So literal.

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When the school dress code are white socks, she will not wear white socks with a colour toe , never mind that no one is asking her to take off her shoes to see if she is in proper uniform, what the school sees are white socks.
When we are going through our wardrobe to see what fits, we tried on everything and because a lot of garments get thrown in inside out, and we are trying on to see what needs to go to charity she insists she tries them on the right way. We are just seeing for fit nothing more.

She is always checking labels and expriry dates on food labels and drinks, sometimes I dont let her check, i have reassured her a million times, that best before is ok to use a bit past date and use by definitely goes, but its every little morsel.
I have asked her to trust me that I would never put her in danger of getting sick by food, but I think it is an obsession.

I have had a written up routine about showering for 3 years now, and she still will get out of showering, she did last night and I have forced her in the shower now, witha ' we will make golf balls after your shower'. This is only 3 showers a week, not good enough now seeing as she is very strong with underarm odour, even 3 hours after deodorant.

She is 16 and it doesn't feel like she is going to mature at any rate just now.

I dont understand how she can get around with greasy hair and B O , and think this is ok, yet for other things, like hand washing and germs we are sanitising a lot .

Its the school holidays and i'm already a bit frustrated.

thank you for reading

Have you tried telling her that the smell from under her arms comes from bacteria growing there? It might result in her becoming EVEN MORE obsessive about germs, but hey. She probably hates showering because of the painful transitions from dry to wet and hot to cold, btw, not because she wants to be dirty and stink. Maybe teach her how to wash under her arms with a soapy washcloth as part of her usual sink routine (wash face, wash pits, brush teeth--not a lot of extra steps.)

I'm not sure I understand the second problem.

Autistic people tend to strictly adhere to the rules. If the school requires white socks, it makes sense (to me) that she doesn't want to wear socks that have any other color, even if all that can be seen is the white part. I would just make sure she has enough all-white socks so that this isn't a problem.

As for the expiration dates, I am like that too with food and non-food items. Just let her check the expiration dates. I rarely eat anything my mom makes because I am very particular about how food must be handled, the freshness of ingredients. I drive my mom crazy by interrogating her about the ingredients and everything before I eat her food, when I do. Again, I'm sorry to say, that may be another battle not worth fighting. The stress she will likely feel if you start cracking down on those behaviors is enormous.

Autistic people tend not to have the best hygiene and that is a problem. This is an issue that you should be insistent about. When I was a teenager I had bad hygiene too but my mom's constant badgering really helped me. So, maybe you could badger her about that in a gentle way. Tell her that, for the same reasons she doesn't want to eat expired food, she should want to rid her epidermis of bad bacteria growth.

I'm not an expert in these matters so I can only speak from personal experience. I hope something I wrote can be of some help. Good luck.

It is common to have OCD-ish tendencies about following rules. I would just accept that somethings are just going to take longer and that she is going to be more particular. I would want to try clothes on the right way, too, b/c it is easier to see what looks good and doesn't look good. Clothing items can "fit" and not look flattering, if that makes sense. I also have a thing about sell-by/best by dates although it is getting better now that I see in reports that have come out about how bs they are. The sock thing makes sense to me, too. I just would not buy socks with colored toes. Not battles, I personally, would fight.

The hygiene thing is different. I would find a good book on self-care that talks about how often one should bathe and that kind of thing. If she sees it written down (by someone who is an expert and not you) she may accept it as a rule, and attempt to compky with these norms despite any sensory issues she has with bathing. She may or may not care about the perspectives of others, so you should explain it, but not count on that to matter.

As someone with AS she may not be as uncomfortable as you think she ought to be when dirty, (It might feel comfy, actually) and the process of cleaning, itself, can be very uncomfortable from a sensory perspective, as already noted. You might suggest baths rather than showers or think of other ways to make bathing less uncomfortable.

This is the case for my daughter. She hates getting in the shower and then hates getting out. It is all due to transition issues. For her, once she realized that was what the problem was...that she DIDN'T hate showers, she just hates getting in and out of them...it became easier. All I had to do was help her transition. One thing that helps is we have a double headed shower head. When she gets in the shower, we use the hand held shower and she starts at her feet and works her way up. For getting out, I have 2 towels immediately available that I put on her. The first for her hair so it won't drip on her and the second for her body. I help her out of the shower. That way it minimizes the discomfort and she has me for emotional support.

Another thing that helps me with understanding all the adherence to rules. When the world makes no sense to you, you rely on learning the rules and sticking to them. Because then you know what to do. It is consistent and predictable. It gives you a sense of personal control and alleviates anxiety. When rules change or are not followed, it makes a confusing world unpredictable. You lose your bearing and you cannot know if you are going to respond correctly to the situation or not, because you cannot trust your own judgment when reading the situation. It provokes anxiety. When one of my kids gets rigidly stuck on a rule (like the white sock thing), I just leave it alone. It helps them feel secure and understand things, and when I remind myself that change is like ripping the rug out from underneath them, it makes it less annoying to me that they are stuck on something insignificant.

the only thing I can see there as an issue that will impact negatively on her life is the shower issue.
Ask her to think about, to WRITE DOWN for herself, why she doesn't take showers as often as you ask her to. Get her to write a three paragraph essay on it. It's important to know WHY she won't do it, before you can address getting her to do it. Especially if she is that structured with regards to all those other things you mentioned.

And you can't just ask her to explain it verbally. She will most likely not be able to, or will not search for the right answer. Getting her to ponder it long enough to write more than one sentence WILL likely be more fruitful.

If the essay isn't likely to work on her, then be creative with the thought behind my idea and come up with something else. The point is that you need to / scratch that / SHE needs to consider and become aware of the reason she won't bathe enough, and then you are going to have to be creative about helping her adjust...

The other thing you could do is a bit cruel. Have someone you know come over to visit after she hasn't bathed a few days, and ask "what is that smell" or "do you put fish oil in your hair or something?" and appeal to her 16 year old vanity?

You might try the opposite to achieve the same result. Have a friend or relative come over when she's just showered and have them comment on how nice she smells.

Rules help people with ASDs make sense of the world. The problem is that many of the rules that we make up are sort of mushy. As neurotypical adults, we intuitively understand that most rules can be bent, to an extent. For example, the speed limit is 50, most adults interpret that as "Drive 60 mph, or with traffic. If you see a police officer, slow down to 55, if he starts following you, slow down to 50." We intuit those rules by observing other's behaviors."

As a parent, you can help your daughter by trying to dissect and understand the real rules that we follow, rather than the simplified and unrealistic rules that are written for us to follow. Sometimes, this isn't worth the trouble, for example, the sell-by date - not being flexible there may waste some money, but getting it wrong can lead to food poisoning. So you could break this down and explain to your daughter that bad milk smells sour, and so a better test of whether the milk is good or not is smelling it, and bad bread has a stale texture or mold on it, which can sometimes happen even before the sell-by date. On the other hand, you really shouldn't take chances with old meat or fish. If you want your daughter to be flexible with rules like these, then you have to help her understand the real rules and not those simplified rules that most adults use.

^ a.k.a. WHY THE RULES ARE THERE.

Take the speed limit example. Most agree that, when the roads are dry, most are too low. Police officers very seldom stop people going less than 10 mph over most limits. My father would SAY "9 mph over" yet often go 15-20 mph over, at least when he was a bit younger. I did the same - until I got a speeding ticket. I've pretty rigidly obeyed "9 mph over" since and have only ever been stopped for it on a major highway where the speed limit was a more reasonable 70. Even then, I got off with a warning. So now I only go 75 when the limit is 70. At any rate, if I see a cop, I coast down to 0-4 mph over (only hitting the brakes if I was going 10+ over.)

I also think that the common NT practice (both in schools and in offices) of finding some minor, technical violation to get an annoying person on reinforces this rigid rule-following. Any kid identifying with Asperger's/autism will think the minor violation WAS THE REAL REASON THEY WERE PUNISHED, no matter how severely!! They'll never "just get" the real reason because they don't observe and automatically follow people like that!! ! THEY NEED TO BE TOLD THE REAL REASON, OR THEY WILL NOT LEARN.

Well, for me some clothes don't fit or feel the same if they are inside out -- it depends on the seams and the material, and whether or not there's anything on the outside of the shirt that isn't on the inside (e.g. stitching, buttons, pockets, or pictures).



It may have nothing to do with her trusting you, per se....if she's convinced you're mistaken, then it doesn't matter if she trusts you to do everything you can to keep her food safe.

For years I thought that "best before" dates were literally expiry dates -- the date when food would expire -- because that's what people call them and "expired" (being much more concrete) is easier for me to understand than "best before". I wasn't obsessive about them like your daughter is...but when I was younger I was quite puzzled by how often milk would be fine on the "expiry date".

Ideas:

Try to explain to her the literal meaning of "best before" -- explain that the milk (or whatever) is "best" up until the "best before" date, and that after that is is "okay" until it actually tastes/smells funny.

Do your best to never call the "best before" date an "expiry date". Tell her that people mix up the names but that they are not the same thing (if she ever mixes up words that are similar but not synonyms, maybe you could compare an example from her own language use to the mixing up of "best before" and "expiry")



Thoughts about the reason for the difference: The grease on your hair is just skin oils rather than germs , and hair doesn't touch common surfaces as often as hands (although I do know bacteria live in human hair). BO is very much related to germs, but they're your germs, and nobody talks about armpit germs getting into your nose and mouth and making you sick if you don't wash your armpits regularly -- unlike with hand-washing, there are no public health announcements or commercials about the importance of armpit washing, complete with pictures of bacteria and viruses and counts of microbes found in armpits. Also, hand-washing is a very different activity to showering -- if you have sensory issues, hand-washing may be a much less torturous task than showering.

Ask her why she doesn't like showers. It could be anything, and it's hard to reason with someone or help them to problem-solve if you don't know their reasons(s).

Ragarding the hygiene issue - as a male, NT adult, I recall a period around age 8-10 where I didn't really see the importance of showering, and didn't understand why my parents made me do it so often. This changed pretty quickly once puberty hit, and I started getting self-conscious about things like BO. But that self-consciousness came from things like others teasing me, or making some off-hand comment about how someone smells bad. Subtle social cues, that led me to realize that there are real social costs to poor hygiene. That's what motivated me to change.

People with ASDs may not always pick up on some of those subtle or not-so subtle social cues, and may need a little extra explaining and reminding in order to understand, why hygiene is important, and what poor hygiene will cost them.

To this day I'm COMPLETELY unable to tell how greasy my hair is, I only smell my own BO if it's EXTREMELY bad, and most of my hygiene is based on rules like "shower and put on deodorant every day." I get self-conscious if I haven't showered or put on deodorant in X time or I've just worked up a good sweat... but that's based on PURE INTELLECTUAL knowledge of the smell "typically" resulting. Very little of it is from olfactory or social cues.

I have told her she has bacteria under her arms hence the smell. Fresh sweat is pleasant until the bugs come.

She has said she is fine with the shower, just hates the transition from dry and clothed to wet possibly bit cold and undressed. She could stay there for days, and sing.

Yeah, thankyou. I need to pick the battles and had no idea she could have a terrible time if I crack down on her behaviours.

At Queensland camp last year, they travelled 26hours by coach. She got gastro and was really sick, her clothes had no where to be pegged in the showers, so she didn't want to risk someone taking her clothes, (her thoughts) so her towel got very wet and that was the last shower she had, first day of 5 in a tropical climate.

When I picked her up from the coach on arrival I had never smelled anyone so bad. I really felt for those travelling on the coach with her.

I will make nearly daily showers, a new habit for her, no matter how difficult for me.

Last edited by leiselmum on 18 Dec 2013, 10:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm afraid my daughter doesn't really have a vanity side one iota. She thinks it hilariously funny to have moustache of food and a beard of cake on her face in a cafe.
She takes a gazillion photos on her iPad with this look at home, but I insist she clean her face in the cafe.

Thanks for having the chance to see other angles with this. I appreciate the support, means so much.