autistic spectrum disorder as a diagnoses

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this is part of my daughters diagnoses i have always felt it is a cop out. she has the learning difficulties associated with kanners autism but she presents more like someone with aspergers. just wondered what your thoughts are on this as a diagnoses?

I think that the lines between Kanner's autism and AS are pretty arbitrary - as I understand it the main difference is when someone starts speaking - if it is really late then it is Kanner's and if not it is AS . . .
Somewhere in there comes HFA, and I've never understood right where it goes . . .
My point is that I wouldn't get too hung up on the semantics if I were you . . .

I agree with Animallover. My son was oringally diagnosed with ADD, then 2 years later with AS. Then, when a host of new doctors wanted to evaluate him, they said High Functioning Autism simply because his language was delayed - no other reason. They basically said that the difference is merely academic - had his language not been delayed (he had hearing impairment due to severe ear infections and later tubes put in, so I think it had more to do with that, than HFA, but that's just a mom's opinion!) they would have concurred with the AS dx. I personally have stuck with the AS dx because again, I think the language delay didn't have anything to do with the AS/HFA, but the bottom line is the symptoms are so similar and the differences so slim, that I wouldn't worry too much about the actual "title".

Asperger's is an autism spectrum disorder, the last I heard.

i think my main concern is that because the diagnoses is a bit vague people wrongly assume she is far less able than she actually is.

Yes, it is an autism spectrum disorder. The last thing that I have read in regards to HFA was that HFA is when an autistic person has an IQ that is average or above average. People who are LFA have mental retardation. But this is only the consensus of what I've been reading.

There's an article I found for a research project I did on autism awhile ago, so I'll see if I can find it again and either post it here or post a link here. It talks about the similarities and differences between HFA and AS.

People defined as LFA often test as having low IQs. Which is the whole fallacy of that thing -- even if IQ tests made sense, how would you accurately test the knowledge of someone with a severe communication impairment?

Of course I was defined that way without a low IQ, so I don't even know if there's that much logic to it.

Biggest problem is some professionals place 'PDD' as a diagnostic term for Autism and others use 'ASD' and none of them really use a standardized diagnostic term across the board to avoid confusion.

You could look at that as an opportunity for her to exceed their expectations. In any case, people really do need to start treating us as individuals. The people should be asking "what can she do?" instead of "what can LFA/HFA/AS people do?", in which case the label becomes less important.

Sometimes diagnosis has as much to do with what is reimbursable as what a person acutally is experiencing. Also you have to remember that medicine is an art as well as a science. translation: they are just guessing.