Quote:
Originally Posted by Clodfobble
If there is no significant language delay, it is not autism, by medical definition. Your daughter may end up with a diagnosis of Asperger's, ADHD, or any number of other diagnoses which are not autism, and they may rightly apply. If she ends up with a diagnosis of pure autism, then you must be correct, the diagnosis is being watered-down by some inexperienced medical professionals, because she does not have autism.
The fact remains that I have sat in a conference room with 50 other Pre-K autistic children all from my school district, all of whom had serious and obvious developmental delays, most of whom were completely nonverbal. Given the size of my school district, that works out to slightly less than the national rate of 1 in 150 (1 in 90 boys, because boys are affected 4 times more often than girls,) because of course this was a PPCD meeting and it didn't include any of the older autistic kids already in the system. If you could have sat in that room with me, you would understand the despair. None of these children could have slipped through the cracks in years past, ever. There are always going to be a handful of borderline cases that could persevere and cope on their own, but they are insignificant in the face of the total numbers. At any rate, I'm done discussing the topic with you, Tiki. I get enough of the "they'll grow out of it" head-in-the-sand bullshit from my older relatives, I don't need to subject myself to more of it here.
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Delays in communication and social interaction are part of the diagnosis, not just language development.
Language delay is subjective for each child, based on where the child *should* be for their abilities. That is my point; that is why very intelligent, high-functioning autistic children have great difficulty being correctly diagnosed, and why there is reason to believe that in the past many did not get diagnosed with anything at all. Aspergers is included in the overall statistical rise in autism figures, as it is a form of autism.
The school language development specialist said there is no significant delay compared to statistics for her age group (there is a slight delay compared to average, but not enough to be considered pathological) but when assessed as an individual by the neurology center and by our pediatrician, she was found to have significant delays compared to where she should be based on her IQ. She was performing at an average for the general population, but was delayed for where she, as an individual should be. J, my friend's child, had the same difficulty with getting the school to recommend testing... because his extremely high intelligence was masking his disorder, he was able to function at a reasonable average despite the fact that without the disorder he would have been performing far beyond his peers in all areas, including communication.
This is why there is a disconnect between what schools will perceive as an indication of a disorder, and what specialists, treating each child as an individual, will perceive as an indication of a disorder. The schools are basing their expectations on an average, and any child who meets that average is assumed to have nothing wrong with them.
There is a question about whether high-functioning autism can really be distinguished as a separate disorder from Asperger's, because, as a spectrum disorder, there is no clear line at the high-functioning end that divides the two. J, for instance, has a diagnosis of autism rather than Aspergers largely because he exhibits classic hand-flapping, pacing, and aversion to touch. He is also unbelievably articulate for a ten-year-old, though there are long pauses in his conversation.
You might find some of these links interesting:
http://www.autism-help.org/points-autism-epidemic.htm
http://ww1.cpa-apc.org:8080/Publicat...r/tidmarsh.asp
http://www.nas.org.uk/nas/jsp/polopo...?d=1049&a=3337
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-sym...vel-autism.htm
http://www.apa.org/monitor/dec04/definition.html
http://www.med.yale.edu/chldstdy/autism/aspergers.html
http://www.autism-help.org/