My daughter will be 4 years old in April, and has been attending nursery school 3 days/week, 3 hours/day since she was 2.5 years old. Earlier in the school year, her teachers brought some concerns of her development to my attention, and suggested that she be evaluated. Prior to this, other than my daughter being a late walker (16-17 months) and having a nightmare of a time with potty training for more than a year (she still needs to be prompted to use the toilet and has occasional accidents), I never really held any concerns over her development. She has always been my sweet, smart, super social, playful little girl it never occurred to me that she was behind (and despite working full-time from home, I consider myself pretty aware and hands-on). We recently had her evaluated, and all of a sudden, it's like all of the sirens started going off. I don't know if I've been completely impervious to my daughter's abilities, but I'm now beginning to see where she is behind in communication (she has a full vocabulary and speaks in sentences, but her speech is "scripted" and she doesn't always respond appropriately to questions, or express her thoughts and feelings in an age appropriate way), perhaps even a little scattered and unable to focus on most tasks for a couple minutes at a time, unable or unwilling to follow most simple directions, and for the last few months, has been swatting at other children at school for no apparent reason (she is very friendly and eager to play with other children, but I suspect her difficulty with communication may be leading her to swat/hit other children honestly, I don't know-- this has never been a thing for her, and she hasn't articulated to us why she has hit one of her friends, nor cease the behavior despite our earnest efforts to work on this). When the evaluators administered an IQ test, she scored in the mildly impaired/borderline range in the 2nd percentile. They noted however that she was very distracted by her own reflection in the mirror (in the room), and other things she wanted to do besides the tasks at hand, and felt this affected the scores. When I think of my child, I don't consider her in the bottom 2 of her age group. To many people, she actually seems quite smart, creative, and adept. I feel like I've been hit with a ton of bricks with all of this, as though I've been failing to see my child's needs. I want to help her in any way I can, and I feel like I don't have the slightest clue as to how. One week she will appear to be a pint-sized genius and the next week everything is a struggle (that happened to be the case the week she was evaluated). We're meeting with the evaluation team next week to go over everything and discuss the services she needs, and I'm incredibly nervous, as this is with the public school system (in the US), which has not been the best experience thus far. Judging from the evaluation report, autism is definitely not a concern, but they did put her at risk for hyperactivity and attention problems (she's too young for a formal ADHD diagnosis). Other than identifying delays in areas of language, communication, etc., I don't have any concrete idea of what's going on. I don't know what I'm actually asking for, except for anyone's recall or insight into their own early experiences upon learning their child potentially had special needs. And with that, I sign off, because my daughter just made in her underwear (and is lecturing herself not to pee-pee in her pants), rather than just telling me she had to go to the toilet or take herself there (she has the words and the ability but just won't do it! I'm at a complete loss for what to do anymore!). Anyway, thanks for listening/reading.