PLEASE HELP

I don’t think you are crazy. I suspect you are right. My son, now 11, entered the special education system at age 4 because of a caring daycare teacher who recognized that he was not average. She had a LD child of her own who wasn’t diagnosed until age 10. My son reminded her of him.

Did you suggest he was autistic or just that you are concerned about his development? Autism is a very hard thing for people to hear. If you suggested it to her, that may be why she is in such denial.

Beth

This sounds *exactly* like a kid I met with PDD. Specifically, imitating/echoing and repeating, screaming, and obsessive play are things to be concerned about. PDD is considered to be part of the autism spectrum but with possibly very good outcomes for normal or near-normal functioning. The mother and other people may be only slightly informed about classic autism, which this isn’t, and therefore be confused and upset.

I am wondering about what kind of testing has been done. If he doesn’t initiate speech, how could anyone come up with normal intelligence or just articulation problems?
Is he perhaps more communicative in a one-to-one situation? Sometimes kids act fairly normally in a quiet atmosphere and revert to very low levels in a noisy and confused group. Have you sat down with him one-to-one in a quiet place and tried to ask him questions? If the group makes him worse he might have sensory integration issues.
Or, was the testing done when he was only two and so the language isues were not yet on the scoreboard? In that case, he certainly needs retesting.

The mother of the kid with PDD I met was *very* defensive. When he was little if you said anything about how he was developing, even positive, she snapped at you. When she did get him diagnosed and treated, she and the program knew absolutely everything and nobody else could say a word about what to do with him, and she could be verbally aggressive. Part of this I think was stress; it is *extremely* hard on the mother. Part of it I think was heredity, that a tendency to obsessiveness ran through the family — I have read that with autism spectrum disorders that there seems to be a hereditary component.
Anyway, the mother is almost certainly comparing her kid with others, worrying — she did bring in people to test him after all — trying to deal with his difficult behaviour and noise all day and night, and she is probably highly stressed. Even more because while she sees something going on and tries to get him tested, she gets told nothing is wrong and it gets thrown back on her that she must be doing something wrong.
It’s going to take a delicate approach to do something positive here.

Are you in a good school system? Next year when he is five he will go into kindergarten and if his school is on the ball — some are and some are not — his teacher there will refer him pretty quickly.

>the potty, because he can’t tell us, never has said “Mama, or any of our names or the other children’s names. He prefers to be by himself, no interaction with other children. Prefers small objects to play with. Has never had any tears, can’t tell us if he is hurt , etc.
I am obsessed with this child and have done more reading and research and everything points toward Autism.

I think this is most likely PDD (the generic term for all forms of autism). At 4 you would never be able to tell how severe it would be. There are people who at 4 are essentially like this and make fairly glacial improvement (without intervention) for the rest of their lives, and there are others (also without much intervention) who become more similar to Aspergers kids which you might have read about.

I say this as this is one approach to the problem, that you are talking about something with a spectrum of seriousness that can’t be determined at this stage. Should you be concerned though? Definitely. The other point is that the earlier you intervene, the better the overall outcome.

>HERE IS THE PROBLEM. Mother claims he is just delayed. She has had him tested and the evaluation says, “He is of average intelligance for his age”.

Re: also speech therapist thinks it is an articulation problem.

YIKES! Where did she send him? And what planet did the speech teacher arrive from.

I’d take the discussion away from the term “autism”. It has, as someone pointed out, weighty connotations and focus on the specific problems—
lack of toilet training, lack of speech, difficulty interacting with others, etc.
Get the term out of there and you might have a hope of getting into
a discussion with her (and prob. the speech therapist).

For example with the speech therapist, you might ask if she thnks the kid is able to communicate his thoughts and ideas. Can he ask a question? (My guess is no). Anything where you could get the speech therapist to your position to some extent.

>wracking sounds. He does have a memory, though. He can recite ABC’s, knows colors and shapes which of course, he has learned at the daycare.

Well of course, this, in itself, actually proves your contentions, that despite his other problems he is able to memorize well like this. That is in the absense of other abilities. Almost cardinal autistic characteristic.

>PLEASE HELP ME! What is wrong with this child?

I think you pretty much figured it out. Now the task is to neutralize the discussion. She’ll get to that term soon enough (may actually have had the child evaluated at more than one place to avoid the dx or even picked a speech therapist who went along with her point of view). I would guess mom actually knows that but is in heavy denial at the moment.

—des