Sorry for the very long post and any spelling mistakes.
We've noticed for the past couple of years a few quirks if you like in DD aged 4 behaviour.
Baby/infant - little or no eye contact, scared of certain noises and liked what she liked.
2 years - as above and school noticed she didn't like to play outside with the other kids and preferred to read inside with the teachers. If her routine of nursery was broken (off sick) it would be very hard to get her back into the swing of things.
3 years - obsessed with certain toys and characters and would only be called by these character names and again not playing with her peers but schools just brushed it off. Also outbursts of crying and laughing.
4 years - no eye contact, doesn't sit still, has to be told repeatedly to stop, only settled when in full routine of school, when school finishes she won't have any contact with anyone for a good few hours except me (dm) and shuts people down or ignores them completely if they try to interact with her, doesn't play with friends unless they do the games EXACTLY how she says, will only play with a certain type of toy and won't entertain anything that's nothing to do with it, has huge outbursts of crying or laughter for no reason, only talks about her interests which is one type of toy, asks if she can play or looks for reassurance before she does something or laughs at something funny that someone has done.
Today she went to her best friends party with all her school friends and she acted like they were all strangers. She didn't play, hardly spoke and stood behind everyone when it came to games and singing happy birthday and again constantly asking for reassurance on playing and eating. When she got home we tried to talk to her about the day but it took her 4 hours before she would mention it, she sat and told me what she did and what she ate in a very happy tone and then said I may as well have not bothered in a very sad voice.
Those are just some examples but there's a lot more, we had an appointment with the child development centre but she was recently diagnosed with glue ear so we put everything down to that being the cause so cancelled the appointment and then everything got a lot worse and we're struggling to cope so we asked the gp for a re referral.
Now our best friends have a lot of dc with learning difficulties etc in the family so we asked their opinion wether we should get help and they seem to think we're thinking too much into things and dd is perfectly fine and school would mention something and that's where the doubt lies.
DD has no family members care for her as she's so much hard work and they think there's issues that need addressing and DD1 has been coming home from school saying her friends (playtime helpers) are asking her questions as to why her little sister is always with the teachers and why she doesn't play like the others and she doesn't know what to say.
We know how rare these appointments are and feel we might be wasting their time and someone else could put the appoint to better use. Do we go to it or listen to our friends when they say the teachers would have picked up on these things?