Except for the high anxiety and even skill profile, you've described my DD8 almost perfectly. She was diagnosed with SPD, which explains most of her behavior
So--can SPD explain all this? I really thought she had SPD when she was a toddler. She chewed on stuff, bumped into things, craved stimulation, etc. Then a lot of the obvious symptoms went away when she hit around K age, though I still see some. Can SPD extend this far into other behavior?
Except for 'does very well in school - no behavior problems' (DS has lots of behavior problems) and 'has many friends', your list sounds exactly like my son. He was originally diagnosed with ADHD, but DH and I are skeptical of that now and are planning on having a neuropsych eval done.
At times I really think she is closer to ADHD than anything else, but she lacks the core aspects of either distractability or hyperactivity. She really has no issues at all with either. I mean, perhaps mildly distractible, but it seems well within the range of normal to me. Yet everything else sounds like her! Frustrating.
Keep in mind that a person doesn't have to have every symptom on the list to be diagnosable, just a cluster of them.
I do know this. But the part that doesn't seem ASD to me (and I agree, there are flags) are that she actually does quite well socially (though sometimes I feel surprised by this given her tendency to be somewhat inappropriate in many ways) and that she has never had obsessions. She also shows good theory of mind in terms of understanding characters' motivations, etc. last night we had a whole long conversation about how she was worried about what her one friend feels because she knows that friend feels hurt that she still wants to be friend with the other friend who she thinks doesn't like her and...it was pretty sophisticated. Yet look at that other stuff--the rigidity and literalism in particular look awfully ASD to me.
You see why I think she is a confusing kid! Fortunately, I do live in a university town with many specialists. But.
