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Nayma, thanks, thats a great article. I live in Western Colorado. Ive been observing dd through this lens since my op, and I am certain that she is not neurotypical. So much managing of her bahavior for even very simple situations, the way she talks, her descriptions of not being able to understand value judgments of her needs and other situations, the obsessing, food obsessions, trigger foods setting her off, saying she always feels rushed, she does everything soooooo slowly, being overwhelmed by sounds, not being able to 'see' big things right in front of her but picking up on detail stuff that no one else notices, same w hearing-not processing coversations but hearing a whisper across the house about other things, mega anxiety and I think depression, too. Needing ridiculous amounts of heavy physical exertion for her mood to stay level, has always had sleep issues, etc.
She does make eye contactand point, but cn pointing be learned even if its not intuited? I remember her really taking a long time to get pointing, whereas my 1yo already does it.
But at the same time, Ive had others (my sis who is scoffy at my ?ing) tell me that she is not like the AS kids they know (boys), I really have nothing to go off of but what Im reading because I dont kow any aspie kids IRL (except for possibly my own). But it is a spectrum! And you have pointed out with the article tht perhaps AS girls are getting overlooked.
I am just scared that if we get her dx'd then it might "follow" her, I know thats not a reason to skip what we need now, and I do think that she will need special consideration fo school testing, and we definitely need some parent training. I just dont want people to dumb down how they treat her or for her to feel like theres smth wrong with her if she gets dxd asd. But she is different and I think that its starting to become apparent to her, too.
I guess I am just feeling how crucial of a decision this is to follow through on, and its scary coz nobody is on board with mehere in real life.
Plummeting already commented on this, but i wanted to say that DS, who is in the final process of being screened for Asperger's, does always initiate eye contact but just doesn't maintain properly. I think, like you said, he learned it. Actually, he was able to correctly identify 90% of facial expressions during pragmatic language testing, and inference peoples thoughts in these "mind reading" scenarios, and the neuro-ped and psychologist still feel he fits the profile. Bright children can learn a lot, I think he observes face expressions the same way he observes animal behavior (he's very into science). Sometimes it's more about the effort put into doing the skill, or how easily theory can be put into practice (like knowing what a bored face looks like yet continuing to talk on a subject the person is bored by or theoretically knowing why someone had a change of plans but melting down because handling a change of plans is too upsetting). Add that girls typically don't always present as obviously as boys (actually, DS seems to present more like a lot of girls than boys, except for maybe the tics, which is why I think his problems weren't picked up earlier) and seem to develop better adaptive mechanisms, and it's easy to see how it may not be quite as obvious.
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Going through with a formal diagnoses is about the best decision we made, by the way. I was very nervous about the label following DS, but so far we have gained so much insight as to what his needs are, and I think the school noticed his differences with or without the label. Just stand your ground about keeping your daughter challenged. DS had some pretty obvious tics and obsession problems, yet every adaptation for academics was removed this year because the school saw that he needed the challenge and could be up to it. Kids with Asperger's have to be judged by their individual merits.
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