Being Jessica's Mom: Growing up on the Autistic Spectrum

So I moved out and my kids stayed at their school and their dad stayed at the house they had lived in for the past 4 years.  A 504 plan was put in place and we struggled through 4th and 5th grade.  After the Trichotillomania was diagnosed, we went to a psychiatrist and Jessica started her first medication.  She also started weekly therapy.  Here is what I learned about Jessica and therapy…Talk therapy doesn’t work!  The therapist she first saw was a traditional talk therapist.  We sat in the room, she asked Jessica questions and discussed how my ex-husband and I could help her.  When Jessica engaged in conversation with the therapist, she tended to focus on things about her brother and her dad and she would repeat these thoughts multiple times regardless of the questions.  As if it was a movie that was stuck in her brain.  These thoughts were reoccurring themes of how she didn’t feel included.  This would later become a theme throughout ages and stages.  It was accurate as far as Jessica was concerned.

Because her perception of the world was still very concrete and this area of working memory and processing did not just impact her in school.  She could not see that there was inclusion, and she would get stuck when EVERY moment did not feel inclusive or they were not engaging in a preferred activity of Jessica’s.  But it was also her anxiety.  When I was not present (at her dad’s house), Jessica, though she loves her dad, knew that mom was the one who “understood” best what goes on with her.  She never actually complained when she was with her dad.  She would hold it all inside when she was visiting at his house.  Then in therapy, she would try to share what was bothering her, but it was heard as just Jessica’s inability to “change channels” and find something else to do.  So, she would also hold onto these events for weeks, months and sometimes years.

And then sometime between 10 and 11 years old, the melt downs started.  They weren’t every day, in fact as time went on, I tracked them and they would occur about once per month AND always in line with my menstrual cycle…hmmmm…Once a month, usually set off by homework time, her desire to engage in a preferred activity not being met, and other minor issues, she would completely melt down, yelling screaming and always running this tape about exclusion by her dad and brother about all the things they did or didn’t do over weeks, months and even things that happened years prior(completely unrelated to whatever set her off) And then, she would just stop and sit in my lap and cry.  Twenty minutes later, she was fine and the rest of the day went on.

As her story unfolds, you will hear more about other therapies and what we finally found that works.  But this initial experience was not very productive for Jessica and it was just the beginning of my realization of the lack of resources I had and how easily symptoms of kids not just spectrum, but mental health can be confused, mis-diagnosed and all together missed.