Can easily talk to adults/teachers and being a helper
This forum is so amazing and helpful to me.
We live in a country where we have to do a sort of meeting at the end of the summer to determine where our child goes to school for the following year. It’s very bureaucratic and a lot of paperwork.
A psychologist wasn’t able to see my daughter until next month and she told me it takes about nine weeks in total from start to finish , and because I needed something asap I was told to do a psychiatric assessment as well since that only takes a week (700$ later for a dumb paper).
I didn’t cancel the in-depth evaluation because I just think for my own sanity I will never be calm until I know for sure what it is and if it is anything or if it’s neurotypical or not. It’s just a lot of money (3000$)
The psychiatrist said he doesn’t see anything glaringly asd about her and the deficits I am seeing can be contributed to moving into a new country and the social cues here and learning a new culture. And that I should hold off on doing a psychological in-depth evaluation for another couple of months. He’s also more old-school…. I really just needed him to write a report for me….
When I mentioned the fleeting eye contact, he said that she had very sufficient eye contact for her age and not everyone makes 100% eye contact at all times (my daughter does make eye contact, but sometimes will look away or move on to another topic)
I spoke to her principal today, who told me that she’s doing much better from th beginning of the year, but it’s still hard for her interacting with kids in her class. Keep in mind that no one in the class speaks English, and my daughter didn’t speak a word of Hebrew coming into the class. So her social skills issues were just heightened by the language deficits.
The teacher told me by recess she does play with kids, but also enjoys sitting with the teachers or helping her. So the teacher will give her tasks like handing out lunch, going to the office…
At home she also loves feeling a grown up, she likes cooking, playing mommy and baby, doing “dishes”.
What can I make of this? Is this age appropriate? How can I encourage her to play more with her friends?
At the beginning of the year a concern the teacher told me was that my daughter liked sitting next to her and holding her hand constantly, but I didn’t know if I should attribute that to my daughter just being a little bit more nervous and wanting to be next to someone very loving (her teacher is very warm/kind)
ETA: she is a bit of a worrier in general, especially since we live in a country constantly at war and she knows people killed. She asks me when I am going to die, what happens if she can’t get to a bomb shelter in time, what if someone tries to shoot her. The psychiatrist told me unfortunately it is common but to just validate her and and explain things