Thank you all for the wisdom and personal experience shared on this thread. We have a 9yr old DD who we are coming to realize may be on the spectrum. She's loving, happy, extroverted, can be thoughtful and empathic, and can be completely oblivious, has subtle comprehension problems trouble with sequencing.
She has friends and school insist she is doing fine socially. But I am increasingly convinced that she's doing fine in superficial / shallow situations and is lagging in complex preteen girl social awareness.
She's been very thoroughly schooled by us, and her schools, on appropriate behavior and has learned this mostly very well, but increasingly it's clear that there are subtleties that she doesn't get. There are behaviors and small incidents everyday where we correct her (and she often seems puzzled), but her 5 yr old sister would not need to be told.
Random example of not getting subtleties. She was a picky eater who, after YEARS of work, finally learned to eat what her hosts gave her or to politely leave it on he plate (or say no thank you). And not to ask for food on a play date, but to wait until it was offered (our friends will always offer children snacks or a meal as appropriate, I am not expecting her to go hungry, just to leave it to the host what and when they offer). Which was all fine until she asked me recently if it was rude to ask for a glass of water! A 9.5 yr old should know that asking for water is not the same as asking for cookies or fruit right?
Last edited by MumOfThree; 10/05/11 09:45 PM.
