I have a 22 month old son who was dx with asd at 21 months. We had a family trainer start and she was very surprised that he was diagnosed at such a young age and that she had never worked with anyone who was diagnosed so young. She accepted that he is speech delayed but was reserving judgment on the asd diagnosis.
Im a little confused - I thought early diagnosis was a good thing, but she was really skeptical.......
I think it is a good thing as you can start early intervention, i knew at that age that my son was different, other people had noticed too i think here in australia there is a new dx tool that can diagnose kids as young as 16mths,
I got 2 dx for my son one from the physcologist and one from the pede
I would look at a new trainer you need full support
It's just that kids that young are all over the place developmentally, so a kid dx'd at that age might be just a late bloomer, have developmental delays but not autism - that sort of thing. Autism is diagnosed mainly by language and social problems - and those skills are just not very developed even in typical kids that age, so it's hard to tell. There are some really obvious things, though - like a kid that age should be interacting with his parents and making eye contact and trying to engage in non-verbal communication and stuff. If the non-verbal stuff is in place, then lack of language isn't as concerning, I would think, then if the child had obviously impaired non-verbal communication.
I wouldn't say there's harm in it and if it gets him EI services, I wouldn't question it at all. Things will be much clearer in a bout a year - until then, keep workingw with him.
Early INTERVENTION is a good thing. In order to get that early intervention, sometimes a diagnosis is necessary (not legally, but from a practical standpoint). Sometimes it's quite obvious to the diagnostician that a child has autism. In that case, there is no reason to delay the diagnosis. But MOST kids at such a young age, although they may have "autistic tendencies" are not so clearly autistic that a diagnosis of autism will necessarily prove to be 100% accurate. At the very least, it's hard to know what "flavor" of autism the child will ultimately prove to have -- autism, pdd-nos or Asperger's. By kindergarten age, many kids who were diagnosed early end up not having had autism at all but many were simply significantly speech delayed, as your therapist pointed out. Lack of communication ability can result in autistic-like symptoms. Also, hearing loss can result in autistic-like symptoms.
The problem is that toddlers and preschooler, even NT ones, develop at VASTLY different rates. So sometimes a "delay" is just the unique way a child is developing. The problem is that it's REALLY a bad idea to wait until development evens out at about age 5 before starting to intervene. So the pros take their best guess at whether a child has autism or not at an early age. It's far, far better to assume autism and get the child intense intervention that to NOT assume autism and wait. If it turns out the child DOES have autism and intervention has been delayed, the child will certainly suffer. Also, other issues (like speech delay) need to be addressed whether autism is present or not.
If your diagnosis is from an autism expert, I'd assume he is right. There is no downside to giving a child the early intervening therapies that are shown to work for autism. There's a HUGE downside to not giving those therapies early enough.