Thanks for all of the collective wisdom! I can't tell you how much this support means to me- and helps.
I have to say that while I think SOMETHING is going on, my gut says that it isn't ASD. First, the descriptions don't ring true to me. It's also hard for me to believe that after spending approximately 90+ hours with my child in a variety of settings (doing evaluations, developmental interviews, observing at school, interviewing teachers, observing with peers and even going to cafes and doing social activities) that my son's psychologist would miss clues if it were ASD. During our first evaluation, she did say that she thought that, if anything, Dyspraxia might be something to explore further but she said it would be best to see how things go at school and to gather more information. She specifically mentioned his pronunciation (he still doesn't say the "r") and that he often pauses for a while before responding, like he's struggling to gather his words. He doesn't have this issue when he initiates communication. Reading about Dyspraxia and dysgraphia, it sounds much more like my son and I think that's heading in the right direction.
I also suspect that my son could have some visual processing issues. After the psych who did the IQ testing recommended it, we had his eyes checked by an opthamologist and his eyesight was fine BUT I've noticed several weird things about my son. First, he is TERRIBLE at jigsaw puzzles even though his visual spatial skills are very strong. For example, even at three he could do the advanced Lego Technic sets on his own. He has an unusual way of doing them- he skips ahead three pages at a time, memorizes the image and then builds what he saw. He is also great at taking machines apart and figuring out how to reassemble them. But he struggles with jigsaw puzzles that are rated for five year olds (he is 5.5). He randomly tries to put pieces together and doesn't seem to intuitively understand that the picture must make sense (for example, he'll try to stick the arm to the head of a person).
His reading ability also isn't as good as I would expect for somebody with such a high VCI: he has been spelling words for over a year but still cannot read much beyond short three and four letter words; he knows words if I spell them out loud but has a hard time if they are written; has an amazing memory but doesn't recognize a sight word even if he saw it (and sounded it out laboriously) in the sentence before; he can read a large word on a computer screen but has a hard time if the same word is in a line of text in a book.
Finally, he is very cautious (but not clumsy), especially when climbing or walking over uneven surfaces. He was a late crawler and walker. He avoids games where lots of kids are running around; it seems to make him nervous. He was ambidextrous until four and didn't develop a proper pencil grasp until we encouraged him to start using one had for writing/eating/playing guitar. His drawing is poor and mostly consists of scribbles. His handwriting is neat but slow and laborious and he mostly resists doing it. He also has poor eye contact.
I am thinking we should go ahead and see a developmental opthamologist and maybe wait a few weeks until my son settles in and gather more information to see if we should do further testing for dysgraphia and/or dyspraxia. Is it too early to test for this? Does this fuller picture sound like any of your children?
