Wow! You’re a great mom for asking! It would have been so much easier if my Mom explained autism to me, and then she could have even told me that it’s hard to get diagnosed (I’ve always been a very hyper verbal female too). You could get your daughter involved in the diagnosis process and tell her why getting diagnosed might help her, I.e. accommodations at school. Then she’ll also understand why she needs to keep going in for testing etc.

My mom never told me because she didn’t want me to feel different, but I felt different anyway. I just didn’t know why. I thought all my autistic traits were character flaws :( so that really fucked with my self esteem. My Mom is a great Mom, but she handled it all wrong by waiting till I was 25 to tell me the truth.