How do you figure out when a child is doing something because of their condition or if it's a behaviour issue? Or do you not bother to work it out and have a different approach instead? It's even trickier because my daughter is awaiting assessment so we don't know what - if anything - they will diagnose. I suspect somewhere on the autism spectrum.
Sometimes she asks questions that seem a great deal as if she is being needlessly pedantic, perhaps rude, but maybe she simply doesn't understand. Examples (I suddenly realise that now I finally have the time to go online I can't remember what she did that sparked the question!) She will go on and on if I slightly mis-describe an object (e.g. say shoes when I mean slippers) or I ask her to do something and it doesn't even slightly occur to her that I mean do it now as opposed to some other time. She points out loudly when I said something would happen and it doesn't turn out exactly as promised.
All these sound autism-y but I am not sure what way to approach them. At the end of the day I probably still want her to try to stop doing these things, but simply telling her off and saying not to be so rude is perhaps unfair - she's not trying to be rude pointing out that they aren't shoes, she's trying to correct what she sees as a serious error and a massive distinction - maybe...
In another direction, she chews when she is anxious. First I would like to re-direct the chewing to a safe object rather than clothing, jewellery, headphone cables, etc. and of course I would like her to be less anxious. And it would be nice if she didn't chew at all. I'm sure there will be people thinking I am indulging, encouraging, condoning the chewing if I get a dedicated chewing object, but I think either way she's going to chew. And I don't want her anxiety levels to go UP by not using her outlet.
What do you do when you run into this kind of thing?