"My Son Has the Kind of Autism No One Talks About"

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It did affect his speech development. He is developing speech but it is delayed. He wasn't very social before the ear infections, so I don't think it was caused by his speech issues. I was thinking it is actually harder to get an autism diagnosis if you have had hearing issues because a lot of the diagnostic procedure for autism is designed to rule out anything else. If you have something else, they are less likely to attribute issues to autism if they can attribute it to something else.

Anyway, he is 6 or so and he has gotten to the point where his parents can understand what he is trying to say, but no one else can. The last time I saw him, I think I picked out one word he was saying, in an hour of seeing him. His speech is developing, but not on the usual schedule.

What we were told is that some parents seeking a possibly inappropriate label are just looking for the extra time and separate room on the SAT and AP tests, both of which can help boost scores. I haven't identified any such families personally, but I do know the accommodations rooms for these tests are always full. To get the accommodations code from the college board you need to have a history with the diagnosis and, thus, parents who want to play this angle will start out in elementary school.

It is parents in places like NYC that can be overly "dog eat dog," willing to do absolutely anything to get their kids ahead. And their kids grow up believing that it is OK to play every potential advantage, lie or not. We have some in our county, although I choose a school district in which it is less prevalent.

A good IEP team in a school will see and sort out those people. A poor one may be too exhausted to care. Perfect systems are impossible to find in real life, although I very much appreciated all the people who worked with us. We worked with caring, intelligent people of integrity all the way through, with rotting apples rare. And they gave me positive feedback, as well, since I always did my best to understand their side. We were extremely lucky.

I don't think the answer is to play dirty just because other people are. We need more people to grow up feeling they can be valued and effective as caring people of integrity, so that things improve over time instead of degenerating.

Just throwing my 2 cents in.

I have lived all over the US. Literally all over (former military), including NYC at one point. As a non-native New Yorker, the "average" New Yorker seemed more aggressive to me than the "average" Southerner, Midwesterner, and West Coaster. But the most aggressive people in each area are equally aggressive. Most New Yorkers do not view themselves to be particularly aggressive, but if you are not from NYC (or the surrounding orbits), you will likely not agree with them. I have lived in major cities in each area, too, and the only one that seemed about the same was the Los Angeles area. The difference I noticed there, though, is that people are superficially nice. Most NYCer's, from my experience, find being superficially nice distasteful. They think it is important to be "real," even if being "real" means you may come off as being "rude." It is my perception that NYCers also believe that as long as they view their intention to be "good," they are not as concerned about how the other person feels. As contrasted to the Midwest, where it seems (to me) that there is much more focus placed on how the other person will perceive your actions regardless of your intent, which leads to some pretty interesting things, too.

I did not find NYers in general to be particularly health conscious. Actually, I moved from SoCal to NY and was pretty much appalled by how unhealthy NYers seemed compared to what I was used to. So, I don't know about parents pushing their "healthy" ways on others. My perception was that the City was less health conscious than other places I have lived.

Not that any of this is even relevant to the OP

Time for me to move to NYC.