Asperger's Syndrome

My middle daughter might have Asperger's Syndrome but has not been diagnosed. She would never agree to an assessment nor have I mentioned to her anything about it. I don't want to label her. I only recently learned about this phenomenon through a friend whose adult son has it. When I was telling her about my daughter and the challenges we face with her, she told me it sounds like she is afflicted with the syndrome.

She definitely has some telltale signs according to what I have read - ie. very sensitive to noise, smells, can't handle changes in her routine, subject to inexplicable anxiety etc. Just today she told me if she finds a penny on the road and picks it up, she can taste/smell the metal. Also, she won't eat with metal utensils, only plastic knives and forks because she hates the metallic taste and also, the sound of the metal against her teeth is, for her, like nails on a chalkboard. Very often she will tell us not to scrape our forks/knives against our plates because the noise of it really bothers her.

We went through a real crisis with her at age 15 when she refused to attend high school. She couldn't really articulate why she was so anxious, just stating that she hated it and it was obvious she was totally overwhelmed by being in a public high school. Her previous school had been a small, private one. But even at that school, she began behaving oddly and talked to her friends about harming herself. At that time, I thought perhaps she was going through some drastic hormonal changes which were causing her mood swings. Although I met with tremendous resistance from everyone, including my husband, I allowed my daughter to quit school because my motherly instincts were shouting at me that my daughter could be a danger to herself. She was so dreadfully unhappy, she wouldn't come out of her room for days on end, avoided all eye contact, wouldn't eat with the family etc. She just retreated into her own little world. She has very little need for people, preferring animals, especially horses. She's a loner, that's for sure. In lieu of school, we had her volunteering six hours a day in a place that helps mentally and physically handicapped adults and children via horseback riding. This experience turned her life (and ours) around. It really brought her out of the abyss and helped her to reconnect with the real world.

She is a very intelligent girl but I wonder how I will be able to raise her to be a well-adjusted, self-supporting adult one day. She loses herself in her fantasy novels and watches too much T.V. Presently she is studying individual high school courses via correspondence (but at the rate she's going, she'll be 25 when she finally graduates high school) but what about all the social skills that one develops during one's high school years? She is missing all that. I realize I need to accept her the way that she is and by and large, I have done that. But I am anxious about what her future may look like.

Any advice or comments? Tweet