Personally I think any diagnosis at 2 or 3 should be considered "provisional" and subject to later confirmation or disproof and this should be clearly stated. But people can grow out of things like asthma so why not ASD.
I understand that a diagnosis can be comforting but I am concerned that society seems to becoming less tolerant of differences - everything has to be explained by a condition instead of just being accepted as human diversity.
Exactly. People want a definite answer or diagnosis for their child's delays/differences at age 2 or 3 (or even younger) and I just don't think that's possible. It doesn't mean that interventions can't be started, but more research should be done on which cases/severity warrant which therapies and long-term outcomes.
I also have little doubt in my mind that we could have gotten a PDD-NOS diagnosis for DS at age 1-2. His speech was delayed, he wasn't really gesturing at age 1, he spent a lot of time by himself trying to figure out how things worked rather than interacting with people. NOw that he is older we can see he is dyspraxic and had some delays (probably also atyical brain development combined with giftedness/2e to muddy up the issue more), not autism. I suspect that the school would have written up an autism IEP (which they can do as an educational diagnosis) if I had pushed hard enough, because they were/are clueless about how to qualify a child using other disability categories.
