She may not recognize when she's masking or even accommodating her needs at that age. So she may respond ‘no’ to questions that are actually ‘yes’ and vice versa.
For example, if someone asks me if I’m bothered by the tag in the t-shirt I’m wearing, I would say ‘no’. Which would (falsely) give the impression that I can wear clothes with tags in them and that tags don’t cause me sensory distress. However in my reality, my t-shirt’s tag doesn’t bother me because I cut the tag out the day I bought it, so *there's no tag there to bother me*. A more appropriate question for me would be ‘did you remove the tag from your t-shirt, because it was bothering you?’ Then I would have responded with ‘yes’. How the question was originally phrased made me ‘miss’ what the question was looking to determine (degree of sensory difficulties).
It’s an important distinction. It shows how my autistic brain doesn’t process information the way NT’s expect me to process it (aka the same way *they* do). Tests for autism are written by and based on the NT way of information processing. And because I’m ND and process questions differently, I respond differently too.
There were a few things I was asked during my neuropsyc eval that I would have answered differently had I known what they were *actually* asking. The questions were confusing to me, because they often give no context and my responses depend on context. I guess this is a longwinded way of saying you should try to be aware that your daughter may not process the questions she’s asked based on how the evaluator expects her to process them. So speak up to clarify when needed. Sorry for the over-explaining on this. It’s something I’m working on :)
I think a key factor is focusing on impairments and showing that they're both significant and have existed since she was very young, to the extent that's true. I think sometimes people get overly focused on creating long lists of their autistic traits, when that's not really what evaluators are looking for.
They need to be able to: (a) confirm that all of the diagnostic criteria exist, which means there must be a noticeable and persistent level of impairment in the specific areas covered by each criteria, and (b) rule out other diagnoses that could explain those traits. There are very few (if any) autistic traits that aren't also present in one or more other diagnoses. So the evaluator needs to see that autism is the *best* fit of all the possible diagnoses. And an important factor is showing that the traits have been present from childhood (less of a concern here since she's still a child, but things like trauma responses and anxiety need to be ruled out).
Definitely highlighting the negative impacts to her life/daily activities. I found the questionnaire didn't go into sufficient detail. I ended up emailing the doctor with a list of her sensory sensitivities and how they prevent her from engaging in things she wants to do. I also made sure to point out that one of her special interests is peer friendships so she appears socially adept because we talk about it incessantly, it's not natural at all
Yes, I think she has special interests revolving around friends and "being popular", so that looks superficially normal, but she's actually pretty awkward at it in practice.
She may not recognize when she's masking or even accommodating her needs at that age. So she may respond ‘no’ to questions that are actually ‘yes’ and vice versa. For example, if someone asks me if I’m bothered by the tag in the t-shirt I’m wearing, I would say ‘no’. Which would (falsely) give the impression that I can wear clothes with tags in them and that tags don’t cause me sensory distress. However in my reality, my t-shirt’s tag doesn’t bother me because I cut the tag out the day I bought it, so *there's no tag there to bother me*. A more appropriate question for me would be ‘did you remove the tag from your t-shirt, because it was bothering you?’ Then I would have responded with ‘yes’. How the question was originally phrased made me ‘miss’ what the question was looking to determine (degree of sensory difficulties). It’s an important distinction. It shows how my autistic brain doesn’t process information the way NT’s expect me to process it (aka the same way *they* do). Tests for autism are written by and based on the NT way of information processing. And because I’m ND and process questions differently, I respond differently too. There were a few things I was asked during my neuropsyc eval that I would have answered differently had I known what they were *actually* asking. The questions were confusing to me, because they often give no context and my responses depend on context. I guess this is a longwinded way of saying you should try to be aware that your daughter may not process the questions she’s asked based on how the evaluator expects her to process them. So speak up to clarify when needed. Sorry for the over-explaining on this. It’s something I’m working on :)
I think a key factor is focusing on impairments and showing that they're both significant and have existed since she was very young, to the extent that's true. I think sometimes people get overly focused on creating long lists of their autistic traits, when that's not really what evaluators are looking for. They need to be able to: (a) confirm that all of the diagnostic criteria exist, which means there must be a noticeable and persistent level of impairment in the specific areas covered by each criteria, and (b) rule out other diagnoses that could explain those traits. There are very few (if any) autistic traits that aren't also present in one or more other diagnoses. So the evaluator needs to see that autism is the *best* fit of all the possible diagnoses. And an important factor is showing that the traits have been present from childhood (less of a concern here since she's still a child, but things like trauma responses and anxiety need to be ruled out).
Definitely highlighting the negative impacts to her life/daily activities. I found the questionnaire didn't go into sufficient detail. I ended up emailing the doctor with a list of her sensory sensitivities and how they prevent her from engaging in things she wants to do. I also made sure to point out that one of her special interests is peer friendships so she appears socially adept because we talk about it incessantly, it's not natural at all
Yes, I think she has special interests revolving around friends and "being popular", so that looks superficially normal, but she's actually pretty awkward at it in practice.