Serious question: how many people participated in the formation of your child’s autism diagnosis? When my son was identified 14 years ago, a team of half a dozen early-intervention teachers and therapists spent three months conducting multiple observations in both home and preschool settings, collecting and analyzing the data, interviewing me, our pediatrician and others who had contact with us. The resulting evaluation was forty pages and so thorough that our pediatrician said he had nothing to add. Times change, and nowadays I sometimes hear of 90 minutes spent one-on-one in the office of a doctor or psychologist resulting in a diagnosis of PDD-NOS, autism, ADD/ADHD or Asperger’s.
How was your child diagnosed and by whom? Were you satisfied with the accuracy of the diagnosis at the time, and are you still comfortable that it’s accurate? Did the diagnosis shift or change over time? Why? What, if anything, would you like to see done differently in the diagnostic process, both at the beginning and ongoing?
A lively discussion is going on over at my Facebook page today. “It took two and half years to get the diagnosis that I already knew,” says one mom, while another tells us, “My son went through 3 different schools and all the way to the 5th grade before we asked the school to evaluate. They did not find it. Two years later we had to hire a neuropsychiatrist who tested him for 5 hours and came to the blatant conclusion that he had classic Aspergers.”
Join the discussion on Facebook.
