Advice please
Background: I had my son enrolled in our states EI program at 18mos bc he only said 1 word at that time. I had a bad experience with the program and he also started to increase his vocabulary so I dropped him out of the program a few months later. I thought since he started picking up a few words he would get that "overnight explosion of language" that everyone told me was coming.
Well, now he is 27 months old and while he can say hundreds of words and repeat verbatim what I ask him to, he is unable to say two or more words together. Also, when around other children, he either plays by himself or beats the other kids up. I always chalked it up to him being aggravated that he cant express himself so he would get physical. Well, today, a friend of mine said that my son reminds her to the T of her son at that age and she got him special services to help him and she swears that without these services her son would be autistic today.
I appreciate her honesty, but I feel like I got hit by a dumptruck. Never did I think my son is austistic. He is loving, he hugs and kisses family, he understands everything we say, he is physically advanced: early walker/crawler, potty trained at 20 months old, has a great imagination while playing, points to things in books, wants to hold his sister or give her her paci when she is crying, etc...
I have already called my pedi today to have him evaluated for austism, if just for peace of mind and also to have him seen by a private speech therapist. Am I overreacting? Am I doing the right steps? Anything else I can do to help my sweet boy? I havent been able to stop crying since talking to my friend today. I know you cant diagnose him here on a chat board, maybe I am just looking for reassurance?! Thanks for any insight you can provide.
Re: Advice please
Been there, know how you feel. My ds would repeats tons of words or phrases we said at that age, but it was echolalia. He didn't know what it meant, he just "echoed" what we said.
With autism, not to say that is what you dc has, every child is different. The phrase auntie (I am sure she will respond, she is the expert around here on autism), used was "if you've seen one child with autism, you've seen one child with autism."
There are so many different functioning levels of autism, and there is also similar disorders such as sensory processing disorder, Aspergers (which is on the spectrum) which all present similar symptoms and overlap some with autism.
My ds has always been very loving, does have imaginative play, and understands a large portion of what we say. But, he is socially awkward (you can tell he is really excited to be around friends, but just doesn't know what to say), and has some stimming issues such as flapping hands. And he is still slightly behind in language (his ST and ABA program has significantly helped him with that), pragmatics being his biggest struggle.
Have you thought about going to a developmental pediatrician to get him evaluated as well? My ds was evaluated by EI when he was 2 1/2, and they did not catch his autism, as he was a hard one to spot. We took him to a dev ped right before he turned 3 in addition to the school system, which takes over his services from EI @ 3. School system came back with Aspergers and the dev ped gave us a full blown autism diagnosis (and this is what we go with because he does have language delay, which is not common for Aspergers).
Good for you on getting him evaluated. At least you may get some answers one way or another. It is very overwhelming at first, when I was at your point in the process, my life was a blur and I don't remember much, I was completely and utterly stressed out.
There are excellent ladies on here with great experiences similar to yours. Feel free to post anytime. Good luck!
Im so sorry it was dumped on you like that.
Make the call, talk to the pedi, set up an evaluation. You are not overreacting. You wont rest until you do now. Right now, hopefully it wont cost you an arm and a leg b/c you still have EI..... and you could schedule an appt with a Developmental Pedi for another opinion now...but that appt will likely have a 6+mo wait.
However, how is her son doing now? Autism doesn't go away. Maybe he had different issues.... but there is no cure for Autism.
There are misconceptions that you have to flap or have no eye contact to have autism, but most of what you've heard via the media is depicting a small sector of the spectrum. Theres a lot of kids all over the place... all differing in impairment.
I'm truly sorry you're going through this, it reminds me of me about 2 years ago.
1) Your friend's son likely never had autism, even in the "beginning stages", because like the PP said, it doesn't just go away with some therapy.
2) You are definitely doing the right thing getting him evaluated by more professionals. From my personal experience, it was VERY difficult for professionals to dx my son at that age (2.5 yrs) and most of them honestly missed it completely at that point, including my Pedi, our first SLP, our first Dev Pedi...and mind you, this was an expert at UCLA who had data on my boy from a 4-month intensive EI "preschool" type service at UCLA, which she was in charge of, where he went 3xweek 3 hrs a day the entire 4 months. Even after this long observation, she said he doesn't have ASD. He only got dx'd by the schoold district child psychologist at 3yrs old and the Regional Ctr psych agreed, but told me off the record she was not sure, but didn't want him to fall through the cracks, so went ahead and dx'd him. Fast forward to now,...yeah, even though I hate to admit it still, it's obvious to me he most likely has some form of ASD, though pretty mild still...but not mild enough to ignore it.
So, in my case at least, had I stopped at one person who said there is nothing wrong with him, except for some mild language delay and mild social delay, I would have made a big mistake. It's great you're taking charge and want to get a few opinions at least. And maybe it'll all be fine, who knows - evaluations will do him no harm, if he's ok developmentally. But, it's good you're being proactive, in case he does need help.
Good luck and stay strong!
Thanks everyone, I have calmed down quite a bit now.I appreciate all your input. I will feel even better after he has his evaluation just to know one way or another. Deep down, I know there is something not right. I am still hoping it is just a speech delay. My pedi is having him evaluated by a developmental pedi and also seen by a speech therapist.
In regards to my friend's son, she said that since she caught a problem in her son early, she was able to get him "over the wall" before it was too late (her words). I thought it sounded like something Jenny McCarthy has said too- it sounded right, but obviously I am no expert on autism.
Again, thanks for your stories and information, for some reason, it feels better to hear from others going through the same thing.