How early did you receive an ASD diagnosis?
My daughter is 18 months old. When she was 12 months she was diagnosed with infantile spams which is a seizure disorder. She was hospitalized and treated, so far successfully, for the seizures. She had the whole workup of tests done to see if it was a genetic disorder that lead to the infantile spasms but everything luckily came back negative.
She was very delayed developmentally due to the seizures. She has been in EI since 9 months. Now she is displaying some signs that are leading us and her doctors to talk about ASD. But, I'm also not sure if it's just part of her delays. We are seeing a developmental neuropsychologist at Children's Hospital in September.
She is nonverbal and only does a little babbling. She just started walking this month. She flaps her arms when she is excited, mostly when I come home from work or when she sees my mom in the morning. We are the 2 people she sees the most. She does not like to make eye contact, she will either look away or squeeze her eyes really tight. She hates to be held and now that she can walk she will not sit on my lap at all. If I try to make her sit she has a fit. When she's in her high chair she throws herself against the back of the chair repeatedly. She likes to bang her head on things and has recently started hitting herself in the head. She does not play with toys the way she probably should be for her age. She does not point. She also doesn't respond to her name.
My pediatrician mentioned yesterday starting ABA therapy. She said even if it's not autism the therapy might be helpful to her.
I don't know if anyone has any advice for me. It's so hard wondering if it's related to the seizures or if something else is going on.
Thanks for reading!
Re: How early did you receive an ASD diagnosis?
Based on your description, I think you're wise to seek out an eval... DD got evaluated and diagnosed with PDD-NOS at about 22 months. We began ABA therapy right away (in addition to the speech and OT she was already receiving), and it's worked wonders. And I agree with your doc- In many cases, I believe ABA therapy can be of great value, even if you're not necessarily dealing with autism.
Just noticed you're in MA... so am I. Please let me know if you need any information about resources- I'd be happy to help. Good luck!
Thanks so much for your reply. I would love to know of some resources in the area. I live on the south shore. I googled ABA therapy but only found a few listings for it. If you wouldn't mind emailing me I would really appreciate it.
janmarie291@aol.com
Thanks!
DS was diagnosed with Autism at 14 months. We started ABA right away and it was great in teaching DS skills and the ability to learn from his environment,
Good luck!!!
I have 2 sons - one diagnosed with autism (at just over 3) and one diagnosed with PDD-NOS (at around 2.5). I'm not great with dates, so those are rough estimates to avoid me looking it up. I believe that the older one would have been diagnosed earlier, but we lived overseas until he was 2.5 and couldn't get anyone to really address my concerns until we moved back.
With my younger DS I sort of question the diagnosis and even at the time it was sort of a "we think he probably has.." diagnosis. Part of this was also based on the fact we also already had a DS with autism, so we had a family history. His language was realllly delayed, so that made it hard to get a good read on his abilities at that age. He didn't speak at all until 2 and now at 3yrs 5mths is answering age appropriate wh- questions, is generally understandable by strangers, and has some pretty awesome social skills. Once we worked on his articulation issues, the receptive moved along rapidly and he started developing like crazy. He still has some sensory issues and is still working on articulation, but I'm just not sure about autism still.
I guess my point is, if I had it to do all over again I'm not sure I would stress about getting him diagnosed at that age again. It had no impact on our therapy - we organize this based on their areas of delay, not on the diagnosis. I think the dr. that diagnosed him would have had a better idea about what we were dealing with if we waited. On the other hand, our particular insurance policy covers more therapy if you have a diagnosis of autism, so it helped with therapy costs (our policy covers ST and OT for autism but not for general delays). You can have the evaluation and still not get all of the answers you are seeking at this age, which is very hard. Even if they tell you "yes, this is autism" it isn't an open and shut answer as to what that will mean for her. I would work on assessing her delays and putting together a therapy schedule as you first priority.