Finally nearing the end/beginning

Well, I feel that I am coming to the end but also to the beginning of things. I made a post over a year ago about feeling that my son was possibly on the autistic spectrum.

We still don't have a clear answer yet. But I am eagerly waiting for a letter through the post to find out.

We met the consultant paediatrician yesterday. It had been about a year since we last met. And things were very positive.

She felt that my son met the criteria for an autism spectrum diagnosis, however because he had reasonably good non verbal skills she needed to discuss with the educational psychologist again about her thoughts on this area when she had met him in school. Is it possible to have good non verbal skills and still be autistic? Is it possible that he has just learnt these skills?

My son was also diagnosed by the educational psychologist as having Moderate General Learning Difficulties which is something that I'm fine with. The Dr yesterday said we could try and find out if there is a possible cause with genetics but I didn't feel it necessary to do blood tests. It wasn't going to be of any benefit to my son. He is only 5 and I didn't want to out him through any unnecessary stress or needles. I am content just knowing that my concerns over the last few years isn't because I've been dreaming it all.

I may not have all the answers yet, and I may never get all of the answers to my questions. But I'm just glad things are beginning to be recognised and that we will finally be able to get the support we need to improve the quality of my son and our family life.

[CookieCrumble30]

Hi, I just wanted to say that of course it's possible to have good non verbal skills and still be autistic. The triad of impairments for an autism diagnosis are: sensory processing difficulties, speech, language and communication difficulties, and anxiety. This makes me so cross because a lot of so called professionals have no idea about autism. I have autism myself and so do two of my three children. My son was extremely violent from age 5 due to the stresses of mainstream school. However our daughter behaved in a completely different way - she was quiet and even mute at times and just hid behind everyone else, so getting her a diagnosis of autism is a very very long road. I even had one professional tell me that she's not autistic because she gives eye contact!!! You have to keep pushing. We had to pay for private EP, SaLT & OT reports in the end as we found that the LEA ones only wrote down the problems that the school could afford to give support for. My advice would be to get private reports done. Most autistic people have a very spiky profile (very good at some things and very poor at others). Wishing you lots of luck going forwards and your son is very lucky to have you as his parent and fighting his corner for him.

[Hidden in reply to CookieCrumble30]

Thank you. The consultant said that he meets all of the criteria except the non verbal. And I suggested if it was something that can be learnt. She will speak to the educational psychologist. I'm hoping we don't have too long for a letter to then know what's going on

[CookieCrumble30 in reply to Hidden]

I really hope you get answers soon. Our son didn't do verbal at a young age and so would grab our hands and take us into the right room and then point and grunt at what he wants. Is this what you mean by non verbal, or can he understand body language of others without words? I do believe they learn coping mechanisms, but it's hard to say what is learnt and what exactly they do understand. It also depends how old your son is. We noticed that the gap widens as they get older, between what they can do and what their peers are able to do.

[Hidden in reply to CookieCrumble30]

I mean non verbal skills by his facial expressions, eye contact ect

[Picklebum]

What you have said here is exactly my grand daughter she is 19 not actually diagnosed with autism It PDD along with other things wish I knew !!!

[Hidden in reply to Picklebum]

It's hard when you know deep down there's something going on. And you are either waiting for it to be recognised or even worse it not being recognised x

[Hidden]

Yes people can copy other people without understanding from prior knowledge. For example, I didn’t know what smiling was when I was little or understand what people doing with themselves and I tried so hard to copy people. People used to say to me ‘smile, smile’ but I didn’t get it-I couldn’t but I tried to copy’. I don’t know if I was successful with the copying though-I’ve never felt it