The school said:
"Overall, while Son does exhibiit difficulty with social interaction with his peers, it does not appear to be at the level that would typically be indicative of an ASD. Also, Son does not display significant differences in the areas of communication (aside from his pragmatic difficulties), and restricted repetetive and sterotyped patterns of behavior, interests, and activities. Son does not meet the the criteria as a student with an ASD."
Petunia, we've been through school evals for different challenges, and I have one caution about school input based on our experience (as well as what I've heard from other parents in other districts): the school can have a bias and motivation to not find a child eligible for services. Some schools will give you a thorough and great evaluation, but had we gone through our ds' school eval without also having private evals, and had we not known what to question re the school's eval and had we not been familiar with our ds' rights and how to advocate for them, we would have been led to believe that everything was hunky-dory, our ds had no LD diagnosis, and life was grand (at school, while it was falling apart for ds at home!). So I would be skeptical that if the school says your child "shows some signs" but not enough for a diagnosis - there might very well be enough for a diagnosis from a professional who doesn't have an interest in downplaying symptoms in order to avoid having to qualify a student for services and accommodations. It's also much easier to ask follow-up questions from a private professional than it is from school psychologists so taking the whole school issue out of the loop and just looking at helping your child, you'll usually get "better" or more complete information and action plans by having a private evaluation.
If your ds hasn't had a neuropsych eval, that's what I'd pursue next.
Best wishes,
polarbear
ps - totally unrelated challenge, but fwiw, our ds has a diagnosis of expressive language disorder from a school speech therapist, but the eval was done through her private business. Our ds does not qualify as a child with expressive language disorder according to our school and state guidelines for that specific disorder - but working with a private SLP who diagnosed him with it has been *the* most beneficial therapy he's ever had. If we'd trusted what the school officially said about our ds re expressive language, we would have missed the most important thing we've probably been able to do for him in helping him become a happy functioning person.
