Does this sound like autism?

[janedo44]

We have just had parents eve for our 5 year old. The teacher queried autism and has referred us to senco with was a bit of a surprise. Also possible partial deafness, which we think is a possibility and have booked her into gp asap.
DD is very sociable, loves meeting new people and doing new things, no milestones or eye contact issues, good at imaginary games, gets sarcasm and is aware of others feelings, no obsession with anything.
Their query is based on...very advanced reading, at year 3 level already, but DH and I both primary teachers and taught her at a young age as we are avid readers. She does this weird thing where she shakes her finger near her eyes, hasn't done this for over two years and has recently started again. She was very popular with peers but teacher has noticed the other girls now have stronger friendships and she's is becoming more of an outsider, which shocked us. She said she has to give her one to one instructions and she relies on visual cues. She struggles to follow instructions in the school environment and shouts a lot.
Is this likely due to partial deafness and struggling in a school environment as her dad was partially deaf as a young child.
We did see SALT when she was two but she had no language issues so they weren't bothered. Nursery never raised any issues.
Entire family are teachers or work in sen and are all a bit surprised, tho we want to meet senco prepared to work with them.

Hopefully bump or should this be in neurodiverse as couldn't find it!

Whether it is ASD, HI, both or neither, it does sound like DD needs more support, so it is brilliant the teacher has picked up on this and is requesting the SENCO’s involvement.

A hearing impairment can cause social communication and interaction difficulties in some DC.

The SEN boards are quieter, so it takes longer to get replies, but you don’t get some of the awful replies you sometimes do on the main boards

Thanks for your reply.
She has no problem following instructions one to one so we will get her hearing checked asap.

DS with ASD is not very sociable and that can be pretty common, but having ASD doesn't require you to not be sociable. I know a couple of kids who are older than your dd and both very sociable, will talk to anyone. They both have a tendency to sometimes stand 'too close' and one tends to talk 'at' you in quite an intense way.

If she has partial deafness though this can present in a young child in similar ways to ASD. Definitely get this looked into asap as she might be struggling to follow instructions, shouting etc because of that. I would also ask that she is sat as near the teacher as possible because of this. If she has ASD it could also be a case of her not being able to filter out other noises/distractions in the classroom and firstly not being able to hear over them and secondly feeling she has to shout to be heard over the noises she perceives.

I would say the thing that stands out to me is the finger shaking near her eye, if you google it that is a pretty classic sign of ASD. That sort of very unusual quirky behaviour is what would make me wonder about ASD more than the advanced reading. Hyperlexia is associated with ASD though.

I'm really impressed that the teacher spotted these different possibilities though! What a great teacher. Get her hearing sorted as it might be at the root of everything, keep a note of the other things such as the finger thing and mention it to the SENCO when you see her.

Thank you, will do. My husband has spoken to the senco at his school to get her thoughts.
The finger shaking thing she does when she is very excited. She did it at about 18 months, then didn't do it for about two years. It's not consistent. But yeah it does raise a flag.

It is difficult to say whether your DD is in the ASD spectrum or not without professional assessment. Our DD was diagnosed with ASD at a much older age (10 years old). She has lots of friends, will talk to anyone (friends or new adults/children she has never met before), love to try new things (but took a little long to settle in new environment when she was younger but not excessively). She has no problem with imaginative play and still enjoys it to this date (but it is now apparent to us after the assessment that her imaginative way of thinking has subtle differences as well). Her school never raises any SENCO issues and excels at school. Her behavioural markers are so subtle that only we, as parents, pick up on and it was only when she started asking us why she felt different or as odd with others that we started going to professional help.

It is definitely wise to get other health problems (e.g. partial deafness ruled out first). Sometimes it does take some careful observations to figure these out.