We had DD's autism evaluation today.
lujain
member
Today DH and I brought DD to meet with a multidisciplinary autism evaluation team. Our daughter is 15 months old. Before the appointment we had filled out 30 pages of questionnaires for them. For the first hour, we met with an OT and an SLP. The second hour was a play session with a clinical psychologist and her intern. The last appointment was with the developmental pediatrician.
The OT and SLP seemed to think DD is not on the spectrum. The SLP commented on her joint attention and communicative intent. And we always knew she had great eye contact. The developmental pediatrician commented on her excellent eye contact as well. She also mentioned that they may be able to help us get more EI services regardless of whether DD has autism or not.
We were supposed to spend an hour with the developmental pediatrician, but she let us go after half an hour. She spent most of that time asking us (me and DH) questions, and she examined DD for a few minutes. I was disappointed that the developmental pedi did not want to spend more time observing DD.
We go back next week to review the team's findings. So now we wait.
Re: We had DD's autism evaluation today.
Good luck!
Looks like you did all you can here. You can always get a second opinion, if you question the dev pedi or any other professional. But, to be honest, ours didn't spend a full hour with DS either. She said she's been doing this for 30+ years and she knows what she's doing....oookay, I didn't say anything to that.
Your experience was similar to ours, except we were there for about 3 hours. They ran some non-verbal testing (Bayley's), some speech tests (Kaufman), questioned us in-depth, watched him eat various foods, watched him perfrom gross and find motor tasks, and observed him playing. They also mentioned his good eye-contact, pointing, communicative gesturing, joint attention, etc etc etc. We were told he was not on the spectrum. but did have oral / motor dyspraxia (apraxia of speech). He was the head of the hospital program, had started out in EI, and basically said the same thing. "When you've been doing this as long as I have, you know." (He did comment that he thought I might be a 'tad' obsessively worried! HA - no kidding! - but did commend me on having him seen since he did have such a gap between his receptive language skills and his expressive language skills.
I hope all goes well for you tomorrow.
Edited to add: the apraxia diagnosis and his report has been instrumental in getting my son OT and extra speech, and the results have already been tremendous. He told us not to expect him to speak until at least 3, and a month shy of 2 and 1/2 we have about 25 words (all in the last 2 weeks or so.) We have a looooonnnnggg journey ahead, but at least I feel like we've turned a corner. Now if I could just stop worrying like crazy....
Sounds like the appointment went well.
How did you arrange the appointment (decide to have this evaluation, find someplace to do it)?
We got a referral from DD's speech therapist. We just went through our HMO. I've been reading about autism for a while. My daughter didn't start babbling until she was 13 months old. She doesn't point. She will high-five but does not wave. Her imitation skills are poor. She does not pretend. She has sensory issues, specifically tactile defensiveness. And she flaps her arms when she is excited or upset.
Waiting for a possible diagnosis is really hard. I found myself googling the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule today. That's what the clinical psychologist was using to evaluate DD.
I forgot to mention in my original post that the developmental pediatrician asked to see DD's birthmarks and Mongolian spots. DD has a blue birthmark on her foot (I do too) and Mongolian spots on her butt. I assume that these are symptoms of some rare medical disorder that is linked to autism? Does anyone have specific info on this?
Lujain -
I worked with a little girl once who was in the process of being evaluated for ASD. They tested her for something (not sure what) because of spots on the back of her neck. I guess it was something that was related to ASD or could maybe present in a similar way. I think it might have been a blood test, and they did it right away. HTH