Waiting that'd a good idea, I still struggle to articulate it myself. The main thing is that she only very recently could play with peers, she could only direct play before if she bothered at all. But if she plays properly she gets overwhelmed very quickly and becomes aggressive and distressed and needs to go into a quiet dark room to kick the mattress and scream for a bit to get herself calm again.
She tiptoes and flaps when caught off guard. She only makes eye contact when she's talking to you using quotes from tv she's watched. She mostly communicates by mimicking what she's seen on tv, hence her American accent. Her speech is very rarely spontaneous and when it is, it's often very jumbled up and doesn't quite make sense, but jist is there. But she'll avoid speech whenever she can, favouring gestures.
When she's in mimicking mode you would think shes nt but the accent, over the top gestures and the slightly out of context phrases give it away to those that know her. People that don't know her just think shes a very intense, sensitive child who just has very strong emotions.
She doesn't cope with routine change at all, she needs to go over it again and again and gets herself so anxious about any changes. She also has a lot of rituals that we need to do which seem tied into the anxiety. Things like lining all her shopkins up on the edge of the bath and one by one pushing them in, or reciting one specific scene from frozen every night at bedtime, every bedtime. If you don't play ball it ends in massive, aggressive, tantrums.
But despite the social, speech and emotional issues she's quite bright, she's taught herself to read quite a lot. Her memory is amazing, she can count to 15, knows the alphabet, colours, shapes etc. Her more academic milestones are spot on.
To be honest I've been suspicious she was on the spectrum very early, I would have started the process a year ago. But as ive worked with special needs children I assumed it was the 'burden of knowledge ' makong me paranoid. But since her difficulties are only becoming more apparent over time Im pretty certain I'm not jdut worrying needlessly now.