I feel that a lot of schools are putting kids into the "educational ASD" category to get services. The kids do not necessarily meet the DSM criteria, but the school system can put them in that category even if there is no medical diagnosis. All that the kid has to display is delayed social skills and a few other things, all of which neurotypical individuals may have as well. So a child with social delays and sensory issues could get an educational ASD label. Parents don't understand this distinction. But even medical professionals misdiagnose it quite often, in my opinion. DS's neuropsych (who is with a large university) thinks that the huge rise in autism in recent years is because of over-diagnosis. Quirky kids with delays (who are not significantly affected) get the label even if they do not have the core features in the DSM.
DS was put into the "physically impaired" category for the school system and does still get services like speech and social skills group. We had to have an outside eval/diagnosis though to get that PI classification (in his case developmental coordination disorder). So it is useless to most kids unless the parents are lucky and knowledgeable enough to get their child into someone smart enough to figure it out and give that diagnosis. I am guessing that DS is one of the only kids in the entire district to have a DCD IEP even though the disorder affects 5-6 percent of kids and is a lot more common than ASD. In fact, probably many kids with an ASD diagnosis really have DCD. So many of the symptoms overlap.
