You could be right, me and Mrs could be working ourselves up over nothing. Have to see if/when she’s diagnosed.
I know we are all tempted, but Google isn't always the best place to go for this kind of thing or medical stuff as the stuff you find will often serve to just freak you out. I think we should all whenever possible just let our kids be kids as they are a long time grown up!
Yeah, to be fair, the DSM-5, the manual they use for diagnosing people with Autism and mental health conditions, it's frightening some of the ways the doctors compiling it came to agreements on what certain diagnoses were. When they couldn't agree on the specifics of a diagnosis they would do a show of hands, which to me sounds strange for something so serious.
Thank you, hopefully this thread will still be around in time, can always come back to it.
It's a very deep sea. As it says on the tin it's a spectrum and thus can become conflated with so many other conditions, including those of mental health. What was once diagnosed as AS is now being reassessed as issues such as trauma and PTSD are the cause of similar traits. Same with ADHD, so many kids have been misdiagnosed and wrongly medicated. Big pharma is partly to blame but not wholly. It's just as bewildering for medical/psychiatric professionals.
That happy bit is all that matters.
Even as a severe case, which of course we all hope is not so, there is very little to stop her enjoying a completely happy and fulfilled life.
Thank you. It’s reassuring to know when you could be faced with the unexpected. Happiness is the most important thing, everything else is secondary.
There was a documentary about couple of years back with Sally Phillips the actress who's daughter is downs. They were discussing the technology which will be able to pick up the gene thus illiminating downs altogether. She was totally against it because her daughter and her family are just happy as they are and the idea of her not existing was unthinkable.
My son was diagnosed at 3 but we had strong suspicions from as early as 13 months. Our GP tried his level best to fob us off as overreacting new parents but we persisted until we got appointments with a paediatrician. Glad we did as they agreed with us and we started down the long road to formal diagnosis. He's now 7 and attends a specialist autism school in Longridge (only one of its kind in Lancashire). The key is persistence and trusting your instincts.
What's that school like? We'll probably be sending our son to Acorns because of proximity.
It's called Hillside. It's honestly superb. We fought tooth and nail to get a place there. We were basically adamant from the get-go and kept pushing until the council probably just got sick of us in truth and relented!
We’ve got a paediatric appointment next week for something unrelated but we’ll be mentioning it there as well.
No worries. Anything beyond 12 months and you have every right to see a specialist if you have concerns. You know your child better than anyone so never let a GP talk you out of something or make you question your judgement. It's a slow and arduous process in getting a diagnosis and the sooner you can start the ball rolling to finding out whether you need one the better.
