One week ago we had Phoebe's diagnostic assessment. It was horrible, we were asked to stay silent during it so they could artificially create all the situations possible to test her. At first she was reasonably ok with this but after almost 30 minutes she started to get upset and cross. Finally after about 50 minutes they went away for a 10 min deliberation. 45 minutes later they returned and confirmed that yes, Phoebe does indeed have an ASD. They broke things down into understandable chunks for us and we are waiting on the more detailed report.
At least now we know and we can all move forward. In that vein we had parents evening on Wednesday and had our first look at Phoebe's IEP (independent education plan) so we can work on lots of ways to help her manage her behaviours and issues at school. Hopefully this will start to help really soon as she is struggling to manage how she feels with other people currently. She hates to hurt anyones feelings so puts herself at the bottom of the pile but by doing that her self esteem suffers and we end in a vicious cycle of her worrying about being bad. One of the worst things I have ever heard from her is that we should just starve her to death, this isn't something you should ever hear from your 6 yr old and it breaks my heart each time I hear it.
Anyway, onwards and sideways we have Phoebe's birthday next week so we are all getting ready for that and all the fun that will bring. Then Yule which we all look forward to as we enjoy making the house beautiful and our Yule treat (Circus this year!) and finally Christmas. We have a cunning plan involving the Portable North Pole videoes we have bought and the girl's favourite movies....
