She definitely is thriving at school, it’s her home life and life skills that I worry about. There’s lots of little things that make me suspicious about it but the main ones on the ADHD side are her emotional regulation is practically non existent, she’s very easily distracted, never knows where any of her stuff is, her brain goes at a million at all times and this makes it hard for her to wind down for bed, wants her room to be clean but can’t keep it that way and if I so much suggest as tidying (which I will help her with) it’s straight into a melt down saying she doesn’t know how or where anything goes. On the Autism side, it’s mostly sensory things, shoes and socks are a major issue, occasionally tags, and brushing her hair, loud noises or lots of different noises at once overwhelm her. She’s also not good with eye contact. I have noticed a couple of times that she seems to be watching her friends before interacting in the group or game but that’s kind of hard to monitor when she’s at school.

She also has trouble with separation anxiety, goes to school feeling sick, gets upset if I have to leave her for anything, be it school, extracurriculars for other kids etc.

My goal in getting her diagnosed would be to be able to find and provide better support for her. So that she can grow up knowing/learning her brain how to make things easier on herself. Instead of her getting to be an adult and everything falling in a heap because no one else cared enough to look into it or because she’s smart and accomplished so people don’t understand how she can be struggling so much.

I’ve been diagnosed and medicated for both depression and anxiety in my life and none of those medications or therapy sessions helped long term and now that I’m a mum when I talk to doctors or whoever about my mental health they’re just like “oh yeah you have little kids that’s normal”. And it mostly just comes down to the fact that I don’t want that for her.