perplexed when adults did not treat me as an equal, for I certainly identified with them far more than my peers.

One of the beest things about my bf's dad is that he always treats me like an equal in any conversation we have. Even if the conversation is about his parenting skills and what I feel he doesn't know how to do(He's 54 with 2 adult kids, I'm 26 with no kids). And hes never once changed how he appears to interact with/feel towards me as a result of these conversations. At least not negatively. His feelings have appeared to increase. But then he might be my father-in-law one day so thats what should be happening

I do have memories of a child when my parents would talk to my older sister about something but brush off anything I said about the same thing. And she was only 3 years older than me. Or they would tell me to shut up when I told them the time of some appointment they had, then they would miss the appointment because they had the time or location wrong. Even worse, was after I had spent quite a while trying to tell them the location and time because I knew they were going to the wrong place, they would finally make it to the right place and then be stupid enough to say something like "I'm sorry. I didn't know we were supposed to be here." Umm, yes you did. So what if I'm 6, I told you 20 times and you wouldn't listen.

Remembering things like that still aggravates me. There is no reason to exclude someone's opinion or knowledge because of their age

I could have almost written your post, my 4yo is so similar. He gets so anxious about things that other people wouldn't even notice. The funny things is that some things other kids worry about don't seem to bother him. Eg we moved house recently and I expected this to cause him stress, because after all it's a major change that even NT 4yos worry about that. So we did lots of preparation and reassurance, covering every aspect we could think of that might be worrying him. Was he homesick? No. Did he get scared or unsettled sleeping in his new bedroom? Not really, he was fine after the first two nights. His biggest worry of all was that come December he won't know exactly where the advent decorations are going to go, because the loungeroom here is a different shape to our old loungeroom. He got really upset about this. Why the heck does he need to know precisely how every decoration will be placed? In March?

Another time we went on a family outing and thought it would be fun for the kids to ride on a double decker bus, which they had never done before. My son had nightmares the night before about the bus ride and was very worried. The problem? He thought he might not know which bus stop to get out at. I hadn't thought of mentioning that, because I just assumed he understood that we'd all get on and off the bus together.

I won't try and list all his trivial/strange anxieties as it would run to hundreds of pages, but it seems that we can never predict what is going to be the big source of anxiety.

My son worries about anything and everything. He hates to wait for anything b/c it will take way too long and his biggest complaint is waiting for food b/c he's almost certain he'll starve to death waiting. We have assured him no kid has ever starved to death on our shift but it still brings him so much anxiety to have to wait to eat. He use to be very attached to our house and would always worry if and when we would have to leave to run errands or just spend the day out and about.

I used to worry about fairly silly things, like if I was in a train I'd imagine it crashing or if I was in a car I'd imagine it crashing, sometimes I'd just worry that my bones would suddenly pop out for no reason at all. And then there was the time that I worried myself sick that I'd been infected by a Tsetse Fly, even though I live in Australia.

Everything everyone has said brings a smile to my face, only for the fact it is so familiar and I had no idea is was so common.

My 11 yo son worries all the time, although I think it is getting better. He has admitted that it is hard to sleep at night for all the horrible things he things about. He has often set traps in the front yard tree to catch the robbers.

My understanding is that anxiety is or can be a major part of this diagnosis. I think that obsessive thinking is also a part. And the repetitive behaviors help to relieve the anxiety. I used to put my son to bed at night only to wake him up in the morning finding his bed filled with hundreds of paper airplanes!

If it becomes severe, I think it is worth mentioning to the doctor. I think it is definitely biological. I prefer not to medicate but I do medicate for some stuff because allowing negative experience over and over may be just as damaging to the brain and long term psychology of the child. My thought is... just because I medicate my son for something now doesn't mean I'm committing to medicate forever.

Right now, he takes only Concerta, for his ADHD. He took Risperdal for about a year when his moods and anxiety were too much for him to handle and I didn't think being depressed and angry all the time was a good pattern to set for him. He was on it, he got through it, he got off it.

There is no easy answer but at least you hopefully know by now that the anxiety you are seeing is not unusual in these very special kids.

Good luck to you!