My daughter was just diagnosed officially two weeks ago. I have known since she was a toddler that she had autism. I took her to several different pediatricians but all of them blew me off with regards to my concerns. I never followed through with getting a formal evaluation done because my family was never supportive of me doing that. They would tell me that my daughter would "grow out of it" or that it was just "middle child syndrome". Typical denial and excuses.
When she entered Pre-K last year, her teacher noticed things and discussed them with me. He started the IEP process and from there I figured it was time to do an eval since I finally had some support.
My daughter is on the mild end but anyone can tell she is different by her behavior. I think she was more severe in her toddler years, more stimming, barely any functional speech, not very responsive at all. Now its almost like she moves up and down the spectrum from day to day. On bad days she will tantrum all day long, not speak, stim, and make zero eye contact.
I know there are some parents with kids on this board whose kids did not
get diagnosed until they entered school. Mine is one of them. While my ds
is on the milder end of the spectrum, I don't think that that was the (only)
reason for the late diagnosis. At age 7 many people will pick up on 'his
differences' fairly fast.
He did not have many of the early symptoms that get people's attention
like obvious stimming or tantrums and rigidity or no speech. He had the
symptoms that make a kid look really friendly and precoucious at age 3
but are clearly alarming at age 7.
I just read a book by a mom whose daughter has MR and her daughter is
always seeking out people to talk to/at. At age 3 strangers would tell her
that her daughter was 'just so smart' but by the time she was in school it
was clear that this behavior was very socially inappropriate. I recognized
my son so much in that discription that I started to wonder if a
description of social MR would not be more appropriate for my son than
asd. I guess they are both developmental disabilities.
Anyway -if you have a later diagnosed kid - why do you think it took so
long? Is your kid on the mild end? Was there a different diagnosis first? Or
does your kid have the kind of symptoms that do not catch anyones
attention until later?
Mine had to reach an age at which she should have developed the semantics and pragmatics of speech more obviously, in order to get dx'd. And of course, that led to failure to relate well with peers ... That, and she was unable to meet the school's expectations of attention span, direction-following, etc.
The demand had to be there, before any "deficiency" was noticeable.
Dear Micki,
My son was not officially diagnosed as autistic until he was in second grade. This was not due to doctor resistance or anything like that, in fact our doctors were very supportive. The main reason was that they matched his diagnosis to the area where he had the most need at the time. When he was two, his most glaring problem was his language delay, so that’s how he was diagnosed. By age three, we were working on fine motor and tactile stuff too. By second grade, the social component became the one that was really holding him back, so his diagnosis was switched again, primarily because we wanted to receive some additional services that required and ASD label.
Now, I would say my son is high-functioning, but at age two, I probably would have said he was moderate, not mild. Since spectrum kids don’t progress in a predictable way, you never know how they are going to grow (just like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates).
My son "officially" got dx'd at 6y. He started his behavior issues at 18 mo. The ped kept saying--wait until 3y--when the "behavior" should be out of the terrible two's. A child screaming on/off every 10 min for 6 hours--is not normal!!!
At 3.5y---we had the autism eval at our Children's hospital. They found his language disorder(he "talked" better than my other kids!). They also "ruled-out" ASD, even though the SLP thought he was on the spectrum. He got the dx of "Mixed Developmental Disorder" and receptive/expressive language disorder. The only reason why he got ASD ruled out was because he "wanted" to make friends and his eye contact was too good.
At 4y--it was Anxiety disorder and disruptive behavioral disorder.
5y---bipolar, anxiety, and POSSIBLY Aspergers.
6y--bipolar, anxiety, and finally----HFA--(because of his continued language disorder)
7y--bipolar ruled out, Now it's just HFA with characteristics of ADHD, anxiety/ocd.
He is a "wait and see" kind of kid. Looking back he had stim's--that I didn't know were stims. When the Childrens hospital eval asked if he flapped his arms---I said NO! I didn't know that hand/finger twisting was a stim. Or even the wrist flapping at 4y when excited was a stim.
My son is very high functioning. He only has noticeable stims at home---"jumps" continually for hours while playing xbox.
Actually if my son didn't have the behavior issues---we would had never known anything was "wrong". I think we would had picked up on the language soon. 1 week before the childrens appt---I questioned whether or not he understood what I was saying or not. His big delay is expressive---even now at 7.5y
I have always heard that high functioning kids/Aspergers don't get dx most of the time until middle school years when social stuff is more apparent.
My son has friends now---but I don't think he will in a few years---when the social expectation are more known and kids will "notice" he is different.
It took until a little past 4 to get a diagnosis, not as late as some, but I started this journey at 18 months. And my boys weren't verbal and still aren't all that verbal. But while they had some stims they were not obvious so they were attributed to normal 2/3 year old behavior. Example, my boys spin themselves maybe 5 times and then they stop, but they do it when there is music playing like they are dancing, they never do it in a drs office or in public for that matter. Nikolas' rocks himself but never anywhere but his rocking chair. He flicks his fingers in front of his face but he would never do it in front of a dev pedi cause he has toys to play with and there are things going on, so those stims were never really seen in a dev pedi or neuro's office and at the time I didn't know they were stims at all. I'm still not sure if they really are cause they are not done in an obsessive way and they are very easily redirected. Plus as the neuro and the first dev pedi told me, they are very social, they are very connected to me and to each other. They also reference me and each other and authority figures constantly. They will look to see what your reaction is to what they want or what they did. The dev pedi never saw a meltdown. the dev pedi who did diagnose them pretty much diagnosed them by the teachers description and pretty much did it on the phone before he ever saw them. I got the feeling he was making them fit his prediagnosis, not rather or not they truly have autism. But that is why they were never diagnosed in the past. I didn't really protest his obvious lack of proffesionalism cause that diagnosis did get them a lot of extra therapies they would have not have gotten otherwise. but I would like another opinion cause maybe the approach needs to be different. I do still wonder about brain damage although they had an MRI and I was told no.
I do want to add that it was attributed to prematurity.
Hello,
With my son the Doctors would not listen to me about my concerns. I asked about Autism about 1995 and the Doctor said oh no way. Of couse the range was not the same as it is recognized today. I had him all over trying to figure it out. He got a diagnosis at 9 or 10.
My son was dx last year at age 6. The 2nd day after starting kindergarten, I was called to school by his teacher who made no qualms of telling me that she thought my son was autistic. Actually it was a relief for me that someone else could see what I had been seeing and saying for a while. Family thought I babied my son and that he was too lazy even though I tried to tell them he was developmentally delayed. His pediatrician was not concerned with his delays and said he would catch up b/c he was a preemie. His teacher immediately started the process for an evaluation which literally took the whole school year to get done. An IEP was prepared for this school year.
Before Kindergarten, he attended a VPK program and his teacher there told me that she didn’t think he would do well in a public school. I guess it was her way to telling me that she thought there was something wrong.
With milder autism it really is difficult for outside people to see problems when children are younger. I know I spent many a night looking up Milestones in my baby book and saying to myself, “it’s okay he’ll catch up soon” but he never did, no matter how much I prayed. I knew something was wrong but couldn’t put my finger on it. Maternal instincts just made me want to baby him and protect him more.
My dd got dx at 5 years, 3 months. I think she did not get dx earlier because she does not have many of the stereotypical or repetitive behaviors. Also, her speech seemed to be the biggest issue. Her social/sensory issues didn't stand out until age 4 when she went to preschool. As her overall speech became more age appropriate I noticed a disconnect as to how she was using her language. For example, asking her a question and her responding back about something else that she wants to talk about.My son was diagnosed at age 7. His symptoms were definitely not obvious to the untrained eye before age 3. Any trouble he had at preschool was explained away by him being a boy and bilingual, until his first year of school was approaching and both us parents and the preschool teachers started worrying that he wasn't ready.
The process started with a visit to the speech therapist at age 5. Got a pat on the back and no formal evaluation. That delayed things, but only by about 6 months. The rest of the delays were due to waiting lists to get the initial appointment with the local specialists and then the regional specialists, and waiting for testing sessions because they were so booked up.
My youngest son might end up with a diagnosis too, and it was also in the year before starting school that his problems became apparent. He's even milder than his big brother, though.
My son was diagnosed shortly after he turned 7, just about six years ago. There were certainly atypical aspects to his development, but very little screamed out autism. This was just prior to the explosion in diagnosing and understanding ASD. He had speech, though the larger percentage was echolalia rather than communicative. Still, he qualified for speech services through the school district upon entering kindergarten, though the district psychologist ruled out autism during her evaluation
If he was 3 years old today, I have no doubt that he would be diagnosed without hesitation, even with the lack of obvious symptoms. The subtle ones would be more than enough for a diagnosis in this more enlightened decade. Still, I can't complain: My son has done astoundingly well, both academically and socially. He's one of the lucky ones who can "pass" for NT, and is on track to proceed to college. Being very self-aware of his diagnosis has helped tremedously in his maturity and progress. He understands the goal and is part of the "team". He wants the same things we all do for him, and he is working hard to get itI don't want to go off on a tangent but it looks to me like younger kids with early intervention reach the same place that kids dx later reach. i have a very 'social' asd child who was dx at 2 mainly cos his bro had the dx at 5. some docs are a lot more conservative at giving the dx - they have very old fashioned view of asd.[QUOTE=horizon]I don't want to go off on a tangent but it looks to me like many younger kids with early intervention reach the same place that kids dx later reach. i have a very 'social' asd child who was dx at 2 mainly cos his bro had the dx at 5. some docs are a lot more conservative at giving the dx - they have very old fashioned view of asd.[/QUOTE]
I figured out J. had a form of Autism last year. After we moved to CO , J was sent to the office (school lost her IEP paperwork), the vice principle asked about J's out burst. Vice principle goes J may have something like asberger's. I wish the rest of the school would of listend to the Vice principle. I had no clue at the time (what AS was) and I didn't know a bunch of my family member's had it (found out this year). It took a year to figure out which Dr.s can diagnose forms autism. This Sept 6, I took J to a dev ped and he saw J (in action, stemming, echoing), and walked back in with AS paperwork. Thank God! Someone saw what I have been dealing with for years.
T has either pdd-AS.
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