She's been with me almost three years. She's almost 4, and a very odd little child in many ways. Most of it doesn't worry me, though. Some things, do worry me.

1. She likes to play not with play food in the kitchen, but with the toy animals and the Little People. She really, really likes making soup out of little people. I don't know why, but this has always struck me, on a gut-level, as very odd.

2. Yesterday she picked up a small piece of string that had a loop tied in one end. The piece was about 8 inches long and left over from a yo-yo-making project DD had been working on. She fiddled with it, and eventually threaded the end through the loop and wrapped it around the neck of a stuffed animal and announced, "He's hanging! Look, he's dead!"

3. She prefers to either be alone (vast majority of the day) or be ordering others around (but bursts into tears when they don't listen, which is the usual response.

4. Most of the time, her alone play is utterly silent. She doesn't self-narrate very often. She will stuff some toys into a bag or box and take them into a corner or some other small place and hoard them. She'll sit there with them, lining them up over and over, or doing nothing with them, for surprisingly long spans of time (for a 3.5 year old)

5. She seems to have a variety of delays--language (although she talks well, her comprehension frankly sucks majorly and she can't follow directions or answer simple questions accurately), motor (her fine and gross motor seem underdeveloped despite plenty of exposure to both types of play here since she was 11 months old), emotional (coping skills are nil), social (hasn't really switched to cooperative play yet...but can do it sometimes)

6. She will be weird and "off" for hours or days or weeks, and then abruptly will switch and seems 90% normal for a few days or a few hours...then bam! she switches back to the weird/off child.

I've suggested several times that the parents talk to the doctor about various things and seek evaluations for various things, but they never have. It's not the sort of thing I can push them on, of course. I don't even have any idea what it is because none of the "issues" (if that's what they are) seem to match ANYTHING I'm familiar with. A lot sounds like autism...but no brand of autism I've ever seen before. She's missing a lot of trademarks of autism and doesn't fit into the Asperger's category.

I worry about her future a lot, and I guess I'm posting this mostly as a shout-out to you all to ask if any of this matches anything you've heard of, or if any of it is a concern enough to push harder...

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If she's nearly 4 a pre-school or pre-k evaluation is right around the corner.

It'll be required for her to enter school at age 5 or 6. Lots of times schools push them at 4 to get a baseline so they can look for trouble spots as well as improvements before they hit the admittance one.


If something like this is bothering me I'll tell a parent in no uncertain terms, if you want your child to remain in my care these are my concerns and they need to be addressed. I care about him/her and I cannot continue to sit idly by worrying to high heaven that something is wrong. Here is the number to schedule a pre-k evaluation, please let me know what they say. All kiddos end up having things identified that they can work on to better prepare them for kindergarten, I'd love to know what those things are so I can help your child work on improving upon those skills here too.

Beyond that stand your ground. If you feel something is very wrong don't be afraid to take action that'll in one way or another alleviate your concern or at the very least your feelings of responsibility to these problems.

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Maybe I need to be evaluated too because this made me laugh! LOL

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I would wonder how things are at home. Perhaps she is neglected a bit....left alone for long periods or left watching TV (perhaps a lot of age inappropriate shows? things that show people dying and such?). In my experience, sometimes quirky kids like this are due to the social nature of their home environment.

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