I happen to like people who feel like they’re from outer space. I really hope I could convince such a kid that people from outer space are perfectly great and that there are plenty more of them out there. I’m probably being unrealistic, but it seems the best solution to me.
I hope things work out well for you and your family.
At this point, well, possibly nothing at all. From what you describe, he’s functioning pretty much OK even if perhaps he’s not at the same stage as the other kids (and that could mean he’s more advanced, less advance, same-but-parallel…).
Nothing you describe in your OP raises alarm bells with me. I’ve never met you or your son, I don’t know the teachers, etc. so I’d be hesitant to dismiss it out of hand however. Yeah, they could be full of baloney, on the other hand they could be onto something. I honestly do not know.
On the other hand - if you do get him tested, and they identify that there’s something there, it may not really need to be addressed any time soon beyond “watchful waiting”. BUT - if he needs more help at some point in the future, you’ve got those test results as ammunition. It’s been our informal experience that the school district here will try to avoid offering services to kids they don’t see as severely impaired (by their own testing processes), when you can produce expert documentation showing that yeah your kid DOES have something that mandates a little extra help.
I just don’t see the harm in getting testing done. The worst that could happen is the testing folks roll their eyes and laugh at you or the daycare people. This pretty much happened to us with Moon Unit - at age 2 we saw that her speech was not as advanced as Dweezil’s had been, vocabulary-wise and pronuncation-wise. We assumed that “less advanced than AUTISTIC brother” = “VERY DELAYED”. So we had her tested. They said she was at or beyond age level in every way (and as noted by my husband, she’s diagnosed as gifted).
Andrew won’t care - the testing session(s) are basically playing with a therapist and being guided through some activities - so really they are fun for the kid.
A little bit of background here: I’m Typo Knig’s wife, mom to Moon Unit and Dweezil. Though we don’t have medical background, like you we’re both well-educated. And there’s a strong family history of autism (my nephew is severely impaired). So it wasn’t like we’d never heard of the concept, when Dweezil was diagnosed. We honestly just thought he was going through Terrible Twos From Hell (and he was, truly, more challenging than any other kid I’ve ever encountered). He was bright and verbal, and (when not going into tantrum/incoherent mode), very loving and engaging with us.
We simply did not see him around other kids, for most of a year (he was in a small home-based daycare and I was laid flat by a difficult pregnancy). So we had nothing to compare him to. But - quite literally the first time we saw him around other kids, at 2 years months, we knew something was very wrong. The tantrums and refusal to engage showed he was very different from other kids. The pragmatic speech (conversational speech) was VERY out of step with his peers.
I disagree. An evaluation is not a label. An evalution is a diagnostic tool. If you want to call a diagnosis a label, that might be a bit more correct.
Can it be that not a soul sees these things the way I do? I assure you that these views formed before becoming a dad, so they’re not purely a reflection of parental bias.
6 weeks in a psychiatry rotation in med school convinced me that medical science knows absolutely nothing about the workings of the mind. My PhD was in behavioral neuroscience and I can assure you, nobody knows what really happens in there. The contemporary era of aggressive diagnosis is purely a swing of the pendulum.
You’re acting defensive about it.
You’re justifying to us why your child doesn’t need a diagnosis. Which, to me at least, means that you know something you don’t want to admit. Plus, you’re not likely to win people over to your way of thinking by arguing logic, when your decision is based on emotion. You like the way your child is. You like diversity. Other people don’t. There is no logical reason for liking it one way instead of another.
If you refuse diagnosis, you aren’t saving him from a label. It will come from his peers if there really is a problem. The diagnosis and treatment could help him deal with that.
You don’t think there’s any logical basis for valuing diversity over conformity? Particularly when we’re talking about the most essential qualities of a person – his or her mental function? Do we really want to limit the range of human nature?
Their ‘diagnosis’ looks really off the wall to me. I’ve studied a fair amount of psych (about enough to have a bachelor’s) and autistics are portrayed as withdrawn, unable/unwilling to form emotional bonds with others, and a lot of things you already have probably read as well.
I guess if I were in your shoes, I’d play it safe and have a professional evaluate. If they have picked up on anything, better to know and take steps if needed.
My best to you and your family.
If he is having problems, I will seek a solution, including evaluation for autism if appropriate. He is not.
I thought you said in your OP that you were having him evaluated.
Honestly, based on your subsequent responses to this thread, I’m completely baffled about why you even posted the OP. You said you wanted people’s perspectives and opinion but then have spent the rest of your posts vehemently arguing with anyone who dares to suggest that maybe an evaluation wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
I would say, by the way, that having his day care providers present you with information that they feel indicates he has autism, qualifies as a “problem.” The solution might be to have him evaluated for autism, or it might be to ignore it, or it might be to find new day care providers, but only through vigorous hand-waving can one say that this is not a “problem.” But then, your earlier protestations to the contrary, nobody in this world is perfect and nobody is without problems. The most we can hope for ourselves and our children is that our problems are surmountable and easy to solve.
Just popping back in briefly because I noticed your location as Chapel Hill - IIRC, the university there has fairly good education and research programs dealing with autism, so at least you’ve got good resources available there.
http://www.teacch.com/ is one link.
I have a somewhat more liberal definition of ‘perfect’ than most people do 
.
I am most interested in hearing from others whose children have faced similar situations, and finding out whether they did or did not turn out to have problems. I didn’t actually come here for advice about whether to get him evaluated (though that’s mostly what I’ve received). The thread morphed in that direction, to my displeasure.
I’ll grant that having his daycare providers express concerns qualifies as evidence of a potential problem, but I think several factors, described in my OP, weigh against the significance of that evidence. I feel that I am sufficiently qualified, by virtue of time spent with him and my education, to weigh my own evaluation more heavily than theirs, accepting the danger of bias that comes with that.
And this thread has been therapeutic for me in that my views have evolved during its course.
That sounds like me. I did have myself evaluated by a professional diagnostician a few years ago, who found indications of ADHD but not to an extreme that imparied “normal” functioning, i.e. I’m capable of holding down a job, studying topics that interest me, et cetera. I generally tend to think of myself as just being impatient with people and activities that don’t interest me or provoke my fancy, and only occasionally bothered by the inability to concentrate on things that I find intolerably tedious. (Seriously, who wants to do their taxes, anyway?) A diagnosis is useful in the sense of having some way to give direction for addressing the problems, but one also has to keep in mind that it is the function of psychologists and diagnosticians to categorize everyone into existing pathologies.
As for your child’s symptoms, I’m kind of curious where anyone comes up with the diagnosis of ASD. As already amplified by lobotomyboy63, there are specific behaviors which would tend to totally counterindicate behaviors in the autistic spectrum that are sufficiently definitive to fall within a definitive pathology. I’m not a psychologist but I’ve read the relevent entries in DSM-IV and other references which, if you are presenting the situation accurately, pretty much rule out autism as a possibility. Beyond that, it’s really pretty hard to diagnose any specific pathology in a 2-3 year old, given that they’re still in a very formative state of personality. If the child actively rejected physical or emotional contact, then there might be a case of suspecting a legimate pathology, but the behaviors described might just be developmental lags or normal passively resistant attitudes that children show during developmental phases. It’s hard to tell what is motivating a toddler because they lack the overall breadth of experience to behave in a rational fashion (at least, by adult sensibilites) and so will often do or say utterly absurd things as a way of relating to the world. Unless you are completely misrepresenting the situation it just doesn’t seem even remotely a case of autistic behaviors.
FWIW, while there has been a dramatically expanded recognition of legitimately autistic behaviors–i.e. people are no longer sent to asylums on the basis of being generically “retarded”–there also seems to be a broad application of the term autism or Autistic Spectrum Disorder toward anyone who lacks social adeptness. It’s not so much a matter of whether this is right or wrong, but whether it is useful or not. Children (and families of them) who are autistic to the point of not being functional certainly need what help can be offered; for children with relatively mild difficulties with socialization, slapping the label of “autistic” and throwing them in a Spec. Ed. classroom is probably counterproductive. We’ve gone from blaming mothers of autistic children for being “cold” and bad to expanding the label to encompass anyone who is socially inept and seeking some other cause (vaccines, vitamins, PCBs, phenols) that is to blame for this epidemic.
Rather than go through full testing, I’d first take the child in question to a child psychologist for an initial evaluation. If the o.p. is describing the child’s behaviors accurately, the psychologist is likely to dismiss such an evaluation out of hand, as a child with discernably autistic spetrum behaviors is identifiable. In addition, he or she may offer an alternative, if preliminary, diagnosis for any of the behaviors that may be significant issues, though I daresay that a two year old who doesn’t want to put his socks back on, while being someone inconvenient, is hardly a major or unanticipated issue; he’s just an obstinent two-year-old, and those are hardly in short supply.
Stranger
Changed my mind about responding further.
I’m not interested in useful. I’m interested in the damage done by defining my son’s mind as pathological. Increasing his function a bit is not worth him believing that his mind is defective.
OK, I don’t know a lot about autism and all. But you’re coming off very defensive on this thread, as if you’re threatened. The day care teachers are trying to help your family. It’s not about your kid being “diseased.” I’m sure he is a great and wonderful kid and no one is trying to tell you otherwise. And, if he does have some autistic behaviors, then that doesn’t make him sick; it just makes him a bit different, which you say yourself you love.
It seems to me that there’s no harm in looking into an evaluation. It’s not harmful for a kid to play with some toys with a therapist for a while. If there is something there, then you’ll know and you can face it with all the information you can get and make decisions based on as much information as possible. It sounds entirely likely that there’s nothing there anyway, and then you won’t have it hanging over you and you can forget about it.
But yes, if someone who spends many hours a day with my child and lots of other children said that she was concerned and thought I should get an evaluation, I would do it. It’s a scary thing to do, because we tend to think that if we don’t look at something it won’t be there. But that usually ends badly. Looking at it usually turns out better, and half the time nothing is there.
Just about all the young kids I know who have had some kind of intervention (speech therapy, whatever) have been happier because of it. They have fun at their sessions and learn new things, they love their teachers, the parents are glad they did it. It’s true that we don’t know a lot about the mind; but things are better in a lot of ways now. (We no longer blame mothers for autism, for one thing.)
My youngest SIL always had a hard time in school; a lot of people thought she was lazy. Finally, in her senior year, she was tested and discovered that her brain is wired slightly differently. Her reaction: “You mean I’m not stupid?” She learned more about how her brain works and felt a lot better about herself. It’s too bad that didn’t happen when she was 5 instead of 18; that’s some important years in which she could have been happier.
spazurek you might enjoy reading Louise Bates Ames’ books on child development. There’s a volume for each year and they were originally published in the mid-1980s. Her approach to the range of normal behavior is so calm and reassuring, and specific.
I didn’t happen to purchase Your Two-Year Old so I can’t quote from it, but the behaviors you describe seem absolutely normal to me.
I’m sorry for your ordeal; I understand how painful and difficult this day has been. My twins just turned 4. Those half-year ages are hard enough without this tacked on.
I’ve met plenty of mothers online who fought to have their kids evaluated so that they could qualify for a variety of (subsidized or free) services from therapists. That’s really the reason for advocating early, to get those services started. But these women sensed that something was “off”. Some others have ignored hunches and been confronted by teachers in kindergarten/first grade who advised them that special services are in order. I’m amazed that that many kids could possibly vary from the “norm”, but hey, I’m no clinician.
If your son is interacting and enjoying daycare, I wouldn’t sweat it. I don’t blame you for wanting to change schools, although if he loves it maybe just let it ride? You could always lie and tell the daycare that your pediatrician isn’t worried (or just bring it up at your next well-baby appt).
Next year try a Montessori school and see how he does.
You also might want to videotape him playing, if you’re not already doing so just for fun. It could give you a helpful frame of reference should you ever want to be able to look back in time to see if there are any telltale clues (or, hey, if he happens to do something especially funny and cute, send it to America’s Funniest Videos and win yourselves $10k) (Oy, if only I’d had the camera running on certain occasions around here).
I understand your anguish, really. I have concerns about my kids but there was NO WAY I was going to put those down on the “describe your child” line on the preschool form. Why label? Why set up expectations?
Time will tell.
I think we’re hitting a wall; I’ll just end up rehashing my previous statements. To sum up: I argue that ‘autism’=‘neurological disorder’=‘mental defect’, and therefore applying such a label would profoundly damage Andrew’s self-image. I see no way around that, but I appear to be a minority of one on that.
The views that appear defensive were formed well before the event at the daycare. The event has simply brought my views on the matter to the fore.
No. I don’t think there is.
And who says that someone’s mental function is the most essential quality of a person?