New, afraid & alone...cheerful!

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My 9yo son was verbally diagnosed by his therapist this week as PDD-NOS. His father, my exh, is in complete denial and has pretty much refused further treatment; therapy or medication. We have joint shared custody and I feel like I'm trying to jump rope with no legs...HELP!

Ugh, I'm so sorry.

Many parents are understandably frightened about labeling their children. They remember the stigma special needs kids carried when they were kids, which is considerably different from the way things are now.

How old is your child? Can you enlist the help of your school? Sometimes, getting therapies for the specific deficits one at a time is a way to get around a label - so, for instance, if your child needs a social skills group, your ex may agree to that as long as it is couched in terms of improving skills and not the boogeyman condition he fears.

I agree with what was written above. One of my supervisors used to evaluate children and provide the parents with an autism spectrum diagnosis. Some parents cringe at the word and go through a period of denial, but often if you stopped using the word autism, or pdd, with them, and just addressed the needs, the parents were much more open to treatments. There was a family who would not accept that their child had autism, but admitted that their son had language difficulties and were willing to provide him with speech therapy. So he still got some of the help he needed, but the parents were allowed to distance themselves from the perceived stigma. What really matters is that your child gets some help, it doesn't matter what label your ex is comfortable with applying to him.
If you are unable to get him to agree to any type of therapy, perhaps you should consider legal action. It's unpleasant but your son deserves all the help he needs.

All true...this has been both a helpful and frustrating few days. I've always thought there were slight issues, but was always bullied into thinking otherwise. It's clear to see he needs some direction, maybe I will take the other approach of using the "non-label" help.

It's a tough place for DS, his younger brother(6) and sister(3) are so very outgoing and social and DS thinks he's a reject and a freak because no one wants to hang out with him....UGH

What specific treatments did you have in mind? A diagnosis does not necessarily require meds. It depends on what is specifically going on. Does he have co-morbids like depression or anxiety? If his issues are primarily social and social language he might be eligible for speech therapy from the school district. I do not know if you need your ex's approval for that as well, or how that works, but if you need it you can tackle it from the specifics of what your child needs help on vs. harping on the diagnosis. If he is still in the diagnosis phobic stage he might still be receptive to specific help for specific needs minus the spectrum umbrella diagnosis.

Social skills are not nothing. See if your ex will consider a social skills class and see if the school can assess him for pragmatic speech issues. If the school sees an issue (and make sure they contact the therapist,) you have a good chance of being able to access services no matter what your ex says. However, I'd first try going for school-based services without a label to see if you can just do an end-run around the whole problem.

My own son started falling apart at about that age, but bounced back surprisingly quickly when provided with the right tools.