Yes! She's already at a private pre-school and we decided to keep her there (even though it only goes to 7, so lots of agonising over that decision... but we didn't get our top choice state school and the one we did get would have meant a schlepp and big class sizes, whereas the private is a 5 minute walk and lots of the kids she knows already, a building she knows already, etc.) So we're hoping that won't be too disruptive though it means we have a potentially very tricky change coming up at 7. At least by then we'll know what she finds hard and what she finds fun about school, which hopefully will help plan the next step.
We were supposed to get the results of ADOS last Thursday but it was cancelled last minute, so I seem to have got most of my anxiety out of the way then.... although I'm sure as Friday approaches I'll get nervous again. I have literally no idea what they will say. I have follow up questions for all options (high score, borderline autistic, borderline not autistic, and low score!) I'm guessing borderline autistic based on limited eye contact and slow response to name, even though she did most of the actual tasks quite well (I think!): but we'll see.
I agree with BlankTimes. What you see a lot from the threads here is the real tightrope. If you have a child who is quiet and causes no disruption people don't believe there is a problem and offer no support (even if the child could be getting so much more out of school and life with a bit of support). And if you have a child who is loud and disruptive then people believe the problem is your parenting as that places no responsibility on them to provide support or modify their teaching methods. So it's going to be time to grow a thick skin (which I do not have and am dreading).
Also on girls I suspect it is as common as in boys (why would it not be?) but expresses itself very differently. It may be that some girls with the same gene or whatever cope so well that they wouldn't be considered to be sufficiently "disabled" to merit a diagnosis. But others mask well and internalise their problems for a long time, until they hit teenage years and it all gets too complicated/too much and they break down. I'm really hoping that with this generation of girls getting diagnoses and therefore having parents and teachers understand them better we can avoid a lot of that, but it's really a "guinea pig" generation in lots of ways as these girls were simply never picked up before until much later in their lives. But I have to be hopeful that self-knowledge is a good thing, and will help them navigate the teenage years which, let's be honest, are a bit shit for lots of people (not just autistic people).