Re: Expressive vs receptive language-more autism

[Guest guest]

There is a book titled the Mislabeled Child by Drs Eide, a husband

and wife team of developmental neurologists from Washington state

who work with a lot of the children who whose parents work at

Microsoft. Some are truly autistic, or have PDD NOS, or Aspergers,

but some do not though they have other issues. These doctors are

apparently very good at sorting through the symptoms to determine

correct diagnosis and treatment. (They have prestigious credentials

too; one is Harvard educated.) I've ordered the book but haven't

received it yet (is anything slower than Amazon?) so I can't give a

first hand review, but I've read transcripts and articles online and

have been impressed with their comments. If you are interested,

look up the book on Amazon for a description and reviews. There are

links to their website and user group/forum too. In fact, one woman

posted on their forum about her daughter who was difficult, anti-

social, could not speak, and displayed perseverative and self

stimulating behavior. Doctors told her the perseverative behavior

was proof of organic brain damage and that she would likely be

institutionalized when she got older. Well, 18 years later her

daughter is at Brown university learning something like her sixth

language and fencing competitively. She has a normal social life,

makes jokes about her childhood challenges and is just fine.

Unfortunately not every child with issues like these turns out just

fine, but labels (and doctors) don't always predict the future. If

someone looks at your child for 15 minutes and uses a standardized

test as the cornerstone of their evaluation and then plops on a

label based just on that, it can be incorrect, which causes awful

grief and stress for the family and worse, the expectations for the

child might become lowered because everyone writes every struggle or

quirk off as autism.

I think this is especially dangerous in school because schools get

more funding to handle autistic children, so they naturally push for

that diagnosis. Sometimes this might allow kids to get the help

they need, but other times they just get put in a special ed or

autism class, which isn't at all a good thing.

[Guest guest]

There is a book titled the Mislabeled Child by Drs Eide, a husband

and wife team of developmental neurologists from Washington state

who work with a lot of the children who whose parents work at

Microsoft. Some are truly autistic, or have PDD NOS, or Aspergers,

but some do not though they have other issues. These doctors are

apparently very good at sorting through the symptoms to determine

correct diagnosis and treatment. (They have prestigious credentials

too; one is Harvard educated.) I've ordered the book but haven't

received it yet (is anything slower than Amazon?) so I can't give a

first hand review, but I've read transcripts and articles online and

have been impressed with their comments. If you are interested,

look up the book on Amazon for a description and reviews. There are

links to their website and user group/forum too. In fact, one woman

posted on their forum about her daughter who was difficult, anti-

social, could not speak, and displayed perseverative and self

stimulating behavior. Doctors told her the perseverative behavior

was proof of organic brain damage and that she would likely be

institutionalized when she got older. Well, 18 years later her

daughter is at Brown university learning something like her sixth

language and fencing competitively. She has a normal social life,

makes jokes about her childhood challenges and is just fine.

Unfortunately not every child with issues like these turns out just

fine, but labels (and doctors) don't always predict the future. If

someone looks at your child for 15 minutes and uses a standardized

test as the cornerstone of their evaluation and then plops on a

label based just on that, it can be incorrect, which causes awful

grief and stress for the family and worse, the expectations for the

child might become lowered because everyone writes every struggle or

quirk off as autism.

I think this is especially dangerous in school because schools get

more funding to handle autistic children, so they naturally push for

that diagnosis. Sometimes this might allow kids to get the help

they need, but other times they just get put in a special ed or

autism class, which isn't at all a good thing.