Autism is an acknowledged developmental condition/disorder that's been studied by professionals for decades. It also has significant impairments with very specific behavioural traits, therefore I believe it should be diagnosed if it has a significant impact on an individual (whether child or adult).
It may be diagnosed by any clinician in the medical/psychiatry fields, as long as the clinician who does a diagnostic assessment has sound experience and knowledge of autism, its symptoms and comorbids.
This is how I feel about things.
K
I just want know-nothing adults to stop misinterpreting my child's behaviour as disobedience or neurosis, and I'd like them to at least consider some simple measures that they might take to cause less of a sensory onslaught for my child. They haven't even done that.
A starting point could be to take the child for a couple of sessions with a child psychologist for behavioural analysis and get the psychologist to communicate with these know-nothing adults where necessary (such as teachers at school). It's called psycho-education and works very well.
I very much dislike the idea that what my child says about their experiences isn't validated till a qualified psychologist or psyhiatrist writes about it in a report or verifies it themself in person. Adults who are being paid to look after kids and their needs should communicate directly with kids and, unless there is reason not to believe, take what the kid says seriously.
It probably comes from the fact that most of them (administrators) have no problem lying about anything, even if they didn't when they were younger. And since NT's can no more see into other people's minds than we can, they assume everyone else is as much a lier as they are.
I would prefer a specially trained medical professional. They would also be able to deal with other health issues that autistic people have: allergies, digestive problems, help with life skills etc.
Psychologists are not usually covered by public insurance where I live and most families would not have access to them. Psychiatrists usually just prescribe alot of medications. Neurologists just would make the diagnosis and not really do much else - yes the brain scan and tests show you have AS, now go away.
why wouldn't get a diagnosis for your child? i spent all of my life out of place with ticking and stimming and other kids making fun of me and being taken advantage of, never being able to make my check book work right, constantly in and out of my parents house because for whatever reason i couldn't quite make out what it meant to live on my own. at 40 i currenlty live with my mother and she tells me all the time she worries about what is going to happen to me when she dies.
she tells me she's glad i was mainstreamed because i didn't have any kind of diagnosis even though everything pointed to the fact that something was wrong. but the earlier the diagnosis the better chance your child has of learning how to live in this world.
in case this sounds like i'm preaching or angry i'm not, mostly just curious and trying to have you understand what it can be like just because outward behaviour can look normal isn't really a gauge of what might be going on inside.
p.s. i think it requires a neurologist, psychologist, and psychiatrist.
i think i did apologize at the end of my post if i sounded anything other than curious. i tend to have problems even on paper with the way i come across.
i did read your post. i am really just curious because you want your son accomodated so there must be some kind of problem, especially when you said there was some other kind of neurological aspect of his possible aspergers.
weird friends don't make it any less painful to discover that you don't know how to approach other people who aren't seen as weird. in school this can be pretty hard to take, especially since elementary through high school the other kids can be so cruel.
stimming doesn't have to be obvious, neither does ticking. and either one of those doesn't necessarily have to take place where you can see them, they may only happen in certain situations or at certain places. of course, you may not even know that's what is happening even if you do see it. not all stims or tics make a person look disabled.
any cognitive problems don't have to be apparent. i always tested in the highest percentages on all of the state aechievement tests, as far as i know those have been around forever. i graduated from college summa cum laude. school is a very different environment than the real world.
my sensory issues were the most obvious. lights, sounds, tastes, textures all of them were the hardest and still are.
my mother always just thought i was really gifted, creative, and a little different. so it came as something of a surprise that i had so much trouble being an adult. but the adult environment is nothing like the protected environment at home. after the diagnosis my mother loooked back at my life and said "oh, that's why". as for the rest of my family - who knows.
i'm really not trying to get on to you, and i'm not trying to make you feel neglectful. i really am just curious. and just because you take your child to see if this is the diagnosis he needs doesn't really mean anything other than what you want it to mean. you don't don't have to put your child in special ed. or anything. but it would make it easier to prepare your child for what the rest of life is going to be like.
what kind of stigma are you talking about?
i'm sorry that i've offended you in some way. i tend to refer to everyone in the male (dude, man) unless i know otherwise, well sometimes even when i know. and yes i am naive which is probably why people take advantage of me all the time (i think that's an aspie traits) i also have a communication problem. i ask questions that others think have an obvious answer because i don't always understand what other people are trying to communicate, and other people always think i'm angry when i'm not (i think those are also listed as aspie characteristics).
Personally I would really like asperger or any other form on the spectrum to be diagnosed by psychologists. The view that this is preferable stemms from my own experiences. As I myself have only a light form of PDD-NOS (I almost feel to NT to even post here) I got my diagnosis via a slight detour.
In my youth I was always "eccentric", this off-course led to being bullied. This again led to a depression, for which I sought help at the local GGZ (geestelijke gezondheids zor = mental health care) institution. Here I was diagnosed as having PDD-NOS by a psychologist. This in turn led to a "treatment" consisting of sessions with a councellor which helped me fit the pieces of the puzzle together. I do have fond memories of this time and feel that the team there really had all the knowledge available. Also it might have helped that my councellor thought he might have been a bit atypical himself.
I did have contact with a psychiatrist there, but only to have anti-depressants, for my depression off course, prescribed to me.
After this initial diagnosis I also had to have a neurologist diagnose me in order to keep my drivers-licence. This was only because of the use of medication (anti-depressants) and the depression. He however did have absolutely no knowledge whatsoever about autism and couldn't even see it and my inability to deal with being eccentric up to that time as a cause for the initial depression. Instead his diagnose was that I was "merely" prone to depression and psychosis and should have a re-evaluation each year. This luckily lasted only one year but it did cost me about 250,- euros to have a new drivers licence made, which I and my councellor felt was utterly preposterous.
My conclusion in short is that talities.he diagnosis realy helped me understand myself better. I also feel that it doesn't matter who made the diagnosis, the "stigma" is the same. Given that last remark, i'd rather have the people with decades of experience involved.
This conclusion is made however from a dutch perspective. It seems to me that the dutch society doesn't really think differently about neurological disorders or mental illness, though it usually classifies both as being more severe, at least more "scary", than physical ...ehm... abnormalities
Has a pig of a temper, though. :roll:
:lol: Don't all teenagers!
Alison
If the right diagnositc criteria existed and was properly understood, I think I'd personally prefer a neurologist (and I say that cautiously, because the two occasions when a neurologist came into our lives were less than impressive).
I think the reason that I feel a bit reluctant about psychologists is that there seems to be more emphasis in psychology to understanding and repairing the mind (it's the latter bit particularly that I feel uncomfortable with), whereas neurology seems a more 'this is the way your brain is wired' approach.
Psychology: mind gone wrong - let's figure out why and what we can do.
Neurolgy: brain wired this way, thus incurable.
I only apply this to diagnosis of Aspergers. I don't know enough about other disorders. It would certainly be wonderful if AS diagnosis did start looking as sensory dysfunction too.
In an ideal world a diagnose wouldn't be necessary and people wouldn't need to ask/think "whats wrong with me", and people would be taught in ways that play into their strengths and helps them make up for any weeknesses that the person may have and everyone would be apprechiated, respected and accepted. I vote for "not requiring a diagnoses and a specific label that describes a possable set of issues not even being necessary."