I am totally in two minds about our 4.5 year old daughter and whether to seek a little support from HV.
She is very articulate, sociable and academically bright and generally thrives at nursery and with friends, though always needs plenty down time and hasn't ever attended the full week - tends to have a couple of half days and one full day off per week. She can be a worrier and a little anxious and for many reasons we have deferred her school entry so she starts in August 2023.
She struggles with the transition of saying goodbye (going into nursery in the morning which she's struggled with on and off all year, and increasingly now at other times ie when I go to work or we say goodbye to a family member visiting) but otherwise is usually quite calm and well-adjusted.
Towards the end of term we saw emergence of echolalia, and a return to throat clearing that she'd done quite a lot a few months before (posted about this at the time). Had a little chat with nursery and all of us were in agreement that a level of anxiety seemed to be linked to this.
We're in the summer holidays here and so everything's been a bit different, and she's seemed a lot more relaxed, but over the summer we've noticed continuing echolalia (slightly less throat-clearing, comes and goes), and a few other traits that might be associated with ASD - very focused on patterns in her play and increasingly unable to cope with being disrupted when playing, coping less well with unexpected events or changes in plan, coping less well with her little sister or friends playing in a different way / changing a game, and, while she normally takes a pride in listening to instructions, being totally blinkered to these while lining things up or focusing on "ordering" things. New things seem to be emerging all the time that she's quite focused on - for example keeping toys in the right place, fixing a necklace I wear so it's the right way round, etc.
In general she's having a great summer and happy and enjoying her days - and half of me wants to just let her develop, see how things go and not jump to any conclusions or push any intervention, as anything we can notice is very minimal. But on the other hand I'm worried that a lot of these things that seem to be becoming so important to her might get in the way of how she's relating to other children and listening to nursery staff when she goes back, and therefore whether it would be doing her a dis-service not to have a look into whether she needs any extra support or understanding.
Has anyone been in a similar situation? Would you think it would be best to just see how she grows and changes or to look at seeking any support?