Originally Posted by moomin
And I keep saying things to teachers/administrators/neuropsych like, isn't it possible that some of this will improve with maturation? To which I get a weirdly confident, NO, absolutely not, not without intervention.

Well, if they said, sure, it'll get better, and then it doesn't, then they're negligent.

And it's true that intervening to correct these behaviors is likely going to be more effective than doing nothing, IMO. But choosing the intervention is going to be important.

Originally Posted by polarbear
I suspect the reason each teacher thought they saw a different diagnosis is due in large part to the fact they are teachers, not psychs trained in diagnosis. We've experienced some of the same thing, and what's happened with us is the teacher who has seen a lot of kids with ADHD diagnosis picks up on the symptoms that might be ADHD related (or look like it), and the counselor who has a large percentage of clients on the autism spectrum picked up on symptoms that might overlap with ASD diagnosis etc - so everyone who doesn't have the full expertise to diagnose is seeing what they know and extrapolating that to a suspected diagnosis.

Also: those questionnaires don't ask the teacher "do you think it's autism?"-- they ask for observed behaviors, many questions, some of which are irrelevant. It's entirely believable to me that your DD acts differently with different teachers across the day based on what demands are placed on her, how she feels about the teacher, etc.

Originally Posted by moomin
Unfortunately, the result is a seemingly endless litany of syndromes that other folks have decided dd has, which is depressing even in the absence of any accuracy.

My feeling is that you are starting to get data on relative lows; that's useful. I'd work on those spots and see how it goes.

I have a very high opinion of CBT as a method. It does require willingness on the part of the patient, so if she's oppositional with everybody but you and gram, that may be difficult to do at age 5. (5 is also very young for CBT; but if you found the right person, her strength in theory of mind is an asset there too.)

What does the neuropsych think will improve the oppositional behavior? That seems like an important element to making her life smoother overall.

DeeDee