I have had a very intense week. Thank you for your post, Raddy, and thank you, all of you, for your insight.
I was called into the principal's office yesterday, and was surprised to find the school's autism specialist was there as well. They almost convinced me that our daughter has autism.
However, here is the thing -- dd is socially engaging, even charming and witty, when she likes people. She has not yet learned to be polite and then move away as quickly as possible when she does not like people. Instead, she is likely to say things like "would you leave me alone?" :-( We have worked on this, believe me.
She is in the gifted class in first grade.
The other thing that I noticed is that the "homework" for last week included learning the letters "r" and "s" with many, many exercises about "r" and "s." You know, the sounds those letters make, with pictures of objects and animals that start with the letters r and s. They are also working on using dots to count to ten.
Our daughter read Harry Potter by herself by the middle of kindergarten and is working on multiplication, including simple order of operation math problems on her own iniative.
After the meeting yesterday, I talked with her neuropsychologist and the neuropsychologist said that she absolutely does not believe our dd is on the spectrum. The neuropsychologist asked if they understood at all how gifted she is, and I said that during the meeting, the principal told the autism specialist that "mom says daughter is bright." The neuropsychologist said taht they just may not understand and that she will talk with the principal.
They will be able to offer more services, like social skills classes (she certainly could benefit from those) and more support for her spd, if she is diagnosed as autistic.
