Aspergers dx given out too much

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Personally i think that many people that are given a diagnosis don't actually have aspergers. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing either. People are clearly getting a diagnosis because something is wrong and they need help. If asperger's is the most applicable diagnosis and it gets them help then why not?

Guess what? There was a meeting today and we did a consent for evaluation. The parent was pretty upset. A teacher stated that even if the child qualifies doesn't mean that we need to place the child in special education. She is part of the team decision. She stated that we can go ahead with the evaluation, discuss the results and then have another meeting two weeks later if she wants to proceed. I didn't even have a chance to talk with to them about this. We spent a lot of time being more specific about everything.

Makes me wonder if that teacher just read this and is figuring things out LOL

I called another parent today and she is not happy the preschool process. She feels like most team members don't want to give her child help and believes we need to do more testing. We talked for 40 minutes. I can see her perspective. I gave her numbers to agencies to help her with the process if she continues to feel this way. I hope she doesn't. She specifically stated that she felt extremely overwhelmed at the meeting and she had no time to process anything. She would have appreciated a warning and also wished that she had brought someone. It was a good talk. She is not excited about certain other people testing her child. I think she is just extremely frustrated.

It just so strange that those two things happened today after you posted about this yesterday. Very very strange.

That's one of the things i know family members of mine were concerned about was that if we do go ahead with the evaluation and they decide the diagnose my little lady with something, will they then take control of the situation? I've insisted i won't do anything i'm not comfortable with and i have the right to say i dont want to do something with her. But i'm not great at standing up for myself... hopefully i'll be better at standing up for my child.

This thread has given some great insight into the "other side of the table" thanks for that Nates Mom.

I've been told to be one of those people who doesn't seem to have it. Sometimes I'm not so sure that my diagnosis was right, because my differences aren't so obvious. However, if you lived with me, or knew me better as a child, it would be easier to see. Although even as a kid, I was still mild. But I did, and still do, have a number of characteristics.

equinn, thanks for your feedback. I did forget to mention that we are homeschooling. I understand the school district still has to offer us the evaluation if i request it (im not sure what the process is exactly, i need to call them) but i'm not sure once that is done, how it will help/affect us. I hope it gives me some leverage in the "i'm the parent, i'm know my kid best" department.

RE: refusing/accepting special education for your child
When you get to the point that you're faced with trying to help your child in the best way you can, making a decision about special ed can be quite daunting. As a parent, I went through a whole gamut of emotions before making the decision to place my son in special ed. i was sad, mad, in disbelief, confused, and overwhelmed.We ended up assigning my son the educational label of ED, just so that he could get the help he needed.

Thanks ster, you're awesome!

As always natesmom, I sure wish you lived closer to me! LOL. I would LOVE for you to be my childrens SP - (or advocate), because the ones here refuse to be as open minded as you are. I mean you questioned something but thought to look deeper by posting the question here. And then you sat back, listened to the responses and made a decision. Not alot of people would go that far to learn more. And thats the problem. There's still Doc's out there that will immediatly look at a child, say he's too social, or look how great his eye contact is and then, due to those two reasons claim the child is not on the spectrum.

HOG WASH

As you know I have two on the spectrum. When my younger guy got the dx of ASD, I really really hesitated on that because I just didn't believe it. I believed the Tourette Syndrome but I made the mistake of compairing my two children and my other one happens to be more affected by his AS than my younger guy. I kept saying to myself "He's so much more social, than XXXXX" ect, but then he would hold his fingers in a "classic" Okay sign for weeks where he would not let these fingers move apart even when he reached for something to pick up.

So after seeing more and more Aspie like behaviors I decided to get a second opinion and the answer was AS. At that point my doc gave me an example of how a kid can be on the spectrum, but you might not see it as clear as another child.

Here was his example and it helped me understand tremondously.

Say you have some red flags and you can score them from 1-10. 1 being the best and 10 being the worst.

Social .......................................3
Anxiety......................................10
Eyecontact...................................1
Lining things up.............................4
Litteral thinking..............................8
Motor skills....................................6
Sensory..........................................2

So obviously this child (and this was totally random) can do well socially better than he can deal with anxiety or frustration. All the numbers are different but they all add up to a Spectrum dx. The numbers help because obviously you need to address the higher numbers on helping the child first before you addresse the others.

I think if more and more people understood this, then they would get the "aha" moment and understand how sometimes a true aspie can go unnoticed under the radar.

I hope your doing well

Lainie

Ok i'm gonna do DD (4)

Social .......................................4
Anxiety......................................10
Eyecontact...................................3-4
Lining things up.............................7-8
Litteral thinking..............................6
Motor skills....................................1
Sensory..........................................9

DS (2)

Social .......................................1
Anxiety......................................1
Eyecontact...................................1
Lining things up.............................1
Litteral thinking.............................. (id ont think this applies so young does it?)
Motor skills....................................1
Sensory..........................................1

Are motor skills like building blocks etc?

And there is my aha moment. Now i know i'm doing the right thing... thank you, i feel like crying looking at that.

{{{Dilemma}}}

I'm so glad I could help you understand more. But please know, I just randomly threw things out there. And I am not a doctor lol. But by the looks of it, I agree, you are doing the right thing for your dd by having it addressed.

Motor skills (fine and gross) need to be tested by an OT. And I tell ya when my younger guy was tested privatly, there were things I never knew. Like he can't cross midline. I would have never guessed! But again, I would never be able to know because I'm not an OT.

As for your 2 yr old, thats great that he seems to be doing well. But also remember it's very hard to determine a child so young if he is high functioning. This also includes a 4 yr old and sometimes doctors are hesitant to put such a strong label on such a young child. Some may even do a wait and see. But the important thing is the services she needs are more important than the label at this moment, and if the school/preschool are doing that, then thats what matters the most. But I would certainly still go ahead and get a full eval from a doc.

As for litteral thinking/talking. It probably depends on your 2 yr olds language skills. Some have such high language that you can here how litteral they are. But some need more language experience to really know.

Lainie

Lanie, thank you so much. I knew the list was random hehe i thought it was a fairly good list though and although there is much much more involved than that, i think it gave a good indication of enough factors to be concerned or not.

My 2 year old seems as normal as normal, which is sort of weird after having one like my daughter, normal sort of gets distorted when your first is so unusual though. His language has been kind of slow to develop (not slow enough to be concerned, typical boy slow i think) and he is talking more now but still not talking enough for us to really understand his thinking style, and i know he is still very young to tell, with madam though we were noticing things well before age 2, even before age 1.

The psychologist we did see (who was a general one not and pediatric one and certainly not a specialist in ASD's) warned that he usually didn't see children so young. They decided at that (very short and with only me) meeting that a further evaluation was not necessary. That was probably 6 months or more ago so things are definitely clearer now, some things have "improved" (although im not sure if that's the word i'd use for what's happened with them) and some haven't at all and some have evolved.

Thanks for your help and input.