While they acknowledged his intelligence as we were talking, none of it is really in the report. He's 33 months old now and these are his scores ...
Expressive language - 18 months level
Receptive language - 6-9 months
Non-verbal cognitive (I'd think this is where the intelligence would come into play, right?) - 28 months
... all this based on about 40-minute assessment. It's as if they only based the report on all the things he does not do and didn't put in anything he DOES do! His "problem" has always been that he refuses to do anything "age appropriate" and chooses to do things beyond his age.
Sorry to weigh in late here. A couple of thoughts.
Why was the assessment only 40 min.? When my DS10 was diagnosed, it was on the basis of 6-7 hours of testing. Did they do the ADOS? Did they do a Vineland to look at whether practical life skills are age-appropriate? IQ and achievement testing? What you got seems far too cursory.
HOWEVER: it is perfectly possible to be both extremely delayed and still gifted, at the same time. My DS didn't ask a question that was phrased as a question until he was 5-- serious pragmatic language delay in certain respects-- yet he was seeking and digesting huge amounts of information.
ABA therapy is incredibly useful, probably the best thing we did for DS10. It is highly tailored to the individual, so you don't have to worry about them trying to teach him skills he already has. But it was essential for remediating a lot of social interaction skills, language skills, motor skills issues-- all of which have helped DS fit better into a mainstream classroom. I don't know where we would be without it, but not thriving as we are now.
In short-- I'd take the therapies that are on offer as well as pursuing a more refined and thorough assessment.
DeeDee
