The First Step…. to diagnosis

Fortunately by the time Lali was to go to day-care she had overcome her need to be naked and was now happy to wear loose (but not too loose) dresses, the occasional pair of undies and bare feet. Her dad would walk her over the road to day-care where she would play for anything from one hour to four. Lali was mostly happy to go but did not socialise with any other children nor communicate. She would need to be seated at the same spot each day and play with the same toys, she would not share and if another child tried to play with anything she claimed as hers they were met with screams, slaps or an occasional projectile.

Within the first two weeks we were called to a meeting and asked if we objected to Lali being assessed by the local Early Intervention teacher as her slow speech and lack of social interaction skills were of concern. I actually felt relief that someone outside Lali’s immediate family felt that all was not as it should be for this wilful wee soul.

Time To Leave The Nest… if only for an hour

Lali spent daytime with her dad as I was working full-time and he was working from home, but she did need to be constantly supervised as she could climb almost anything, open draws, cupboards, jars, containers and empty the contents all around the house she also loved scissors and had a fascination with cutting her hair, clothes, bedding, curtains etc.

There was a small childcare centre directly over the road and we decided to enrol Lali so that her dad could have a few hours to work. At this stage Lali was undiagnosed and just seemed to be a little eccentric in her ways, she did not verbally communicate very well but if you paid careful attention to her you could make a good guess what she wanted and hay how disruptive could a petite four year old be?