Aa
8 yr old daughter with some Asperger's symptoms
My daughter is 8 1/2 years old. She has a 117 IQ and a huge vocabulary. She can tell a story to rival classic literature in length and complexity. She is empathetic to a fault. She has a strong alliance to cats and dogs. She has a strange behavior of acting like a cat. Hissing, crawling, clawing, hiding, holding her hands up like a sitting up animal, and other odd cat-like things (no cat box).
She was suspended 3 times in kindergarten and was placed in isolation school for 20 days. She bit, kicked, and stabbed kids with pencils, she trashed her entire classroom, generally terrorized the class. She cut her hair under the teacher's desk and later told that the teacher "ripped it out". We changed towns because I couldn't get people to accept her or her sisters after that.
While at a cousin's party, she acted so strange the other kids ignore her and that hurts worse than the teasing.
We are searching for others dealing with this. Someone said Asperger's maybe. Do girls have that? We are North Texas.
Oh, while I was pregnant, the alpha fetal test said Down's Syndrome. I had an amniocentesis that came back normal. She looks normal but small, size 6 when she is 8 1/2. She is the youngest of three girls.
She was suspended 3 times in kindergarten and was placed in isolation school for 20 days. She bit, kicked, and stabbed kids with pencils, she trashed her entire classroom, generally terrorized the class. She cut her hair under the teacher's desk and later told that the teacher "ripped it out". We changed towns because I couldn't get people to accept her or her sisters after that.
While at a cousin's party, she acted so strange the other kids ignore her and that hurts worse than the teasing.
We are searching for others dealing with this. Someone said Asperger's maybe. Do girls have that? We are North Texas.
Oh, while I was pregnant, the alpha fetal test said Down's Syndrome. I had an amniocentesis that came back normal. She looks normal but small, size 6 when she is 8 1/2. She is the youngest of three girls.
And one other thing-- those AFP tests are often false positives. Thats why they follow up with Amnio.
A. Yes girls can have Aspergers or Autism -- most definitely.
B. She should be seen by a psychiatrist or psychologist who can test her thoroughly so that you can find out what you need to do to help her. Social isolation is definitely the hardest thing to deal with -- for girls more than boys, I fear.
C. A few things you mention make me think anxiety vs autistic spectrum:
- violent behavior at school-- children with extreme anxiety about social situations can act like this
- acting like a cat -- if people make her nervous, which is the case in a social anxiety case, it may be soothing for her to behave like a cat
Just some thoughts.
Good luck in your evaluation.
B. She should be seen by a psychiatrist or psychologist who can test her thoroughly so that you can find out what you need to do to help her. Social isolation is definitely the hardest thing to deal with -- for girls more than boys, I fear.
C. A few things you mention make me think anxiety vs autistic spectrum:
- violent behavior at school-- children with extreme anxiety about social situations can act like this
- acting like a cat -- if people make her nervous, which is the case in a social anxiety case, it may be soothing for her to behave like a cat
Just some thoughts.
Good luck in your evaluation.
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