Anything else that looks like autism? | Autism PDD
We are waiting and waiting for some appointments to come along, so we have no official diagnosis of anything yet. But I just wondered if there is anything else we might hear or get thrown at us that sometimes may look alot like ASD. Any help?
ADHD? Delays in individual areas ... ? Sensory Integration Disorder without delays?
Central Auditory Processing Disorder?
Childhood Schizophrenia?
Childhood Schizophrenia is rare. bi-polar, ocd. look at your family history.What is your child doing, flapping hand walking, spinning or
delays speech , social
sensory issues, screams in pain when touched, likes muchy foods,acts deaf or in pain with certain sounds, toe walking
I read that expressive/receptive language disorders can have some of the same symptoms.
Childhood Schizophrenia was what autism was called before kanners findings in the 40s
there is no other disorder like autism other disorders may have one or two of the problems that auties have but only autism has the triad of impairments and that is the main diagnostic criteria
many other disorders do have some traits of autistics but it is not untill you look at the triad of impairments that the differances stand out by a mile
shellxxx
There are a bunch of neurological disorders that have some things incommon with autism, for example touretts. You can look at
childbrain.com -it's a pediatric neurology ebsite.
I know someone with PKU (they do test for that at birth now) whose
behavior is very simular to autism. I think there are bunches of
diseases and injurious that can affect the brain and the result might look
simular to asd. They used to call higher functioning asd (and adhd/add/
learning disabilities)) 'Minimal Brain Dysfunction'. At first I thought 'that
was in the dark ages' but now I think that might be pretty discriptive and
accurate.
What are the reasons that make you suspect asd.How old is ur son or daughter??? And what r they doing to make u ask??? Language delay??? etc????
autism is only diagnosed if the triad of impairments are present
no other disorder has the triad so no other disorder can be like autism
many can show similer patterns of behaviors and patterns but autism only
has the triad
shell
language impairmentWhat was it that I just read (it was on here, I'm sure someone will know and be able to link you to it.) about lead or mercury poisoning and the comparisons to autism.Sarah had delayed myelin (on MRI) which affects physical skills and language skills...she was very aloof though so not sure if the delayed myelin caused that? She seems to be resolving most of her issues which could be due to myelin coming in and it was indeed delayed or she was autistic and all the therapy and her naturally maturing helped her overcome her sx's ....not sure.speech delays by the age of 2 max
temper tantrums
fine and motor skills delayed
obsessive with ceratin things
linning up toys
Nick, can you tell me what signs you picked up on (when working with the preschoolers) when the cases were more subtle? I don't know for sure if there is anything else that resembles autism, but I can tell you this: when I worked with disabled and delayed preschoolers, I could watch a kid for 5 minutes and tell if he had autism. There's something about it that sticks out to me like a sore thumb. Maybe it's the "takes one to know one" principle, but I only missed one call in the whole 2 1/2 years I was there.I suppose OCD or "geekiness" (pardon the term
) could bear a resemblance to it in older children, but with the preschoolers, it was pretty unmistakable to me.Fragile X Syndrome
Apparently autism can be an accompanying trait associated with Fragile X.The more subtle signs, as in the children who were higher functioning and went under the "developmental delay" diagnosis for several months before finally being either diagnosed autistic or it becoming a general consensus?
You are testing me tonight, aren't you?
This is complicated and difficult to explain in words, but for one thing the way these children talked sometimes stuck out at me. They would often talk in a very matter-of-fact, focused, or dictating way, not like the typical 4-year-old whose conversation is more sporadic and spontaneous. The autistic children would often "state the obvious," and their vocal inflection was usually less varied than that of the NT children.
Also, they would often be intent on what they were doing for an unusually long period of time compared to their classmates.
Child A (NT) might play with blocks for 2 or 3 minutes before noticing that another classmate has dragged out a toy car that he likes the look of, and he runs over to try and take it away or get out another toy car. 30 secdonds later he might notice that some other classmates are working puzzles, so he drops his toy car and runs over to check out the puzzles. When it is time to pick up, he puts up the last thing he was playing with and stops, having completely forgotten that he has visited nearly every station in the last half hour.
Meanwhile Child B (suspected ASD) has brought her stuffed animal and a child-size blanket from home and refuses to let them out of her sight. She plays by herself over where the class's stuffed animals are kept. She has built an enclosure out of her blanket and has her personal stuffed animal inside this enclosure. She is acting out a scene from a television program she watches using the other stuffed animals as well as her own. She does not notice when the other children change activities, and shows no interest in anything else in the room. She only notices another child if he happens to mess with what she is doing. She gets mad if the stuffed animals the classroom provides are not the right color or size if she comes to a scene in which that color or size is needed. Only if she is prompted to does she go to a different activity. If you ask her what she is doing, rather than getting "I'm playing with these," you will get a detailed description of the scenario she is acting out. When it is time to clean up, she cries if someone else picks up the stuffed animals for her because the person who picks them up does not arrange them on the shelf the way she would have.
Then there's the way they interact with you. Not only does it often take a concerted effort to get their undivided attention, but when they talk to you, their eye contact is unusual. An NT child will usually either look directly at you or directly at what he is doing while he's talking to you. But a child on the spectrum will often look at you only ocasionally, but most of the time gazing away as if thinking very hard, or as though they were pulling thoughts out of the air. They would talk to you with a sort of "guilty" look a lot of times, like they were afraid of what you were about to say to them.
And then there's the stimming. They all had it, even the subtle ones. And if you've ever had a particular stim and are aware of it, you will recognize it when you see someone else do it. The hand tapping, eye-tracking, clicking with the mouth, zoning out, etc. were noticeable to me when no one else seemed to see them.
There were a few other subtle things that I could notice that are very hard to describe in words, such from the way they carried themselves to the way they threw their fits, and some kids were more difficult to peg than others. There's always a thing or two that gets your attention and makes you watch them more closely, and in watching more closely, if you know waht you're looking for, you see the more subtle signs. The younger they were a lot of times the harder it was to pick out the signs. But once they reach about age 3 to 3 1/2, if the signs are there, they will really start making themselves noticeable if you are alert to them.
Lead poisoning and hearing loss may not cause the whole package of autistic symptoms, but certainly some of them. The neurologist society officially recommends that ALL children with suspected developmental delays be tested for lead poisoning and hearing loss.
Good luck with everything.
I suspected my son had ASD when he was around 2 years of age. I now can see that he had clear signs even then, only I did nt know about them then, not the subtle ones anyway. For once, he looked like he was deaf most of the times, he did not respond to his name, his eye contact was poor, he had a huge vocabulary but was not putting two words together, there was 'autistic hand taking' to something he wanted. He never ever pointed, did not understand concept of cause and effect, and did not engage in joint attention. Physically, he was ahead of peers, bigger and taller he did everything early.
When I started getting worried, mainly because of lack of speech and because he was not following directions, I started research on my own. He seemed to fit the profile of ASD but after a while some health professional would reassure me that he is fine and he would catch up and I would stop looking. At one point I started to look for a DIFFERENTIAL DIAGNOSIS (something that looks like ASD) and beleive me when you start looking, it looks like the child with ASD fits most of these disorders as well. And now I understand that it makes sense, that ASD is an umbrella term and the child might have so many symptoms of other disoders. Then I would get confused and think to myself that oh he has expressive-receptive disorder and NOT autism, or he has hyperlexia without ASD, or semantic-pregmatic disorder, or Sensory Integration Dysfunction or ADHD.
Its SO clear to me now that and ASD child has symtoms that present in all these conditions but NOT vice versa. One of my friends has a child with mixed receptive-expressive delay and I can see the difference, this child plays with toys appropriately, can pick on non verbal cues, does not have so many difficulties in a social situation like my son and of course no major tantrums. It is safe to say that there is NO condition that looks like autism, maybe to a layperson but not to me, not anymore. I think many ASD paents can tell quite easily now.
Mary
My son has dx with a language disorder; he had some sx of autism when younger but they went away except for understanding language and some fine motor issues. He speaks pretty well, messing up some words but we can figure out what he means. Good luck.... sorry so fast, I'm rushing.We had a bipolar dx before autism. Along with receptive/expressive language disorder, anxiety, OCD. The language and anxiety could count for the social delays. And SID.
He's 7.5y now and other things are popping up.
thank you Nick. A lot of what you said sounds like my son. he has language, its just,,,,,,,,,,,,,off. He has a hard, hard time expressing himself appropriately. He's 3 1/2 and saying how he "feels" is almost impossible. He says "my tummy is growling" for "I'm hungry" I don't think he's ever said "I'm hungry" we can't say after a bath "let's get dressed" because getting dressed is what you do in the morning, not at night and we must say "let's get your pajamas on". I could go on, and on, and on and on about these types of communications with him. Also, that stimming thing, seeing the way he "copes" I don't see a lot of typical kids stimming like he does in order to function (my son rubs his upper lip with his thumb, resting his finger on his cheek). His sensory issues go back and forth and when he's stressed, you'll see more of the noticeable things, ear flicking, teeth grinding, he does this fast clapping with his hands when he really wants something and is impatient.
You have helped me a bit, thank you. My son is definitely one of those who sits in the grey area of a diagnosis. Most people who don't know a lot about appropriate communication (believe me, I'm still learning) think he's "oh, just fine" but why does he respond to others using movie lines? Why would he want to show the visitor coming to the house our bathroom? they think its cute, and maybe at 3 1/2 it is kinda cute, but by five, ten and adult..............that's what I think about...
Fascinating Nick. Don't want to hijack this topic, but just wanted to say thank you. Nick...not meaning to hijack either, but wanted to say I wish I could get a video of jacob to you and then know one way or the other whether he's on the milder end of the spectrum. Sounds like you're alot more knowledgable than the supposed professionals.LOL! Thats exactly what I was going to ask of Nick too. My son just may be the world's mildest case.Great minds think alike lol. Jacob has alot of what I call "Pink flags". The signs he has aren't glaring, jump out at you in 5 minute type signs. If he's not on the spectrum, maybe OCD and language delayed would describe him. What gets me is that my family sees him talking and they think I'm crazy for thinking the way I do. Not all children with autism are non verbal like my Brendon, but they don't seem to get that. Sure Jacob says alot more words than B...but it's not functional language.Semantic and Pragmatic Language Disorder.
Specific Language Disorder.
(speechville express website -- google it!).
Copyright Autism-PDD.net