Monday 25 July 2011

Lucy's Diagnosis

I'm a bit late with this but last Tuesday I took Lucy to the pyschologist for another assessment, she has them every six months. We went on the bus and it was quite a long walk but she didn't complain. In the waiting room she was really good, she sat reading books to me then played with some building blocks. She was quiet and never complained about the wait, which ended up as 45 minutes. Some of the other children in the waiting room were complete nightmares, I was worn out just watching them.
Then we went in to see the dr. Lucy was ok for a few minutes then I lost her as she went off into her own world. She was upside down on the chair and making weird noises. While I was talking to the dr Lucy was completely oblivious of what was happening, when we directed a question at her we had to try several times before we got a response. This is quite typical of Lucy, one minute she can be perfectly normal and fine, then she's off into her own little space which is hard to penetrate, we usually say she's off in Lucy's world.
Her report from school stated that although her work was good she often became distracted by seemingly nothing and just stopped working. She would talk at totally inappropriate times during lessons and still didn't mix much with the other children. She has her special friends but she doesn't really interact with them either, I see an example of this when she comes out of school, she'll beg me to wait for a particular friend, then walk with them for about 10 seconds before going off on her own. She doesn't like change at school and will become withdrawn if told to do something different. she also complains that the other children are too noisy.
At home she is very obsessed with her gaming, she is happiest when playing on the wii, and when we tell her to come off (with give her time limits for play) she will often want to go on the pc and look at websites or videos relating to her games. We try to encourage her to do something different but she'll go back to it as soon as we take our attention away.  She is also very routine orientated. Her game goes on at the same time every day, although it's different at weekends or when there is no school (although if she if off school sick then the game is not allowed on.) Then after dinner she likes to go out in the garden for 1/2 hour. She hates going out with us and refuses to go to the shops. She will reluctantly go out if we are going somewhere nice, she's be quite happy to never go out at all. The only other place she will willingly go is her nan's house, which is next door but one. Another problem is her tioleting, she has never gone to the tiolet for a poo, she has to start it in her pants first. We have tried everything. Tiolet training at first was a real struggle and she wasn't dry until nearly 4 yrs old.

With all this evidence in mind the pyschologist came up with a working diagnosis of high functioning autism. So although she is sure that Lucy has a form of autism she will need continous assessment until we have a definate diagnosis.

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