They live with their parents and a few live in communities of one sort or another. One of the earliest girls was placed in an adult community of autistic people but she was excluded in the end and is now in a secure unit These people appear very robust but they are not Their panic attacks can be violent. The ray of hope is we now have handling guidelines, so children with PDA should be managed better.”Jim is optimistic Since Hayley’s diagnosis, he says she is easier to be with. He focuses on her positive sides, which far outweigh the negatives. “Having seen what we can achieve, I hope Hayley will go on to study the subjects she has a real flair for.

She has a very scientific mind and wants to be a marine biologist.”‘Does Your Child Have a Hidden Disability?’ by Jill Curtis (Hodder and Stoughton, out 19 September, £7.99) The Early Years Diagnostic Centre (01623 490879). PDA support group: .uk. If you are going to be a world-class singer, it pays to let the world know early That, at least, seems to have been Alice Coote’s way. “According to my mother,” she says, “I didn’t stop screaming for three days when I was born She had to hand me over to someone else.

Perhaps my singing voice began then.”

If you are going to be a world-class singer, it pays to let the world know early That, at least, seems to have been Alice Coote’s way. Perhaps my singing voice began then.”
The suggestion is not entirely frivolous. Coote, at 34 one of this country’s rising stars, believes in the singing voice, not only as a technical device, but as a powerful, indeed the most powerful communicative vehicle. “Nothing touches people more than the human voice, unadorned. When I watch a great singer, I feel that they are crying, and that great singing is a refined crying for humanity. Maybe that’s where it links to me coming out of the womb and screaming for days.”Coote brings rather more art to her vocal utterances these days; and the world has taken note. She has sung with English National Opera and the Lyric Opera of Chicago, at the Wigmore Hall and the Last Night of the Proms, at the Edinburgh and Salzburg Festivals.

Next month she makes her Proms solo recital debut, followed in September by her Royal Opera debut in Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos. Chicago, Amsterdam and San Francisco are on the itinerary, her first solo recording (for EMI) is imminent, and her diary is full until 2005.On the crest of a wave, she is enjoying every minute of it, although as a mezzo-soprano, she teasingly confesses, “I’m terminally jealous of sopranos. My life’s ambition was to sing Salome, Madam Butterfly, Tosca, but I’m coming to terms with my fate. I realised I had a lower voice right from the beginning, when I sang along with Kathleen Ferrier’s recording of Blow the Wind Southerly; and my winds were definitely blowing southerly. Over the past few years, my voice has risen and risen, but I’ve held on to the depths, which I’m happy about.