Mk13, I think you're doing all the right things - researching what you can, thinking through the evals your ds has already had, asking questions, digging for a deeper understanding of what's up. FWIW, I think that it's a good idea at this point to seek a really thorough eval again, from either a pediatric neuropsychologist or a developmental pediatrician.
the problem is that some of those could be either Autism OR Apraxia / dispraxia OR both.
Our neuropsychologist has a chart that shows how symptoms overlap between autism spectrum disorder, developmental coordination disorder, and ADHD - there is *quite* a large amount of overlap, but each diagnosis also has very distinct characteristics. How those characteristics play out in any one child is going to be very unique and individual, but there are markers that are used to differentiate between ASD/DCD/ADHD.
Our ds13 who is dyspraxic has some symptoms that could fall under an ASD diagnosis, and he's had a few people here and there over the years suggest that he might be on the ASD spectrum. Two of the people who've wondered are friends of mine who live far away from me and who are parenting children who have Aspergers. We primarily communicate via email, and when they listen to my descriptions of what's up with my ds there are times when they see commonalities in things that their children have experienced, so they naturally wonder, hey, that sounds like Aspergers - because that's what they know. DS also had a counselor he was seeing a few years ago who wondered if he might be on the autism spectrum - burt she was a counselor, not a psychologist or psychiatrist who could make a thorough diagnosis; she was a counselor who had a large percentage of her practice made up of children with Aspergers and who had never worked with a child with DCD before. When she raised suggested we have our ds go through an autism spectrum eval with her office psych, it coincided with the same timeframe our ds was already scheduled to go through an updated eval with the neuropsych who he'd seen for his original DCD diagnosis - so I had an opportunity to get her input on the situation before putting ds through yet another eval. Our neuropsych also diagnoses ASD and ADHD, so she showed me the part of ds' eval that showed clearly, to her, that he is *not* on the autism spectrum.
It sounds like the eval you had previously was brief (30 minutes) - you might post what surveys or criteria/scales/etc were used to diagnose and compare that to what other parents here who have children with ASD diagnoses had included in their children's evals. My gut feeling is that 30 minutes with only parent input and the brief in-office-30-minute observation by a dr/psych isn't enough to diagnose autism - but that's just me. My ds' diagnosis of DCD was much more involved and has also evolved over time as he's grown and we see the different ways it impacts his life.
Last thing - re the sudden development of speech out of nothing. My ds didn't talk, didn't babble, didn't really make sounds much at all for the first three years of his life, then overnight he started talking in complicated, complex sentences. Like a previous poster mentioned, at that time, we thought he was just a kid who's personality wanted to know fully and completely how to do something before he tried it. There are kids like that; maybe that's your ds. OTOH, making no sounds, no babbling, then suddenly talking as if he's mastered it - those are also symptoms of ds' DCD.
Which doesn't mean your ds has DCD, or autism, or anything. I do think, in your shoes, I'd be questioning and researching just as you are.
Hang in there!
polarbear
