since he was 18 mo. he has been evaluated with neurologist and other doctors through the insurance and other than his speech delay they say he is normal. was also evaluated by the school specialists and on his IEP it says he has some signs of autism but could not be ruled out at the time.
now 2 yrs later the school psychologist says my son has mild to moderate autism. I know its hard to accept that there's something wrong with our child but im confused on who to believe.
My son was in Early Intervention for his Speech delay. Even though I said there is something wrong all his therapists said they saw no sign of Autism. A year later he gets the diagnosis. It was just too early for anyone to be absolutely sure. Even the school only gave him 30 mins. of speech at age 3 until 6 months later they realized and saw all the signs they needed to re-evaluate him. All along we kept saying no therapy can harm (OT, Speech, PT, etc) but only help any child so I would just get all the therapies you can until you know for sure yourself. In my situation it was a blessing. From 3 words as a 2 year old to mainstream kindergarten.
I knew at 3 yrs old something was wrong with my son. He was in early intervention for 2 yrs for speech delay. He was almost 9 before he was diagnosed. I was angry because they could have discovered this at 3 and I would have had a jump start on therapies. If you suspect it is autism get him evaluated by a psychologist.
My sons school did an evaluation on him when he was 4. They gave him and IEP for delayed reasoning. They put him in a special needs early intervention preschool. When he entered kindergarten his teacher recommended that we pull his IEP because he was doing so well in her class. In 1st grade he did very bad academically and behaviorally. We decided to get a private evaluation done. I began the search for what my insurance would cover as far as doctors went. I found a Autism psychologist that has 2 autistic children of her own. She began the testing for us and when she said my son had autism I was in shock. I was in denial for about 6 months. He is now in 3rd grade and I definitely can tell that he has autism. It is the only thing that explains his odd behavior. I know it is hard to get them diagnosed when they are young but early intervention is the key to their greatest success. I know it is scary but I can handle knowing what he has. It is the not knowing or understand that leaves me powerless. good luck and keep being his advocate.
I agree, the earlier the better! We just got our diagnosis for our son at 2 1/2 years old, but we were seeing many of the red flags by 12 months - he started therapy six months later and is progressing well. We still have our challenges, of course, but taking immediate action is vital for mainstream social integration in the future.
Thank you everyone for sharing your experience and knowledge, it has helped me.