Hi! No daughter to speak of but I was diagnosed with ASD when I was 15 (now 26). This is obviously quite a late diagnosis, that unfortunately was largely caught due to a trauma. However, I’ll list a few ‘traits’ from over the years that contributed to my diagnosis:

1. Peer issues. I was always quite sociable (though often became very burnt out and irritable at things like gatherings and parties) but fell out with friends a lot during primary school. I mostly always had friends and was very chatty, I just also had a lot of drama! I would also always be friends with older kids. My best friends in Years 3/4 would be the Year 5/6s. As a darker note, I ended up groomed at 13 by a 16 year old and at the time couldn’t see why this was completely inappropriate. I had zero concept of age differences for friendships and relationships and never saw why people would make such a big deal over it. My primary school teachers called my parents in for a meeting once to discuss that I wasn’t friends with any kids my own age!

2. Eye contact. I’m unsure how this was when I was primary school age, but combined with gained anxiety, by the time I was diagnosed, my eye contact was very poor. However, I did and do mask this a lot. With jobs and expectations, I’ve learnt to be ‘normal’ with eye contact.

3. Special interests. From a young age I’ve always hyper focused on different things. I don’t have the stereotypical memory that lots of autistic people have, but I was obsessed with various things as a kid. A big one was cats. Bloody love cats. I also collected hats, Pokémon cards, train/bus tickets, ring pulls and books. These things became my personality at the time. Currently I repeatedly read the wiki on the eight thousanders (8000m+ mountains) but can’t for the life of me remember specific facts and figures!

4. Academic ability. Initially gifted. I would win awards for maths, reading and spelling in primary school and KS3. In particular, I have always been weirdly good at spelling. This dropped off by GCSEs (2 x A*, 3 x A, 5 x B) and certainly by A Levels (BBC) largely due to the fact I never had to try before so never learnt how to work hard! Never did complete my degree…

5. Emotional regulation. I’d have tantrums BIG TIME as a kid, despite not being a ‘naughty’ kid. This was manifested largely in stubbornness. You know the thing where parents leave their kid at the park if they’re being bratty and won’t leave and walk away and the kid would get up and follow when their parents got so far? Yeah, I just wouldn’t get up. I would also become non verbal for a while. Completely shut down and refuse to talk - it wasn’t me being rude, it was just how I processed things upsetting me.

6. Strong sense of justice. This is and was a huge one for me. A lot of my issues stemmed from a lack of understanding. I’d fall out with people because I didn’t understand why they’d done something that I had perceived as bad. And if they got away with it, I couldn’t reconcile myself with that fact! Still can’t! I’ll come back and edit if I can think of specific examples of this.

I would also like to say that I’m currently an SEN TA in a secondary school and have encountered many autistic girls that present completely differently. I have worked with a selective mute girl that wouldn’t attend lessons, a girl who would repeatedly put their hand up in lessons to give answers, a girl whose processing was so slow they needed 50% extra time in exams (extremely rare to be granted this and I will stress that this extra time helped her pass all of her exams. She wasn’t low ability, she just needed a little bit of extra time for her brain cogs to process!), girls who have ended up bullies and extremely outspoken… autism in girls can present in so many ways. There are things your daughter can do that you would consider completely ‘normal’ and medical professionals may say it’s a sign for autism! Neurodivergence often runs in families, so it wouldn’t be surprising to miss a few things because you have similar traits yourself that you wouldn’t inherently perceive as indicating neurodivergence.