Your situation sounds very similar to mine 2 years ago! Except I only have ONE child...how DO you manage with twins??? Anyway, DS was diagnosed with autism at age 2.5 like yours. Like you, we have focused on ABA and developmental therapies and completely ignored academics. I even said to his preK and K principals that we didn't care about academics, he was smart and could learn what he needed easy enough. We wanted to focus on social skills, etc. He went to an autism school, then regular preschool (age 4) and regular K (age 5).
For us, K was a disaster. Our K is a full day of kids sitting in chairs surrounded by toys they cannot play with. He did NOT do well. It was at this time he was ID'd officially as gifted so they ran around trying to get him in the appropriate reading and math groups. By then, he had behavior problems due to his autism, poor communication, poor social skills so it was hard for anyone to want to "let" him do more academically. I still did not know enough about gifted kids to even think that a lot of it may have been due to boredom. I wish we had pushed to have him bumped to grade 1 at that time...but I was still thinking he needed the social skills that kindergarten could teach him. I completely blew off his academic abilities: I laughed when he went to the front of the class and read the teacher's instructions in the reading book while the rest of the class was struggling with "B is for Bear."
Anyway, if your girls are gifted like my son, you shouldn't hold them back in school. I am now trying to convince the school DS should be in 3rd grade instead of 2nd, but it's hard. We are going to a new school (it's a school for the gifted where supposedly 2nd grade is like 3rd grade) and they will have to see for themselves DS's level.
If I had it to do over again, knowing what I know now about gifted-ness...I would have had my son skip K and go straight to 1st. He would have still gotten the social skills training in a 1st grade class that he got in K. So, that's my story and opinion!! Nan
