Took my daughter to NYC today for yet another of her endless evaluations. Actually, the spousal unit brought her in; I just met her at the doctor's office and sat in the little observation booth and watched her muff questions. I brought along reading material, but unfortunately it was extremely labor-intensive reading material (Murray Kempton, "The Briar Patch"), and my daughter has a particularly strong, clear voice, so every time I'd try to distract myself with the book, she'd say something, and I'd have to look and see what she was doing, etc.

The office was lovely, as these places go (I've become a connoisseur). The observation room had relatively comfy chairs, and nearby was a laptop that I think was saving the video of my kid being tested--the good doctor looks at footage before meeting with the anxious parents. Nice toys in the waiting area, stickers when she was finished: we went into a room that had rolls and rolls of stickers, Sponge Bob and Finding Nemo and the perseverative script of your choice.

The psychologist was of the crisply efficient persuasion--no time to reassure parents or share information, a la lab technicians--though she was very nice with the kiddo and worked hard to get the most from her. Afterwards I took said kiddo out for Mexican food, then to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which I knew she'd like (she is intensely visual and loves to draw, color, paint, do crafts). She came home today and turned her bedroom into a gallery and attempted to charge me admission; she also made some sort of paper sculpture of an angel by crushing and twisting the paper to give it volume.

So always that sense of "passing": slightly phony in AutismWorld, as I saw children who seemed completely unaware of their surroundings, absorbed in their stims; slightly phony doing the Shiny Happy People thing at the museum, knowing that with my daughter, there's always the possibility of the slightly off-kilter (what looks like bad behavior is really a verbal stim, or her behavior becomes rigid--with her, some things that look sort of like typical behavior are really manifestations of something else. Ceci n'est pas un cigar).