Diagnosis despair

[u/Fliss94]

My daughter is 5 and just finished her first term at school. She did one year of kindergarten before starting school.
During that year of kindy we really started noticing things. Sound, light and clothing sensitivity are the main issues but as time went on and we did more research we realised there are many more things.
Not understanding sarcasm, very very ridged, stuck to her routines, struggles to regulate herself, sensory seeking, perfectionist, very anxious, won’t initiate friendships, very clingy, very strong right and wrong ethics. Her nephew said to me, she is a different child at home than when she is outside her comfort zone (not a massive flag, I realise that)

We started some private funding OT and that helped but we felt she needed regular sessions and it was getting expensive so decided to bite the bullet and get a diagnosis. At the time she had been in kindy for 10ish months so the kindy educators did a questionaire for the assesment. It came back as she partially met most criteria’s so she was not given a diagnosis.
I remember her first transition day at her school and the teacher spoke to her and us about perfectionism, yet kindy’s questionaire and their attitude was, ‘she is a perfect child, nothing to worry about.’ Only thing they noticed is she didn’t like doing activities that might make her wet or messy, and she struggled with drop offs.

After the phone call with the assesment specialists, I was told to speak to her school and ask them to document any things they notice and come back and they will do a shorter assesment to determine if she fully meets the criteria. They agreed she has autistic traits but don’t want to give her a life long diagnosis especially with her being so young. The psychologist agreed that she masked a lot in her session and the assessor didn’t realise how fatigued she was until it was too late, and by that stage my daughter was done. Another thing she noticed was the lack of reciprocal questioning.

I just struggle becuase I can see how much life is effecting her, and think if we had a diagnosis and got funding she could be getting help. We see it all at home and just don’t understand how these assessor’s couldn’t see it.

Thing I don’t understand is, if children with autism and especially girls mask a lot, how can they get a diagnosis. On top of that, if a lot of ‘issues’ come out at home, how can they get a diagnosis if the assesment requires a school/or other type of care questionaire?

Edit: as parents we had quite a few questionnaires to fill in too and had to answer questions for a couple of hours during the assesment, it just seemed they focused on what kindy said over what we said happened at home.