The daycare just declared my 2.5-year-old kid to be autistic (long)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

It feels like you’re being judged, doesn’t it? You have this great kid and here someone is saying that something about him may not be so great. So the natural response is to say “Well what the hell do they know anyway!?”

My ten-year-old son has been getting extra help in school since he was in second grade. Everyone agrees that he’s very smart, but he has a hard time engaging with school work. He fidgets. He daydreams. He has a hard time paying attention. He’s been evaluated by educational psychologists and he doesn’t have ADD or autism – eventually they put him down as “Other”. It’s frustrating sometimes. He clearly is very smart and knows lots of stuff – he just doesn’t learn very well in the structured environment of a normal elementary school. Why should he have to change how he does things to meet their criteria?

The thing is – he’s a lot like his uncle, my wife’s brother. Back in the 1970’s kids didn’t get screened for stuff like this when they were little. So nobody noticed a quiet kid who sat in the back of the class and quietly never learned how to read. By the time he was a teenager it become obvious that he had a learning disability, but by then it was too late. He limped along in high school, barely made it through college, and has been stuck in a dead end career for decades. Would he have turned out differently if someone had noticed that he wasn’t engaging with his schoolwork when he was 8? Maybe, maybe not.

So I’m willing to put up with the frustration of having someone tell me my great kid isn’t maybe quite so great.

Take your son to the pediatrician. Have him evaluated by a professional . If there is something wrong, thank goodness you caught it early! Knowledge is power! If not you have the sweet satisfaction of telling the preschool teachers they’re wrong. And I agree with mischievous – if the teachers don’t accept the professional diagnosis, then start looking for another day care.

22

The goal isn’t to change him. The goal is to make sure he lives up to his potential.

My son has a tremendous imagination. We’re convinced that part of the reason he zones out is because what’s going on inside his head is so amazingly fascinating.

But if he’s going to grow up and put that great imagination to use he has to figure out how to deal with the demands of the real world. He can’t just sit around day dreaming. He has to learn how to communicate so he can share his strengths with the rest of the world.

23

Let me be clear: if I thought that Andrew or I could benefit in any way from a diagnosis of autism, I’d be all for it. Andrew is happy as a lark, and so are we.

If Andrew had trouble meeting any of his appropriate milestones, I’d get him tested.

If Andrew seemed like he had trouble enjoying life, or experiencing any of the things life had to offer, I’d have him tested.

If I had trouble enjoying Andrew, or even suspected that our lives would be better in any way with a diagnosis, I’d get him tested.

I cannot imagine him being any happier, accomplishing more, or bringing more joy to the lives of those he’s around (except possibly his daycare teachers, but they can just…calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean…). I refuse to submit to the prevailing cultural mode of effacing all deviation.

24

I’d rather live in a world with these people being who they are than one where they are all modified to approximate the norm.

If someone elects to seek treatment, I’m all for it. I see no reason to impose it on a child who is hunky dory just the way he is.

25

I have to say that I’m rather surprised at how low the threshold is in this thread for declaring someone to have a possible mental defect. Call them what you will – ADHD, autism, learning disabilities, they are all neurological defects by definition, and inherently undesirable by logical extension.

Have you read Dickens? Tolstoy? Melville (ok, bad example…)? Spent time in a big city? Or really, just observed humanity anywhere? What is life if not for the endless forms, most beautiful and most wonderful, of human nature? Give a child help if he needs it, but most important of all, value him for himself, his strengths and his weaknesses, at his most brilliant and at his basest. I am deeply unhappy that my child is growing up in a place and time where diversity of spirit is so devalued. But as I’ve said before, I will not submit. Andrew is not asking for help, and I’m not going to impose it on him.

26

Yes, he’s fine now at age two. But how will he be at 17, when it may be too late for treatments to be as effective? What about at 40?

27

I started to say that I have no words, but I have plenty, actually. What makes you think your child will be a different person after any sort of treatment or therapy? It’s not about changing the person he is in order to make him like everyone else; it’s about helping him to become more himself so that he is comfortable with who he is. My son - the wrestler, football player, straight A student, Boy Scout, popular-with-kids-and adults boy that he is - is still the same person he was at 2 - just as loving, sweet, smart, funny as he ever was. The help he had in getting there gave him an advantage, if anything, over someone who has to figure some things out alone. I really don’t like your implication that anyone who seeks treatment for their child is forcing it on an unwilling victim.

You’re jumping way ahead of yourself though.

28

Agree with everyone pretty much. Teachers have noticed something “not like the other kids.” And this could be anything from Autism to doing his own thing. It’s not at all unusual for a child of any age to act one way with teachers and another way at home.

I would suggest the first step of getting a diagnosis from your pediatrician and go from there.

As a parent of a child with some “challenges”, I can tell you there is a whole world of well meaning people that would like to explain the “challenges” with a simple lable of autism. There is a whole group of kids that exhibit *some * of the autism indicators. Keep in mind that autism is a range, and that kids can have challenges for which there are labels instead of diagnosis.

[My youngest had hypoxic damage at birth. Apraxia is an *explanation * for what is simply a case of science not being able to determine the cellular issues that she probably has. Plenty of well intended people thing she has autism. ]

29

I know being hit with the A-word can affect one in unexpected ways. I have been there.

You need to deal with this possibility in your own time and in your own way. He’s your kid, after all.

I suggest you get around other kids your son’s age, and also see how your son is around other kids his own age. He might continue to look hunky dory to you.

But let me also suggest - as gently as possible - that if he doesn’t look hunky dory, for all of your sakes please get testing right away.

My case is an anecdote, not a datum, but when I accepted the evidence of my own eyes regarding my son’s behavior, that is when things started to get better. I didn’t even realize there was a problem - I thought it was just Typo family terrible twos (they’re QUITE terrible!). It turns out I was wrong, but then I’m not a developmental psychologist.

Anyway, chill out for a while, think about the advice we strangers are beaming through your screen, and do whatever you think best. We are here for you.

{{hugs}} - if you want 'em. (If you’re also a guy - we’ll have to get drunk first. Is that a problem?)

30

I apologize for the implication. That’s how I would feel, but that’s not how I feel about other people doing it, if that makes any sense. We all make the choices that we think are best, and none of us knows what actually is best.

I have to take issue with this concept though. Clearly the point of therapy is to alter something – his level of comfort with who is he is, well, that is part of who he is too. Changing that is changing him. In the case you cite, it’s doing him good, so it’s a benefit. Whether it outweighs the cost is another matter, one for you (plural) to decide.

Andrew is comfortable with who he is. So am I. He is happy. So am I. A future is being projected where he or we will be dissatisfied with our life and will regret not having intervened earlier. All available evidence suggests that we are at no greater risk for this than anyone else is.

There is a real cost of intervention. A label is a value judgment. There’s no getting around it. Aside from the stigma, the logistical challenges of restructuring our lives for questionable benefit; far more important is that applying a label of pathology to someone’s mind is deeply judgmental. In my view it had better be done with the utmost caution.

31

I’m not sure if this is helpful, but you might want to look for a copy of Collins’s Not Even Wrong (I’ve seen remaindered hardback copies around recently). His initial experience of someone raising a concern, and his reaction, are very similar to yours, so it might be useful to read. I don’t think, though, that it can answer the question of what to do next. I agree with the posters who have suggested going forward with a formal evaluation. I’d see the goal not as making your child conform, but understanding better where he might face challenges. That way you can get some assistance, if necessary, in providing him with the resources he could need to be happy and effective, assuming that evaluation shows he’s out of the normal range in a way that’s a problem, which may not be the case.

My parents were called in by my 4th grade teacher. She carefully explained that I had a learning disability and should be in a special classroom. The evidence for this was that I was reading at a 12th grade level, but only doing math at a 6th grade level. When my parents pointed out that both of those were above my current grade (and that a year before I’d come from a school that was incredibly deficient at teaching math), she told them that the “handbook” said that any child with a 2-grade or more discrepancy between math and reading levels had a learning disability. They were never able to get her to understand that this was true only if the child tested below his actual grade level, but they refused to let me be put in the special needs classroom and eventually I became a productive member of society whose reading skills still far outstrip her math skills.

32

I can second that.

I’ve seen so many people on this site say that they’re oblivious when someone sends them a signal, and that they need to be bludgeoned over the head before they realise that someone is interested in them. I’m one of those people.

And it still does not come naturally: social interaction, remembering peoples’ names and faces and other attributes and assembling them into a whole is something I still have to make a deliberate effort at. In recent years, I’ve paid for and taken my own training to help me with this. If I’d had training in perceiving body language and interacting with and remembering people when I was in my early teens or even before, my life in high school would have been far better.

If a test of a child helps the child and the parents find these tools that will help in life, I’m all for it.

33

My oldest son is autistic. He is not broken; he does not need to be fixed. He needs different tools to learn than many other kids. Autism is not a derogatory term, and despite what some may think, it doesn’t mean stupid. Therapies do not change who the person is – believe me, he’s still the same kid. But now he’s a kid with more skills and capabilities than he used to have. And he’s a happier kid, because he has a few ways to communicate and interact with other people.

I don’t think anyone is expecting autistic people to change the essence of their being to become “normal.” I do want my son to learn the skills necessary to function in society, because I won’t always be here to take care of him.

An evaluation can’t hurt, IMO. I will admit, a diagnosis can feel like a sledgehammer to the chest, for a parent. That subsides a bit, after a while, though.

34

I’d like to make another more positive statement: this thread has been extremely therapeutic for me. I suppose I’m still out on a limb mentally, and I doubt you guys will drag me in. But it’s really nice to have a group of clever (anonymous) pals helping me brainstorm on this.

In case you hadn’t noticed, this kid means a lot to me. Sometime I’ll tell you the story, but we went through hell and back bringing Andrew into this world, only to have him show up absolutely perfect and only get better from there. I just don’t want anyone to screw him up – I’m sure we will soon enough.

35

I promise you, if Andrew ever exhibits the slightest hint of failing to function in society, I’ll get him evaluated. Right now he is suffused with joy 99% of the time (the other 1% is when mom and dad won’t agree to the third cookie).

An evaluation does hurt. Labels hurt. Sometimes they help more than they hurt, but they do hurt. An evaluation is a label – it’s labeling someone as at least demonstrating pathological tendencies.

36

Red highlighting = everything I see that does NOT correspond with autism.

My niece (b.1992) seemed a normal, healthy girl for about the first two years of her life. Then, she got that triple immunization and was never the same after. As you probably know, many have suspected a batch of that immunization had mercury and many many children were affected but I don’t know if their symptoms were similar or not. Babbling and language acquisition types of things ceased. She began some self stimulation (standing on tiptoes and waving hands) and would look right through anyone and everyone. She seemed to ignore anything that was said to her…she’s off in another world and nobody else is invited.

For the most part, she has certain videos she likes to watch. Occasionally she’ll hug someone etc. but she has no speech at all, really. She might make a “word” that her parents can recognize, but that’s it. She isn’t potty trained, let alone trained for feminine hygiene. In fact, bro locks the door to the bathroom because she likes to smear entire tubes of toothpaste on the countertops and she wears a diaper. She’ll tolerate being touched but doesn’t seem to like it.

I bet you feel better now…

37

Sorry, but to me the idea in raising kids is to treasure them for exactly who they are and support them in whatever and whomever they want to be. If Andrew seeks tools, I’ll try to supply them. Right now he’s not.

38

A label is a label. That’s it. It’s not a value judgement unless you decide it is. What it actually does, in practice, is allow services that are needed to happen. It also can serve as an explanation to the person who is affected by that label. Anecdotally again, my son in 2nd grade asked me why he felt like he was from outer space and everyone else was from Earth. I had heard that statement from autistic people and from their parents but had never mentioned it to my son and it blew me away that he felt the differences that early. When I explained to him that it was because he had autism and that his brain was wired differently from the other kids - even though it worked just as well as theirs did, it worked differently - he was thrilled and couldn’t wait to get to school the next day to tell the other kids. Kids sense different, and in their minds, different is bad, whether it’s about themselves or someone else. Now, a severely autistic person may not be enough in touch with the world to care all that much, but a person on the mild side of the spectrum will know and may care very much. It helps to know that there’s a physical reason, and that it doesn’t make you a bad person, and that you are just as good as everyone else and people love you just how you are.
That’s what a label did for Ryan.

I really hope you do some reading about the spectrum, preferably by people who actually are autistic or have Asperger’s. Some of them share your opinion that the world should adapt to them. Others share a lot of pain about not fitting in, not being able to hold a job that matches their intellectual capabilities, not being able to stand the sensory deluge of light, sound, the sheer presence of other people in the workplace and around. Some talk of wanting friends and to be close to others but not knowing how. Men and women talk of wanting relationships, marriage, children, but not having the social ability to get there. I spent many years on a private mailing list for autistic people and parents of autistics and I’ve heard the stories many times. It makes me incredibly sad.

And once again, you are jumping ahead of yourself. It may turn out that no action is needed at all. But if it is, you are doing yourself and your child a disservice by not honestly considering the options available before turning them all down.

39

I assure you I’ve gone over and over (and over) the autism criteria, comparing them with the descriptions of normal two-year-old behavior. There are a surprising number of overlapping behaviors, by the way.

Andrew fits all normal two-year-old behavior criteria and meets all milestones. The only autism criteria he meets are things that are also included in the list of normal behaviors.

40

No, no, a thousand times no. The only possible meaning of a label ‘pathological’ is ‘undesirable, standing to benefit from therapy’. It is profoundly damaging to society that we’ve come to a point where every deviation is pathological. Seriously, the majority of children that I know are being treated for something or other. This is a travesty, especially in the case of ‘neurological defects’ (more accurately described as mental defects since we’re essentially clueless about the neurological basis for these disorders and thus we base diagnosis on mental testing). Once Andrew has been told he’s autistic, or even questionably Asperger’s or ‘on the autistic spectrum’, that becomes a profound component of his definition of himself. It can mean nothing other than that his mind has a pathology.

Please, I implore you all to understand the following: if I perceive any hint that Andrew’s quality of life would stand to benefit from treatment, I’d look into it. I don’t.