What is Asperger Syndrome.

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The ped seems to be subsidised but this is an educational assessment and the woman they work with apparently just charges up front. And the waits are so long! Its all through the Pt Augusta hospital.

We'd like to know if there is a reason she's so quirky or its just a genetic thing (her father has a LOT of the same quirks and he's got into some pretty serious trouble because of them over many many years), but mainly so we can get some decent help working with her. You can't get professional help without a diagnosis. All the 'standard' advice out there on the internet and in parenting books is pretty much useless, mainly because I'd never looked into ASD until recently so we've been trying pretty standard reward/punishment systems for the best part of a decade to get her to do stuff like play with toys (she never had the 'imaginative play' stage my toddler has been in for over a year), talk to you while looking at you, talk at appropriate times, ask questions when she wants something, and copy us or respond to peer pressure, which are all things that we now know are just bog standard normal things normal kids just *do* and not something you can learn so I've been wasting my energy trying to change her all these years when if I knew better I would have been out there trying to work out how to deal with her and not drive myself insane.

Honestly, if I hadn't had another child as a SAHM I would have just thought all kids are like this, as being an only child and working mother and just dropping DD#1 at daycare or kindy and then going to work I've had virtually no exposure to other children until I had my second child. Now I have a toddler and am involved in preschool, playgroup, kindergym etc it is so painfully obvious DD#1 is different it isn't funny, especially as DD#2 is growing up and is just so incredibly different, yet so similar to every other 2.5yo we run into. Heck, I just assumed kids started talking in sentences at 6 months and got worried when DD#2 went well past the year mark with only a few dozen single words.

The lack of empathy stands out the most as being something a professional could most help with. Some of the stuff she comes out with is just so wrong, and so hard to explain to her *why* it is wrong.

Edit: Other than the couple of quirks - which are almost entirely communication/empathy related - she is an extremely well-behaved child. I don't have any of the problems with her or her little sister that seem to be standard naughty children behaviours. They're both as polite and nice as you can expect a 9 and 2yo to be. So it certainly isn't lack of discipline causing issues