Another school struggle post (ASD Lvl 1, 5 year old girl)

Myself and my wife are really struggling since our daughter has started Kindergarten this year. She was in TK last year and despite a lot of anxiety early on we did not have much trouble getting her to leave the house for school. She seemed to love the day at school and had 2 very close friends in her class. Over the summer she was diagnosed with ASD Level 1, which we were not shocked by.

Since Kindergarten has started we have had a lot of trouble to get her to even leave the house. Out of 14 days she has been on time twice, missed a number of days as we could not get her to leave the house, or been hours late. The days are only 4 hours long so she is often missing half the day.

There has been a lot of change for her which I know can be overwhelming. New teacher, new class, change from late bird (10.50) to an early bird (8.50), 1 of her close friends has moved halfway across the state, the other one is in her current class. Due to her being very smart and ahead of her age group in reading, maths etc she was put into a K/1 combo class with a few other Kindergartners, class is close to half K and half grade 1.

When picking her up from school she is very happy, says she had a great day. The teacher tells us that even though she is missing or late a lot of the time that when she is in class there are no issues and she finishes all of her work. It seems that she does really like school but then the morning comes and its a huge battle again to try and negotiate to get her to leave the house. She will start stimming with hand and arm flapping, running and hiding in our bed and shouting either she wants to be homeschooled or that she is too smart for school and does not need to go. We have a younger daughter, 3, and I don't want to explore homeschooling until it becomes an absolute necessity.

We are really struggling to reconcile what seems to be a nice experience for her in school and her reluctance to go in the morning.

The school and teachers have been amazing with us and very understanding of the situation. They have a school counselor meet us at the office to escort our daughter to class and our daughter has really taken to her. We have an IEP (Individual Education Plan) meeting next week and having this counselor being available to take her to class so she does not have to deal with the overstimulation of all the kids going through the same gate is going to be one of our asks, as well having some popit toys available in her bag for class in case she gets overwhelmed there, they have about a 30% success but its something.

Does anyone have any advice or tips of what has worked for them for IEP?

My main worry is we can have a great IEP set up but we still struggle to get her out the door to school. The stress for everyone is mounting as I am starting to struggle with concentration in the mornings for my work, I work from home mostly, as I am taking time out to help with trying to get her out the house. The stress on my wife from dealing with this all day/night long, and the worry about the impact on our other daughter as all of this is going on.

This has turned into a longer rant than I planned, thanks for reading if you got this far.