Autism

[jmcghee]

hi. My name is Jamie I have a 7 year old girl called Natasha and have just been told that she may have Autism My ex partner has to take Natasha for an Assessment at the end of April and i can,t be present as i,m overseas on operations and I,ve got a few questions that i would be very grateful if they could be answered.

Is it common for Autism to be diagnosed this late on?

I have looked at some of the symptoms for Autism and some of them are apparent in Natasha.Such as she doesn,t mix well with other children however i just put that down to her being an only child and it is quite a common factor that an only child thinks everything belongs to them whether it does or doesn,t.

Another sign is Emotion whenever someone in my family would say something that got a reaction be it a laugh,smile etc Natasha would ask "was it funny" we all just put this down to kids being kids never wanting to miss a thing and always wanting to know what was going on.I was the same as i,m sure you were as a kid so i never for a moment assumed it could be anything else.However the teacher seems to think that she doesn,t understand emotional expressions and thats why Natasha asks "was it funny".
Does this sound familiar to you if so could you please let me know more about ways to communicate better?

One of the Symptoms is Reading however Natasha really excells at reading she was way ahead of the class and now her reading is slowly getting worse the same with mathematics is this normally the case?

Natasha does get side tracked quite a bit her head is always full of ideas and her communication skills are as good as a teenagers so sometimes it feels like your talking to a grown up because she can remember everything and takes in everything that she sees or hears be it tv or dvd,s she really is bright beyond her years.
However when it actually comes to writing things like a short story because of her imagination it starts on something like A king and his castle and it will go into great depth about this then go onto something that she had read about in one of her school books and finish on sponge bob square pants so its not a consistent story from start to finish.To me this is a 7 year old being just that a 7 year old.However her teacher thinks different and if it turns out that Natasha has Autism then i,m glad it,s been spotted now but why has it not been noticed sooner?

I,ve always noticed that Natasha gets bored easy but i just put that down to her being very Intelligent because she was doing things at 2 years old that 4 year olds were just starting to do.If it sounds that i,m bragging i apologise that is not what i,m intending to do.I knew about Autism but until you get told that your child may be autistic as embarrasing as it is to say you never really take notice.

Any help or similar stories would be much appreciated as i really don,t know where to start

thank you for your time

jamie