My son is newly diagnosed and I need all the Help I can get.

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I took my recently turned 3 year old to the school for assessment on on their chart (not sure which one) he scored 31 (30 and above is on the ASD). I then took im to the neurologistand he said that he has autistic traits but he wouldn't say he is autistic, but we should set up some therapy, as if he is. This has me confused, should I believe the school or the neurologist. The school exam is done by the psychologist, speech therapits, social worker and physical therapist. My son has delays in his motor skills, has lost some language and does a lot of echolalia. If pressed, he is however to able to ask for what he wants (with bad grammer).

Hi major autistic traits are, sometimes he acts as if he if deaf so you have to talk to him a lot to get him to do anything you want him to do. He has poor eye contact with anyone apart from his immediate family and sitter, he doesn't paly with his cousins and not so much anymore with his brother (he used to play a lot more with them), he sometimes spins but if I stop him he doesn't seem to care. He toe walks sometimes, but doesn't care if I stop him.

He is not big on routines and seems indifferent if they are changed. But, he wont point at most things to show me. He will mostly point in the books or if it's fairly close by. I have to really work to keep him interested in playing catch. His favorite toys are books, he does picture reading, basically paraphrasing the pages we read.

Getting him to build blocks like what I do, basically copy me, is like pulling teeth. I can barely get him to follow a simple 4 block pattern like what I do. He knows almost all his shapes, numbers and colors and has a thing for car logos. He will go on the swing with his father but only for a min with me. He will paly at the park if I lead, but if I stop leading, he wants to walk under the jungle jim back and forth. He will run away from anyone if he gets the chance.

He also seems to need to figure out things by putting them in his mounth. He wants to taste everything and has a preference for crunchy things but will reluctantly eat other things (I have to bribe him with juice to eat his dinner). He loves to hug and kiss.

When the school assessed him, he couldn't do a lot of sime tasks (putting things in, on, or under) but when he is at home, depending on his mood, he will followthose commands and he knows what they mean.

Hehas a hard time follow anything more than 1 command at a time.

I am wondering now if he is "slow" or if he is autistic. He clearly has developmental delays, but I would like to understand it better so that I can help him. Also, with autistic toddler, is there a difference between can't or wont?

I just want to make sure that after we die, my son is able to fend for himself and wont be taken advantage of. Thanks in advance for your help.

we went through a long confusing process for diagnosis... see my post under new here frustrated momma...

I would say that even if your son does not have ASD, he seems to be getting at least some of the therapy he needs for a variety of things that may point to an ASD diagnosis later and this is a very good thing... the bottom line is that they treat the issues (every ASD kid is different), they don't treat "autism" HOWEVER at least with us, the "ASD" diagnosis has opened huge doors at school and in getting additional therapy outside of school due to insurance reasons so I would definitely make the doctor revisit that decision every once in a while... or see another doctor that you know has lots of experience with ASD

in the beginning I got hung up on all the components, like auditory processing disorder, sensory integration, pragmatic speech problems, etc and in a way I am glad I did because rather than go to therapy and just take whatever they give me, I tend to ask a lot of questions and why do you think it is this versus that, etc and I know what to look the other 23 1/2 hours that he is not in that therapy session ...

I also would make sure to tell any therapists you see that although he is not diagnosed by a doctor, that you and the school suspect that he may be autistic-- I think this might help them figure out what direction to take with therapy or help them understand how to approach your son-- you might bring them a sort of checklist or just print out what you wrote here

with our son, we always knew he was different but we weren't sure if he was just quirky... until kindergarten hit and more social demands were placed on him... now in 1st it is pretty apparent to us that he does have differences from the other kids... this is not at all uncommon amongst higher functioning kids-- to not see or be able to diagnose until later... although I wished we would have pushed to get the help earlier on (he did not get any therapy until he was 6), I am still not sure we would have been able to see this when he was 2 1/2... the good news is that you are getting some help and can be watchful

Well why does he have to play catch, maybe its not interesting to him......same with the blocks, I would maybe encourage the reading and such rather then trying to push activities that bore him especially activities that are not nessisary for life. I mean I never liked playing anything like catch because I am terrible at catching things people throw at me.

Thanks for the replying to my post. We are in the waiting process to see what services the school will eventually recommend. The school psychologist did tell us that if he improved in any one of the areas they flagged, he could actually lose the ASD diagnosis. This makes me happy and sad at the same time. I definitely want him to function independently, however, I want him to get all of the therapy that he can get because I think he needs them now. There is little to no services without the ASD diagnosis and my insurance does not cover any therapy.

The school psychologist said that a neurologist diagnosis would strenghten my case, however, the neurologist is not ready to make that diagnosis. I am terrible conflicted. I have an appointment nextmonth with another neurologist at a different hospital so I can get a second opinion. If he agrees with the other neurologist, I will not tell the school that we evensaw aneurologist since it is not mandatory.

What probably threw the neurologist off is that my son was and is very friendly with adults and babies. He huged the neurologist and told him he loved him and waved to him as he was leaving. I know it made us look like weare mad. Also, I thinkt he neurologist has Aspergers and maybe even Tourettes. I am wondering if he is setting the bar higher for my son because of his own experience. I am not sure how I feel about that.

I also wanted to add that since we started forcing our son to ask for what he want's, he is talking a little more. That has only been happening for the past 2 weeks.

Is that a symptome of autism or something else?

for my son, it was pretty usual for him to just climb a cabinet to get what he wants and we just thought he was independent... at the same time he would just start hitting his head for no apparent reason.. I was not able to connect the two until he was 5.... we were in walmart and he started banging his head, it was actually my other son who started asking him if he wanted this or that and he wanted a toy that we had just been near.... while my older son was grabbing things off the shelf and asking for what he wanted, my younger one just sat in the cart playing with his fingers never even mentioning any toy... I know it sounds stupid, but it never dawned on me that we could be right there and he would not say anything but then start banging his head after we were shopping somewhere else for 15 minutes-- i was thinking he was fussing over something in the food isle where we happened to be or just ready to leave...

I started doing some reading, and then one day I asked him why he did not tell me wanted that toy when we were in the toy aisle, and he says because you know.... and I said how do you think I knew... and he had no answer... after a bit more questioning, I realized that he thought that I knew whatever was going on in his head.... I thought no way that could be right, but now that I have reminded him that I don't know what his brain is thinking when we are somewhere that I know he will want something or when he is climbing the cabinet, he seems to be telling me a lot more things.. and to give you some perspective, my son is very verbal, so we had not suspected any of this, but now it is easy to see that he is verbal with physical things, not with social/emotional things-- we filled out a lot of questionaires wrong in the diagnosis because of subtle differences like this

I used to get the ignore thing all the time and it was due to 2 things.... I found out in Kinder that he could not tell the difference between a statement and a question-- he is an A-B student but he totally failed this questions test-- no wonder he never answered me when I was frantically calling him and searching through the house (he would just be on his bed calmly reading) he had no idea he was supposed to answer.... the other thing is that his brain is always going into some creative universe-- he creates these movies in his head-- I know now that when he doesn't answer, I have to stop him, ask him what his brain is thinking, then tell him to hit the pause button on that...

these things are just my son-- your son could be completely different-- most of how I figure things out are to read asperger books or to look on this site, then I watch him, sometimes I ask questions but this is tricky because you don't want to lead him in any direction because of how you are questioning, most of the time I just try different things based on what I think to see how he will react

I know they say each austic child is different but I just seem so many contradictions in my son. He seeks out people to cuddle him but will run away if I am not careful. He is totally into his little sister, always wanting to hug andkiss her and talk "baby" talk to her but will only play the games he wants to paly with his older brother (my children ages are Boy-5, Boy-3, and Girl-1). He has no other sensory issues that we have found except for wanting to taste random things, but also likes to spin to self stimulate. He rides the train, can walk next to a busy intersection, can deal with trucks, etc. He doesn't like short sleeves, but after a few minutes of crying, he get's over it.

We took him into the pre-school class on a tour and he immediately started taking the books, claiming "that's my book!" which I think is more anti-social than autistic. He likes when you chase him but has no concept of hide and seek. He can imitate funny faces and seems to be able to read my face when I am happy or angry. He can also read my body language. But, he lost verbal language which makes no sense. And how can he begin to regainit after just 2 weeks of forcing him to talk. Never mind him scoring so low on the assessment tests.

Then, I notice that sometimes when I ask him to do something that he is supposed to do, he get's a sly smile and drags his feet. So, he purposely doesn't do what he knows he's supposed to do (like cleaning up, etc). He also loves to report about a mess but has no issues with being messy. He will gingerly suck catsup off his fingers.

Then there are times he just zones out and lies on the ground, sofa, etc. His idea of a tantrum is to lie on the ground where ever he is and suck his finger and play with his ears. He's got the peaceful protest down pat. I honestly think that there are a couple things going on with him, but I don't know what it is.

He seems really into books and memorizing things. How much of that should I limit or encournage?

Also, I find it very interesting that your son is verbal and yet thought you could read his thoughts or even that his thoughts come across as a movie. I actually think that a photo graphic memory is truly a great asset.

When my son can speak more clearly, I am going to ask him that, just to cover my bases.

With what you just said, I can totally see why the neurologist is hesitant to diagnose him with ASD. Those are all good signs. Again, every child is different... but with my son all the signs were there... he mostly ignored other children until he was about 4 and did not play with our older son (he played around him) but we just were not sure if he was shy/preferred to do things independently at that age and could play if he chose/ would grow out of it later ( I was a shy child and played by myself a lot, but I am NT). We saw lots of things at an early age, but were not sure how they would change over time.

Hopefully, all your son will need is speech therapy and OT. I would ask a speech therapist if they have any other kids with symptoms that fit your description. If your son is having trouble with speech and motor skills, your doctor can still refer him to just speech therapy and OT without an ASD diagnosis, and your insurance should pay for that.

My son is a walking bag of contradictions. Even with all that I said, he does sometimes spin and flap his hands sometimes but isn't bothered by me stopping him. His tantrums are for 2 things, not getting his way or what he wants, or not being understood.

But back to what you said about the insurance paying for BT, OT and ST (he needs all 3). If the neurologist writes a prescription, he can have it? I have Aetna and they said no therapy if the diagnosis is autism. But, to get the therapy, there has to be an begining and an end, like reabilitation after surgery.

Have you every done this before? how did you go about doing it?

Also, you said you saw a lot of things at an early change, in our case, our son started to lose a lot of his skills after he turned 2 (and his sister was was born).

One thing I would suggest is try to treat him as normal as you can until the autistic symptoms become more obvious. The main reason the neurologist said he can't diagnose him is because at that early of an age there is no guarantee and if they get it wrong then parents get angry with them. When I was diagnosed I asked the doctor "in your personal opinion what do you think I have" I did that with 2 doctors and they were both perfectly honest with me. When you ask a doctor their personal opinion they can usually relax and not worry about a misdiagnosis hurting them.

When I the neurologist his personal opinion, he said he did see the autistic traits and he said my son would benefit from the programs in the school, but he didn't feel that he didn't feel like he was autistic. He did say that since he is 3, we should just monitor the situation and re-evaluate down the line. One of the things that threw off the neurologist was his social skills and the fact that he would respond sometimes.

He basically stripped him down to his pull-ups and was playing with him on the ground and my son was completely indifferent. Of course he spun and flapped his arms a few times but that was more out of happiness than stress. My son also repeated his commercials and some pharses from his shows but the neurologist didn't seem to concerned about that. Also, we had a big red baloon and my son was quite happy running and hitting it.

It sounds like if he is autistic then he is high functioning. Which you don't need to be majorly concerned with because it won't show anything until they are usually about 5-6. At that point I would take him back to get tested and that will tell you if he has it and what it means.

At this point there is not true way of knowing if it is autism or just quirks young ones have. I didn't show any major signs till I was about 6 and did not get diagnosed until I was 17. But each case is different and each child is too.

If you want there is a department where I work (United Way) for parents to learn what they should do to help their child. I have talked to them a few times about autism and they know a lot of great resources. I can talk to them to see what they suggest.

A couple of very general resources. First of all, read through some of the stickied posts at the top of this board - in particular, check over the sample IEP pages, because having that language is going to be important when you deal with the schools.

Second, one of our posters wrote this book that many parents have found helpful: asdstuff.com

Third, Autism Speaks has an excellent kit for the first 100 days after diagnosis, as well as resources for grandparents, etc. if you need them: http://www.autismspeaks.org/family-serv ... 00-day-kit

There's a very incomplete subject index of some posts stickied at the top, too - see if any of the subjects are something to explore further.

I will come back and read your questions in more depth later to see if I have anything to offer, but this stuff is a good place to start for anyone with a recent diagnosis.

Thanks so much for your input. I never knew the United Way had anything to do with helping families affected by autism.

Regarding Aspergers, I thought they usually developed pretty good language skills early on. My son was a late speaker (started speaking in very short sentences around 2), but then lost a lot of the words within a few months of gaining them (a little before he turned 3). In the last 2 weeks we have forced him to speak, so he is speaking a little more now. This doesn't seem to fit anything that I have read.

Also, my son loves books, letters and numbers, but he is not good with most of the skills that the school tested. He is not good with imitating what they asked him to do (like building blocks) but he is pretty good at imitating movements or funny faces. He is also not good at following their directions, but interestingly enough, he was able to sit with them for about 20-25 minutes while they "quizzed" him, before he got restless.

Does any of that sound like Aspergers?

Momspary, thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I am very interested to hear what you think, based off your own experiences.

My son at 3 had great eye contact, was super social, loved to hug and kiss, hang out with adults and babies or younger kids. He had imaginative play, imitative play, little to no stims, he had speech (though was delayed in speech) I can look back and think his jumping was a stim, and one breif preiod he liked to rub his hands along fences, but thats all. he was charming and all his therapists loved him as did his teachers. NONE of them ever mentioned ASD. It wasnt until he was near 6 that he got the Aspergers diagnosis.

When they are little and so high functioning it can be hard to get the ASD diagnosis.