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Joined: Apr 2014
Posts: 4,074 Likes: 6
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Joined: Apr 2014
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From a special ed perspective, it may also be valuable to remember that very young children don't need a diagnosis of anything at all to receive services. They can be qualified under developmental delay, and serviced based on identified needs. Treatment is the same regardless of label, and this avoids some of the fallout that may result from early misdiagnosis, where there is ambiguity. The EI provider may be operating under that framework--hence the collection of descriptives, rather than a unified diagnosis.
Implementing appropriate interventions for the language delay, sensory sensitivity, and stimming behavior is more important than applying a specific label to a very young child. You should, however, make sure the referral from EI to your local school district's special ed occurs at age 2 years 9 months, so there is a smooth transition of services.
...pronounced like the long vowel and first letter of the alphabet...
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Joined: Apr 2013
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Great point! For those who may be looking for more information on this, wrightslaw provides a webpage on Child Find.
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Joined: Feb 2016
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I agree that that the Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (MCHAT) may be helpful, but isn't the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) meant for children over 4 years old? [/quote] Just to answer this question: the SRS has two forms; the early years form begins at 2 years 6 months
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Joined: Apr 2013
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Good to know! Thanks for posting that clarification.
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Joined: Dec 2016
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I think it's definitely something to keep your eye on, and if you are worried about autism, you should get him evaluated by a developmental pediatrician. My guy was obsessed with numbers and letters at a really young age. We just bought him math manipulatives, and let him watch YouTube videos about numbers. He was diagnosed with autism when he was 5, and he gets ABA therapy 4 days a week at home. If you met him, you would just think he's shy. He gets speech therapy at school, it's just once a week. For me, the main reason I got him evaluated was because he was so asynchronous. Just so advanced in math and reading, and so behind in verbal communication and social skills. Now that he's 7, he's not super obsessed with numbers anymore. He has friends, and loves being around people, but still has a hard time with verbal communication, but is being much better from therapy. I would say just trust your gut, and if you think there are issues, have a specialist evaluate him.
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Joined: Apr 2011
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I also had a child who was diagnosed very late. Partly because I was kind of parenting in isolation and didn't know some of her quirks were extremely unusual. For example it took me about 6 months to teach her the correct use of personal pronouns, ie that she should refer to herself as “I" and to me as “you". Let me tell you those endless conversations with an 18 month old about who was who were confusing for me let alone her! But at that age everyone we met was telling me how wonderfully she spoke, it would never have occurred to me that she need a speech pathologist. She had lovely diction, a massive vocabulary for her age, (mostly) excellent grammatical sentences, etc. I had no idea she had a significant and diagnosable speech issue. She also never really had an eye contact problem. She generally flapped from happiness not distress…
At 15 she's doing great and most people would never EVER guess she has a diagnosis, and that is due to being gifted, a girl and years of careful management, not because it’s not real. I am SO glad she does have a diagnosis because as good as she looks life is still HARD for her and the self awareness of where struggles come from is invaluable. And with the value of diagnosis in mind, if I could do it all over, I would get the diagnosis before doing all the therapy and intervention that we did, which made the later diagnosis so very hard. After years and years of hard slog that had all really helped enormously, if your kid is still has big struggles and you realise they need that diagnosis, you don't want to be sitting across from professionals who are saying "Mmmm, we can sort of see it, but she's doing so well...". I had to actually point out to some of them that if she had a diagnosis before all the interventions, and we were sitting here today having this chat about where she was at, you would be saying "Congratulations, your child is doing brilliantly, it's all working really well, they do of course still have Aspergers and always will..."
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Joined: May 2013
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My kid who is now 10 had some similarities but also differences. He had a speech delay but it wasn't language so much as actual speech production. He scored very high for receptive language ability but not expressive. There was a gap. He was very inarticulate, hard to understand, dropped endings off words, had problems combining words. But he seemed to understand directions just fine, he would watch shows like thomas the train and seem to understand (and then do imaginative play with his own trains). When I did the MCHAT he was kind of borderline. He was a very quiet kid and lost in his own explorations. He wasn't obsessed with anything in particular, but seemed to know all the numbers, letters, etc. (and when he was around 3 1/2 he began sounding out words, could recognize most of the sight words, etc. and when he started K he was reading at around a 3rd grade level). In 4 year old preschool he could solve math problems like "If you have 37 trees in your yard and I cut down 16 how many are left?" But he seemed to learn these types of skills like math and reading without being all that interested. I didn't even know he could read until I showed him a list of sight words and was shocked when he read the list. Whenever he got excited he would flap his hands (for instance, if he was about to jump off a diving board). He would walk on the balls of his feet and still does that sometimes. He was ultimately diagnosed as having muscle weakness and low tone and a chiari malformation. Turns out that a lot of kids with chiari malformations have autistic like traits, speech issues, etc. But a chiari malformation is compression of the cerebellum. Thats a totally different mechanism than whatever causes autism. I guess my point is that you just need to keep your eye on him...maybe treat the symptoms like you would if he had autism but it's probably too early to tell. It would be helpful to have a neuropsych eval (make sure you go to someone reputable and research-based, like at a university). We had various evals for autism and they basically all said DS didn't meet the criteria despite the fact that he was flapping, toe walking, he had sporadic eye contact, some social issues, etc.
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Joined: Apr 2013
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A few more resources, in case they may be of help to future readers of this thread. The first 3 are informal checklists, the fourth is a summary of the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), which may be used informally at home as a checklist. 1- old post with link to article comparing gifted characteristics and ASD characteristics (Aug 2016) 2- post with checklist comparing gifted and ASD traits (Sept 2017, hat tip to BananaGirl) 3- post with link to Gifted Resource Center of New England (GRCNE) article comparing gifted and ASD traits (Sept 2017, hat tip to Nolepharm) 4- Summary of DSM-5 ASD diagnostic criteria https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/hcp-dsm.html
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