Hi all. After talking to a friend and her seeing and hearing about my 3 year old (almost 4) daughter and she says she suspects my daughter has aspergers as her son has it and they have the same traits. But I don't know much about it. She is incredibly smart, has incredible language skills and is incredible in all development areas except social skills. She has extremely sensitive hearing (having a hearing test on Monday) she has panic attacks, hits her ears/flaps her hands when sounds are too much for her. She has recently started having panic attacks when we go to the hair dresser/dentist/car wash. She goes to bed at 7 -7:30 but has periods of staying up until 10pm (sometimes later) and then wakes at 4am for the day. Sometimes has night terrors, wakes up screaming and almost ripping her hair out. We can't touch her or speak to her until she has calmed down other wise she screams even louder and when she is done it's like nothing ever happened. She doesn't seems to notice that things hurt other people, like she will rough her little brother up and I tell her that she is hurting him but she doesn't seem to get it until he cries and then just gets up and walks away as if nothing happened. She is very active. She is obsessed with dinosaurs, bugs and basically any animal in the world. She could quite easily sit and read books about these things with me all day. She can sometimes get very frustraited and upset if I don't go down particular streets when we are driving around town. I don't know if I'm forgetting anything. Does this sound like a typical almost 4 year old?
5 Replies
I think it's very brave of your friend to speak up, for some people, even though it's said with love it ends friendships. I work with kids on the spectrum and have a child on the spectrum. Your daughter does sound like she is on the spectrum from what you describe. Get a referral to a developmental paediatrician from your GP. I always have the motto 'if in doubt check it out'.
Kids with aspergers can do really well but support and intervention are really important. School especially can be challenging because of the social expectations, noise in the classroom and spontaneous changes etc. getting a diagnosis before school starts will make a huge difference to how school goes as they will be able to put strategies in place from day one.
I am very greatful for my friend speaking up and I think she felt comfortable saying something because she knows how stressed I've been due to my daughters behaviour and I have said a few time that I don't understand what's going on with her because I've never seen a child act this way (I have not been around children on the spectrum).
If your daughter receives a diagnosis there is a lot of support out there. Girls often fall through the cracks as people miss the signs in girls as they aren't as obvious sometimes. Good luck
go to your doctor and get a referral to a peadatrician. they will discuss everything that she is doing with you and analyse if they think she needs to be tested for being on the autism spectrum. she does have some traits but I believe every person has autism traits - its just some of us have more. my son wasn't diagnosed until he was nearly 13 and the earlier the better. seek help now whilst she is young . good luck mum
Every child is different, a lot of the behaviour you have listed sounds like a normal 4 year old, I have a son who has Asperger's, i didn't find out until he was in high school, one of his teacher picked up on his behaviour he is now 20 :)
he would go to bed at 7-7.30 and wake at 5.30am every day, he also is incredibly smart, has incredible language skills and is incredible in all development areas except social skills, very sensitive to light, noise and lots of people but has learnt to handle each situation now he is older, at school he had to have a strict routine and if anything changed he would not be happy, I would get your daughter checked x