girltiger

Thanks for your replies. Feeling quite keyed up for the meeting. You are right in that just becuase she is high achieving academically it doesn't mean she doesn't need help. The hardest part is that she reposonds well one to one but not in group situations. So I very rarely experience any problems because I am able to give her one to one attention. Unfortuantely dot to dot's are no good as she gets too frustrated that she can't draw a straight line between the dots. She plays lots with play doh and moon sand and has no real sensory issues in this area. What she does like doing though is drawing monsters and imaginary creatures. This is because there is no right or wrong so we are persuing this avenue. I don't think she has Hyperlexia as when I googled it it seems to relate to children who are self taught. My daughter can read simply because she loves learning new things and I have taught her phonetically following Jolly Phonics. She is very logical and phonetics are very logical (tricky words and alternativce sounds notwithstanding). Maths is the same. She is very observant and I think this has made teaching her maths and reading very easily. But she is also very observant about her own abilities. Thanks for the audio link, I had already come across it but I think it highlights exactly the sort of issues we are going to be faced with. I also was sent a link to which I thought was absolutly fab.

Hi, My four year old daughter starts school in September and she is currently attending a preschool. The preschool suggested we refered her her for assesment due to a number of concerns they had. To cut a very long story short she was sent for a mult-disciplinary assesment. At the first meeting with the paeditrician we were told she had high functioning Aspergers, but she didn't know how severe it was and that she quite possibly could have gone unnoticed as she is very high functioning. Our daughter has now had her four assement sessions and we have her ECAP on Monday. Since the initial Aspergers diagnosis we have been working hard to understand what the pre-school's concerns were. I have discovered that what the pre-school want is for our daughter to be given 2.5 hours a day one on one care for the first two terms. I was quite shocked at this as it seems quite lot but I figure she knows best, and to be honest I think she is probably right. But what is hard is that our daughter isn't that bad. Having read some of the other posts we are are very very lucky, which makes me think that our chances of getting anything at all are very remote. Our daughter has social issues. The clinic have said that she is lagging behind socially and does not play cooperatively. She falls into the category of desperatly wants to make friends but doesn't know how to. When the other children do play with her they do things like get her to guard their bikes (she was really proud that she had made some friends on this occasion) so other children can't go on them or get involve her in 'naughty' things. She is very trusting and takes things literally. She also won't attempt anything she isn't certain she can do perfectly. She will only do writing if someone sits with her and 'forces' her to do it. So if a class are asked to do something and she doesn't think she can do it, she will instead go and find something to do that can do. Otherwise however she is excelling. At four and a quarter she is a fluent reader, she can do basic maths and I am always recieving comments about how her speech is vary advanced and she has a wide vocab range. Apart from when she doesn't do something perfectly and she refuses to try new things, she is otherwise very well behaved, follows instructions well and is very compliant. Her preschool are concerned that because of this, they won't see her as a big problem and she is definatly the most subtlely affected child they would have had. I can tell that we are going to fight really hard to get anything for her and sometimes that is really hard. Quite often I look at her and think what are we doing. She is doing so well, how can anyone think she deserves extra help? How is that fair to other children? I don't have any issues with her having extra help, or the diagnosis. But is it fair to request so much? If she doesn't get this extra help she will still get through school. She is also likely to be quite unhappy as she will have trouble making friends. She does need to be taught how to interact. But as parents, we obviously want her to be able to reach her potential and we definately don't want her to be unhappy. I have recieved some repoprts in advance of the meeting on Monday and the worst that they have come back with is that she "showed a lack of skills associated with social interactions and did not readily play co-operatively with others". The summary says that "A referal could be made to Early Years Foundation Stage Inclusion Service and the area senco could work with pre-school teachers to encourage her social interactions". Not quite sure what this means but doesn't sound very promising especially as they have graded her as having the cognitive skills of a five year level. Has anyone has similar experiences? Sorry if I have waffled.