Lining up toys + more. Autism? Adhd?

[MamaDisney]

Hi all,
My daughter is 12 and we’re currently looking into an adhd and/or autism diagnosis. She also has ocd and lots of sensory issues. She has lots of signs which point to adhd, we were initially thinking autism but after researching adhd it’s clear there is a big overlap between the two.
Anyway, we’re just wanting opinions, personal experiences etc of these few traits to help us with our research.
When my daughter was around 2 she would line up her toys. I know neurotypical children also do this however when she would line them up it was always in the same specific order, it was never part of a game and she would become distressed if they were slightly out of place, or if they were moved or anything. When I say distressed, I don’t mean just upset, she would be inconsolable, distraught. She’d scream too, it was like her mind couldn’t function properly until they were back in their place. The same thing would happen if the cushions on the sofa were out of place. The same thing would also happen if the straps of her pushchair were dangling down beside the pushchair rather than being placed inside it when she would walk next to it. She would literally walk in front of the moving pushchair to fix it every time. There was also one time where her dad left without giving her a hug goodbye and when she found out, he had to drive the whole way back because it wasn’t what normally happened and it seemed her brain couldn’t function right because of it. I had always thought she’d just grow out of it or be diagnosed with ocd later on. What i didn’t realise was that ocd doesn’t develop until around the age of 10 so these things couldn’t be ocd but either something else or nothing to worry about. She did grow out of lining things up and having to have things in their exact spot - part of what we think is adhd is that she prefers what she calls ‘organised chaos’.
Anyway, did your neurotypical children also show these signs? I’m also quite interested in whether children with adhd (without autism) did these things too, or if these things are strictly present in children with autism?
Any help is very much appreciated :)

I have a daughter with ADHD. She has never lined anything up, ever. I also don't think it's one of the standard 'symptoms' of ADHD. I am also a primary teacher and I haven't seen children with ADHD lining toys to but I have seen autistic children do it.

I'm obviously not a doctor though. 🙈

My daughter is 15 now but is more spontaneous to be honest. There's no way she would sit and get angry with things that weren't in any kind of order etc. She's a whirlwind and always has been. Her stuff just gets chucked everywhere and she moves from one thing to the next. She couldn't care less about order.

I agree with previous poster. The behaviour you described when she was 2 does not sound like ocd behaviour to me, it would be classified as repetitive behaviour - repetitive behaviour and difficulties in social communication are the two areas that are part of an autism diagnosis - as far as I know, I do not think that repetitive behaviour forms part of a adhd diagnosis.

We can't really diagnose by Internet but lining things up and more or less obsessive behaviour up is very common in ASCs. Needing things to be a particular way is also very ASC-ish. And ASCs can look different in girls, girls seem more able to "mask" by copying. Two year old can have some of this kind of rigidity (see the "cutted up pear" thread in Classics!) or be very obsessed about one thing being a particular way but so much persistence over several things is unusual, and if it lasts into school age that is even more unusual.

My DS's psychologist once said that the kid with Asperger's either has the tidiest desk in the classroom with everything lined up perfectly in its place... or the desk choked with clutter that looks like a bomb site.

Having said that, an ASC has social and communication aspects as well - the "triad" for ASC is social, communication and rigidity. If you are still worried about her or if she has social difficulties - and teenage years can be extra hard for youngsters with ASCs or any other issues - then it wouldn't do any harm to try for a professional evaluation.

Thank you all for your responses.
We’ve done so much research on autism in girls. We never thought there was anything “different” about her aside from OCD but she brought this idea of her having ASD to us herself after finding herself struggling during a school trip last year. Since then, we have completely filled out referral forms with symptoms for repetitive behaviours and restrictions, social communication, social interaction and sensory issues. An NHS diagnosis where we live takes around 3 years to complete which IMO is too long. We’ve enquired about going private at a really good centre and the cost came to nearly £3000. Since we submitted the referral, we’ve noticed a lot of the things we wrote can be pinned down to ADHD. An adhd diagnosis is way less expensive to get. The autism centre said they can say if she had adhd too but can’t diagnose her, so we’d still have to pay for that too.
We sat and looked on google for which traits on the autism referral can be put down to adhd and it seems that a great deal of them can. I didn’t realise sensory problems were a part of adhd too, her sensory problems have been bad all her life. There were some traits that didn’t fit with adhd but could be explained away so to speak however the ones in my original post can’t. The distress she felt during those instances doesn’t seem like normal behaviour now that I look back on it. It’s those things that make us question if we should just proceed with the autism diagnosis, it’s just that it’s incredibly expensive. I never for a second throughout any point in her life thought she could have autism until we spoke about it and wrote everything down but since there’s a lot of crossover between her adhd and autism symptoms it’s just hard to know what to do for the best. We also have to properly look at which repetitive behaviours are OCD and which are potentially part of autism for example by understanding if there’s a reason for them such as thinking her whole family will die or if there’s no reason at all.

I don't know much about this but I will say that I am fairly sure I did have episodes of ocd myself before the age of 10. Or at least, things that showed a strong predisposition to ocd and intrusive thoughts. I also had/have other issues that in this day and age might have got me some kind of diagnosis, so maybe it was part of a bigger picture, but I am pretty sure it was ocd. Definitely not as young as your DD though.