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Has your child ever seen a NeuroPsych? Is there a reason why she has not been evaluated?

Robin,

Sounds just like my dd who is mild pdd. (This has changed from mild to mod. autism...she has had lots of therapy) Your dd has good social skills or at least motivation to socialize that my dd is lacking but....My Sarah has all of the following:

 

Hi ,Welcome I have a 6 year old with AS,he is reading kindergarten books but is not what Id call advanced ,he loves numbers ,hot wheel,trains ect..,but doesn't get stuck on any one topic,he will get stuck on rules,and needing to be the best.

his language is Quirky for 6,he will say "she is quite a bit larger than I expected"Instead of( she is Fat),he also has alot of verbal stimming and scripting.

he likes to play video games,but if not doing that he will spend hours lining up his hotwheels.he loves to be read to.

he has some sensory issues,smelling thumping his head ect..

PM me if you want to talk,Linda

Pregnancy hormones do funny things to us

She def has some things that's you'd associate with asd. How does she get on with imaginative play and does she have friends?

You may want to take the pdd assesment at childbrain; www.childbrain.com

I recognize many of these! If she had no speech delay, but has pragmatic
language issues or social use of language problems--I would look further
into a dx of asperger's. One thing that's tricky is that the disorder
sometimes presents slightly differently in girls than boys. There are a lot
of parents of girls on the spectrum here, and you should be able to pick
their brains soon.

The hand dryers/flushing/vacuum thing is EXTREMELY common in our
kids and has to do with sensory issues (auditory sensitivities). The
hairbrushing thing is the same--many kids find the sensation intolerable.
Occupational Therapy that addresses sensory integration disorder has
helped my son IMMENSELY. Have you read the book, The Out of Sync
Child? It really is the best for explaining all of her sesitivities. The
companion book, The Out of Sync Child Has Fun has many great play
ideas you can do at home or at the park to help her with her regulation
and integration.

Having innapropriate boundaries with strangers and not having any sense
of social censoring is just as common as kids who withdraw. They are
just two different expressions of the same inability to read social cues
and self-regulate.

She can't help it that she gets stuck on things--that's the "perserverstive
interest" thing they refer to (it doen't only refer to big topics of interest)
My son can get stuck on a certain topic or type of converstation like that
all the time. I have to redirect him all the time.

Many kids on the spectrum have poor sleeping habits due to a
combination of immature sleeping patterns (a type of developmental
delay) and sensory issues.

Playing the same pretend game over and over again is a perfect example
of having "limited creative play" Many kids with a form of autism can
pretend, just not a richly or creatively as more typical peers. She might
benefit from a creative mix of floortime/play therapy sessions to help
engage her in a less rigid way.

Her answering questions innapropriately also sounds like it could be a
sign of an auditory processing disorder. Our kids don't always catch
every word in a sentence we say due to processing delays. An evaluation
from a speech and language pathologist should help to get an idea of her
receptive language skills, as opposed to expressive. My son takes a
longer time to respond to questions sometimes for the same reason. It's
good to check these things out so she can have proper support in the
classroom. She is most likely a very VISUAL learner, and she seems to
have somewhat of a savant ability (or splinter skill) in the area of spelling.
My son reads at about the fourth grade level right now, and he is only 4
and a half!

And lastly, my son is actualy being treated for some OCD behaviors that
are interfering with his well-being. OCD and anxiety disorders kind of go
hand in hand with a dx of asperger's of HFA.

I don't know it any of this helps--just sharing what I know, and saying I
relate to almost everything in your post (except the seizures during
pregnancy) Obviously, I can't dx your daughter, but in my opinion, you
have come to the right place and are dealing with many of the same
issues most parents here are.

There are some really wise, warm, and wonderful folks here!

Welcome to the board! I'd be glad to give more specific answers anytime

You're a great mom, and have made lots of great observations.  The childbrain checklist mentioned above will help you make some more observations.

I don't think you mentioned anything about a language delay, but the language quirks she has may make a diagnostician rule out Aspergers and lean more toward PDD-NOS, just a hunch.

A lot of the behavior you describe is sensory-related, so I'm going to give you a link to a checklist for sensory-issues.

http://www.sensory-processing-disorder.com/sensory-processin g-disorder-checklist.html

Your daughter obviously has a lot of strengths to build on, good reason to be optimistic even if she ends up with a diagnosis.

Good luck with everything! 

This sounds a lot my dd.  She is 5 and I suspected asd a few years ago.  I went into panic mode and had her evaluated when she was three.  Her evaluators felt "something" was going on but were hesitant to call it autism.  They check up on her every six months and we are due for another appointment next month. 

She has very similar language problems and she has a repetitive movement.  Its not flapping but she is wiggles her fingers and grimaces her face when she is excited.  Her social skills are pretty good but now that she has started Kindergarten I think I see some slight problems.  She does not understand when she is "too much" for the other kids, she is a bit hyper.  Kids get mad and she is so confused.  She also copies a lot of her teachers language and uses it to talk to the kids, she comes off as sounding bossy.  The kids have a hard time with that, but dd has no idea:(

I still worry a lot and I wouldnt be surprised if she ever ends up with an aspergers or HFA dx. 

On the other hand, she has made huge progress and she has barely got any therapy.  She was always denied services because her test scores look really good.  Even speech therapists have a hard time understanding why I am having her assessed.  If you spend enough time with her though, you would understand.  She is "off" not delayed. 

 

 

I wanted to add, I never had a seizure when I was pregnant but I did have a hard time with eye contact when I was pregnant:)  I always thought that was weird.  I worked as a loan officer and whenever title companies brought in gifts for us, I would think to myself, why cant I look at these people???  It was like I was aware but couldnt help myself and make eye contact:)  I was a mess when I was pregnant:)  I did tons of strange things like driving past my house all the time and having to turn back around:)  I figured it was all my pregnancy hormones:)

Hi. I posted the following in another area and wanted to try and post it here too (as per the suggestion of someone else.... and thank you.   

Wow.  I have just spent the last two hours reading posts and now I'm overwhelmed. 

My daughter is now 6 y.o. and I have been getting her assessed for the last 3+ years and no one seems to be able to pin it down.  I do hear "Aspergers" a lot, but have also heard PDD, PDD-NOS, Hight Functioning Austism, ADHD, etc.  I'm actually a grad student (and at the ripe ole age of 40, yikes) working on my PhD in Educational Psychology.  I should have gone the "special ed" route and studied the autism spectrum disorders, but my path led me down general child development.  I'm just going to list what I have noticed with my daughter that I feel are different than others her age:

1. She does get stuck on one thing and doesn't let up on it, such as if she wants to do something she is persistent (which is good in a way, but it's kind of like an over-persistence where I actually have to hold her hands and make her look into my eyes to get her to stop, and sometimes that doesn't even work). 

2. She used to run away screaming and crying from the vacuum, until finally one day about a year ago I got ear plugs for her, and now she wants to vacuum all the time.  She still cringes and covers her ears with other noises like toilets flushing and those hand dryers in public restrooms saying "it's too loud mama!"

3. Her grammatical structure is off.  She can read my college books with impressive inflection and diction (although her assessment in first grade put her at the 3rd/4th grade level), but when she just talks from the top of her head the grammar is off.  I know from studying child development that there are normal developmental grammar errors, like putting "ed" on the end of everything, but this is different.  Example sentence from when she was describing a picture she drew one day:

"Right there's the tissue box, and this is the blanket, and that’s the correct that I’ve done very good, that’s the bathroom d… room, and that’s the door wheres the living room behind it."

The ending part of that sentence is the good example.  The "correct that I've done good" I know was from the "C" the teacher wrote on her picture. 

 

4. She zones out sometimes but I have figured quick ways to get her out of it (nice ways of course). 

5. She is OVER friendly, going up to EVERYONE she feels like and giving them hugs and kisses and wanting to tell them everything.  I have been on her about not talking to strangers for 3 years now, but still, I'll be buying groceries or paying for gas and she is hugging the person behind me.  One time it was a guy who was not a very safe looking person.  That is so scary to me. 

6. She seems to have no impulse control.  She KNOWS what's right, or at least she can tell you what is the right thing to do, but in the moment, the impulse control is NOT there.  I have worked on that as well for the last 3 years.

7. When she was a baby she had night terrors (different than nightmares, for those who are wondering).  At least that's what I was told they were.  They were extremely scary.  They started when she was about 16-18 months old and stopped when she was about 3 y.o.  But to this day she is not a very good "sleeper".  She wakes in the middle of the night almost every night and will either walk/run through the house and jump in my bed, or if she starts in my bed, she will sit up in the middle of the night for no reason.  She also doesn't sleep very long.  No matter if I have her scheduled for bed at 7pm every night to 9pm every night, she still does not fall asleep til after 10pm, and sometimes not til midnight. 

8. When I was pregnant with her, I was having a lot of de-ja-vu sensations.  Lots of them were strong enough that I lost track of time.  One time it ended in a grand-mal seizure.  That is when I was 7.5 months pregnant.  It was the only one I had, but the de-ja-vu sensations continued after she was born, mostly when I was breast feeding or fatigued. 

9. This one I am listing just because someone else on these message boards mentioned the "same game".  I don't know what that is, but my daughter does like to play the same thing over and over and over again, in the same way, whether it's playing house (where I am a person wanting to buy a dog and she is the dog and the game is played the same exact way each time)  or dinosaurs (again, played the same exact way each time, which is confusing to me still because she knows like 60-70 dinosaurs, their names, how to spell them, the characteristics that distinguish them from each other, etc, but I can't keep them straight). 

10. I dont know if what she does is considered hand-flapping or not, but she does flap them, but not all the time.  She does "hand dinosaurs" all the time, she also LOVES to spin.  I remember recording her one time when she was about 18 months old because I was always amazed at how long she could spin.  She spun for 35 minutes the time I recorded her.  I mean yes, she lost her balance about 4 or 5 times, but she got right back up and kept spinning.  Again, I know kids like to spin, but that just seems over the "ordinary" spinning that a child would do.

11. Her favorite game is "spelling bee".  I even created a game for her called "silly bee" where I gave her words that just sound funny, like sporadic or flabbergasted.  For the most part, she normally gets them right.  The breeder of the dog we just got a month ago was impressed then jokingly asked her to spell "disestablishmentarianism" because she saw that on a televised spelling be where the 12 y.o. boy won with that word.  My daughter spelled it right! I was shocked!

12. I keep trying to read things on information sites and research articles, but it seems to vague to me.  Like "ordering".  Yes, my daughter like to order things, a LOT, but when is it just a genetic thing, because I like to order things too (I'm slightly on the OCD side).

13. She is tender headed.  That is another thing that I have no idea if that's part of it or not.  I'm extremely tender headed too, but at least I was able to learn to brush my own hair eventually.  She on the other hand still cries and screams when I do her hair.  I have had to get into the pattern of washing her hair, using a really good conditioner, combing her hair when it's wet, then braiding it or doing something with it so that the next morning when I take out the bands that her hair is a lot easier to comb.

14. She also does not answer appropriately with many questions.  For example, when being assessed one time, they asked "why do we eat?"  Her response was "because we have to lean over the plate."  While she ansered in the context of eating, she didn't answer the question.  That's just a very easy example, but it happens quite often like that.

Ok, I'll stop for now, but it's a good start for a list of what I have noticed that is "different" enough to stand out in my mind.  They are kind of all over the place (i.e., at all ages and my pregnancy and in no particular order).  Hope that's ok.

Please reply with whatever feedback/ideas you may have. 

Thank you SO much for reading all this!

Robin


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