So, it's been an exciting few weeks in our household. The biggest news is that our little girl was diagnosed last week with High Functioning Autism. The news came as quite a shock to us, since several evaluations we'd had already had "ruled out" autism. In the end, though, this team of six professionals through an all day evaluation came to a careful conclusion and we are inclined to accept it. They suggested that we read about girls with High Functioning Autism or Asberger's Syndrome and that they thought we would begin to see a lot of Sprout in those descriptions. They were right. Girls present differently than boys and Sprout is very high on the "High Functioning" end, which means she has already developed a lot of coping strategies that mask her symptoms.
Still, it's a tough pill to swallow. Our hope that our issues with her could be resolved with some Speech Lanugage and Occupational Therapy are giving way to understanding that she will likely struggle in some of these areas for many years. Reading about adolescent girls on the Autism spectrum is especially scary.
But, there's no question that she is amazing. Everyone falls in love with her, even when her quirky behaviors drive them crazy. On a brief reading assessment, she was reading on a 3rd-4th grade level and she just turned 4! And they thought that she would have scored higher with a more thorough assessment, though she struggles a bit with higher level comprehension skills. They suggested that eventually, she would qualify as "twice exceptional" and enter a gifted program as well, but it's really too early to tell.
They also reassured us that we are already doing a lot of the things we needed to be doing for her. We intuitively developed strategies for her that are just what they recommend for kids on the Autism spectrum. And she's in the perfect educational setting and making amazing progress. We feel like she's going to do fine, but hopefully we can help her with her challenges now that we have a better idea what they are.
On the other hand, they also suggested that we have her evaluated for services through the school district's Exceptional Children program to get an IEP in place before she starts elementary school and we are also working to have her entered into a therapy program. All in all, it is a lot to wrap our brains around, but everyone around us has been supportive and we are appreciative of that. I think there are quite a few people who question the diagnosis or dismiss it as irrelevant because "she's so smart" or "she is going to be just fine." While I'm sure those words are meant to be encouraging, sometimes it seems that people don't recognize the areas where she struggles, which can be a little tough.
So, there's the latest on our super, spunky, amazing, adorable Sprout. She's growing like a weed, reading like a whiz kid, and is still the same kid she was before all this came to pass, so we are just continuing on and trying to learn as much as we can to help her be successful and meet her challenges.
