Thank you for the response, Dee Dee. His psychotherapist has given him a dx of PDD NOS, although it's not a formal dx, I believe that's just the diagnosis she bills under for his services and is her personal observations. The psychologist who is going to do his actual testing I believe will be the best we can get diagnostically in our area. The people two years ago were clearly not very thorough.
His outside services include OT (he has been particularly successful with Interactive Metronome for coordination) and psychotherapy. We also have a few really good resource programs and parent support for autistic spectrum issues which we already access because of our other child.
I think the greater issue we're trying to figure out is what to do in the schools. They make some small accomodations for him, it's not terrible, but I feel like there's something not right, and that there should be a way to allow him to be more engaged. We requested evaluation a couple of years ago, and it went ... weirdly. I do not want to get into specifics, but I'm still not sure if they (a) didn't understand what he needed, or (b) didn't WANT to understand. Then last year we had a terrible special education teacher, so we were too busy trying to mitigate the damage she was doing to worry about more testing. She was more involved with my other child, but coordinated the small amount of interventions ds8 gets as well. Well,
if she had been doing her job she would have coordinated the services. Thankfully she is gone now. (Speaking of letter writing: that's when I started working on my own letter writing skills. I feel I'm working on an "advocating for your kid" portfolio.
) I'm just not sure what I'm advocating for here -- I want there to be machinisms in place that keep him safe (from his spaciness), moderately involved, and not lagging behind. I don't know what those machinisms should be or could be. I think the outside diagnostics might possibly help identify some things and give us documentation that there is a need. *fingers crossed*
I'm glad you mention ABA therapy. I am actually considering it for my other (more autistic) child right now. We are often swimming in copayments due to all the therapy we do, but I think it's going to soon become available for us to do ABA, and I've gotta get that ball rolling. You would definitely recommend, it sounds like?
