Lots of questions, 4 1/2 yr old AS/HFA daughter

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This site is unbelievably helpful. My 4 1/2 year old daughter has been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Our developmental pediatrician told us she had characteristics of Aspergers and OCD, but it was basically social anxiety. There is no support for a child with an anxiety disorder. She sounds remarkably like squaretail's girls. The questioning is frustrating. We also have food issues, sleep issues, tantrums, trouble remembering names, poor eye contact and sound sensitivity.

My question for you is...do you think the quantity of preschool matters. There is a developmental preschool near us that is only available 3 mornings a week or another that would be 5. She has one more year before kindergarten--I need preschool advice.

Thanks so much for you postings and any forthcoming advice.

When it comes to preschool decisions, every child is so unique that you really need to make the decision based on your child. I know parents who report that all day preschool for their 3 year old was absolutely phenomenal in helping them progress and giving them a great day time environment. My child needed a lot of downtime at home to cope with life and could hardly handle all day at age 7. Some kids do better with the consistency of going five days per week and the on again, off again of three. It really depends on your child.

I'd go for HFA personally, OR AS with verbal dys/apraxia.

I was the same as a kid, I did start speaking at ca. 14 months but stuck to (badly garbled) one- and two word sentences for a long time unless I was parroting something. I always had problems with pronounciation, so much hard work working my mouth if I'm also trying to continue making sense! I also had a lot of word finding problems and still do, and always struggled to memorise the correct order of syllables in words, words in sentences etc.

I potty-trained early because I hated the feel of nappies on my skin but I did have occasional "accidents" after that. One in particular was when I spent hours playing in a pile of hailstones while we were house-sitting my aunt and uncle's house. I even remember the dream I had (I was in a cornfield feeling awkward about peeing amid all the corn plants) when it happened

Oh, one more thing--we were in the same boat diagnosis-wise--I called it "Spectrumish" Make sure that the dev ped. clearly indicates in his/her report that your daughter shows very clear signs of Asperger's but falls short a little short of meeting the diagnostic criteria. Also, if the child is on the fence and the parent is having trouble getting services because of it, the doctor can write a letter leveraging for services because those should be based on need, not on diagnosis. If they persist in refusing needed services, some doctors will go ahead and adjust the diagnosis because in the end the services are more important than having a precise dx when the child is close.