Why is everything now just ASD?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op here. I think I mentioned this in my first post but I have a friend whose son had an ASD diagnosis at age 2 and by 5 it was removed. He's since actually proven to be hyperlexic and was incredibly skilled with large numbers at around age 3.5-4. He has interests in things like bridges, roads and routes and things like that and what it seems like happened is when he was younger, his brain was simply working on things too complex for him to adequately process and it presented as autism but as he got older and could better handle it, he no longer presented as ASD and does not have that label any longer nor an IEP. So he seems to have definitely been in that group of kids diagnosed too young and wrongly.

What it shows that child development and diagnostics are fluid. He presented enough at the time of his evaluation to be given an autism diagnosis. Early intervention obviously helped. His re-assessments should that it wasn't on the spectrum, so either he has no new diagnosis or a different one. (I do know plenty of kids on the spectrum who don't have IEPs.)

Or, just as likely, he simply matured.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FYI, Ivymount Outreach also has a social skills group just for girls.

Op here. Part of the reason I'm not totally sold on ASD being a possibility for my daughter is her social skills are fine. She doesn't struggle at all there- lots of friends, participates in activities. She misses unspoken things like passive aggression and sarcasm (the pragmatics issue) but other than that, does not struggle at all with social skills or in social situations.

Autism at its core is a severe social communication disorder.

Have you considered Social Pragmatic Communication Disorder?

Language pragmatics is a social skill. My son its similar. He has deficits in writing, spelling, motor planning, and pragmatics. He is in third grade and I too think he probably would have qualified for PDD-NOS in the past ('some characteristics of autism') but doesn't have enough 'restricted interests' to qualify under the DSM. Haven't done a full-on private eval yet (have been to dev ped, OT, speech - and our charter did a v comprehensive psycho ed exam three years ago, so we're in for another one this fall.

My son is very social, but misses tone, sarcasm, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
"We go the diagnosis after a 30 minute visit, mostly talking to me. Our follow-ups are 15-20 minutes."

Need a new doctor--- typical experience is hours of testing, questionnaires for the parents and teachers and more than one appointment.

Not really. This kind of drive by diagnosis is very common. Most of the parent in my group didn't have hours of testing --they couldn't afford it. Some d venture just went with labels from the school.

The MERLD mom strikes again.

Again the anecdotal evidence from your group doesn't prove that doctors are handy out autism diagnoses willy nilly and/or are incentivized in any way to do so by insurance groups. "Labels" from the school aren't a medical diagnosis.

MERLD hasn't been in the DSM since 2013 and won't get you an IEP.

Your blind anger prevents you from reading properly. People aren't saying they are incentivized by personal gain to go with an ASD diagnosis. They are saying the doctors are more willing to give out ASDs because it helps their patients get therapies.

I already wrote that that FAPE inflates the actual number of kids with autism, but that's b/c of the limited designations for which you can get an IEP. This "label" isn't the same thing as an independent evaluation.

Read the entire thread. The MERLD mom said over and over on this thread (and others) that the doctors give out autism diagnoses so kids come see them or are incentivized by the insurance companies to give an ASD diagnosis. This is hogwash.

9:12 poster looks like a good example of this very idea, and there's more than one poster on this thread who has said they took the ASD label they thought was wrong so they'd get services. So, not hogwash at all.

Parents accept an IEP designation so they get services, in't the same thing of doctors conspiring with insurance companies to give autism diagnoses. That's what MERLD mom keeps repeating, and that's hogwash.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:[
Doctors, like ours, do have an incentive. With an autism diagnosis, we can get ABA, speech, OT and PT, without much difficulty. Before we had the diagnosis, we had to private pay services and they would not cover it. Doctor wanted child in services, so doctor gives the diagnosis to make sure we can get the diagnosis paid for. Many insurances only pay for services under autism.

They aren't getting kick-backs, but they are doing it to get kids services that kids may not have access to depending on the parents financial situation.

We go the diagnosis after a 30 minute visit, mostly talking to me. Our follow-ups are 15-20 minutes.

You go to a lousy, lazy doctor. There are examples of people doing their job poorly in every profession; just because you got a junk ASD diagnosis after 30 minutes doesn't mean that most -- or even many -- doctors hand out autism diagnoses because of "incentives."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FYI, Ivymount Outreach also has a social skills group just for girls.

Op here. Part of the reason I'm not totally sold on ASD being a possibility for my daughter is her social skills are fine. She doesn't struggle at all there- lots of friends, participates in activities. She misses unspoken things like passive aggression and sarcasm (the pragmatics issue) but other than that, does not struggle at all with social skills or in social situations.

Autism at its core is a severe social communication disorder.

Have you considered Social Pragmatic Communication Disorder?

Language pragmatics is a social skill. My son its similar. He has deficits in writing, spelling, motor planning, and pragmatics. He is in third grade and I too think he probably would have qualified for PDD-NOS in the past ('some characteristics of autism') but doesn't have enough 'restricted interests' to qualify under the DSM. Haven't done a full-on private eval yet (have been to dev ped, OT, speech - and our charter did a v comprehensive psycho ed exam three years ago, so we're in for another one this fall.

My son is very social, but misses tone, sarcasm, etc.

+1

Kids with language delays are more at risk for having language based learning disabilities as well as ADHD.

Kids with motor delays like DCD are more likely to have co-morbid conditions too. DCD like ADHD can interfere with social skills and executive functioning.

The DSM V categorizes all of these as well as autism under Neurological Developmental Disorders.

Kids with dyslexia, dyscalculia, and/or dysgraphia have Specific Learning Disorder under DSM V.

Kids who continue to have expressive, receptive, or both speech issues past preschool age will have a Communication Disorder under DSM V:
http://www.dsm5.org/documents/changes%20from%20dsm-iv-tr%20to%20dsm-5.pdf
--Language Disorder (What was previously MERLD) or
-- Social (Pragmatic) Communication Disorder

The point is, there is an appropriate diagnosis out there for your kid, OP.

Again, IEP designations aren't medical diagnoses nor as nuanced or specific. Getting help regardless of the label is key. It's certainly better than the alternative. Kids didn't go to school, drop out, or were institutionalized.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FYI, Ivymount Outreach also has a social skills group just for girls.

Op here. Part of the reason I'm not totally sold on ASD being a possibility for my daughter is her social skills are fine. She doesn't struggle at all there- lots of friends, participates in activities. She misses unspoken things like passive aggression and sarcasm (the pragmatics issue) but other than that, does not struggle at all with social skills or in social situations.

if she does fine socially it is not autism, period. is it even age appropriate to expect 7 year olds to understand sarcasm and passive aggression? it sounds like you might be over-focusing on things within the range of normal as you try to sort out the actually functionally problematic stuff.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:[
Doctors, like ours, do have an incentive. With an autism diagnosis, we can get ABA, speech, OT and PT, without much difficulty. Before we had the diagnosis, we had to private pay services and they would not cover it. Doctor wanted child in services, so doctor gives the diagnosis to make sure we can get the diagnosis paid for. Many insurances only pay for services under autism.

They aren't getting kick-backs, but they are doing it to get kids services that kids may not have access to depending on the parents financial situation.

We go the diagnosis after a 30 minute visit, mostly talking to me. Our follow-ups are 15-20 minutes.

You go to a lousy, lazy doctor. There are examples of people doing their job poorly in every profession; just because you got a junk ASD diagnosis after 30 minutes doesn't mean that most -- or even many -- doctors hand out autism diagnoses because of "incentives."

Again, you keep failing to understand what "incentivizing" here means. Didn't do well in English class, eh?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FYI, Ivymount Outreach also has a social skills group just for girls.

Op here. Part of the reason I'm not totally sold on ASD being a possibility for my daughter is her social skills are fine. She doesn't struggle at all there- lots of friends, participates in activities. She misses unspoken things like passive aggression and sarcasm (the pragmatics issue) but other than that, does not struggle at all with social skills or in social situations.

if she does fine socially it is not autism, period. is it even age appropriate to expect 7 year olds to understand sarcasm and passive aggression? it sounds like you might be over-focusing on things within the range of normal as you try to sort out the actually functionally problematic stuff.

I'm not trying to focus specifically on anything. I'm simply trying to see if what professionals suggest for my kid fit her. The specialist mentioned the things like sarcasm, someone leaving her out on purpose but not telling her why (passive aggression) as things that she is not correctly perceiving or noticing. Since she knew my DD's age and mentioned those, I assumed she meant those were age appropriate things she should be picking up on now.

I am absolutely seeking all avenues of helping her and am not swayed in any one particular direction as to what she has or doesn't have. I have no hang ups about any potential diagnoses. I just brought up ASD because it was mentioned to us as a possibility for the first time and I was curious since I could see my daughter meeting the standard for PDD which is no longer in existence, but not ASD since she lacks many of the things for that diagnosis. But, if she would have been PDD at one time although not ASD, she would now be ASD simply for showing the signs of PDD I would assume... It's hard to get your brain around!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
"We go the diagnosis after a 30 minute visit, mostly talking to me. Our follow-ups are 15-20 minutes."

Need a new doctor--- typical experience is hours of testing, questionnaires for the parents and teachers and more than one appointment.

Not really. This kind of drive by diagnosis is very common. Most of the parent in my group didn't have hours of testing --they couldn't afford it. Some d venture just went with labels from the school.

The MERLD mom strikes again.

Again the anecdotal evidence from your group doesn't prove that doctors are handy out autism diagnoses willy nilly and/or are incentivized in any way to do so by insurance groups. "Labels" from the school aren't a medical diagnosis.

MERLD hasn't been in the DSM since 2013 and won't get you an IEP.

Your blind anger prevents you from reading properly. People aren't saying they are incentivized by personal gain to go with an ASD diagnosis. They are saying the doctors are more willing to give out ASDs because it helps their patients get therapies.

I already wrote that that FAPE inflates the actual number of kids with autism, but that's b/c of the limited designations for which you can get an IEP. This "label" isn't the same thing as an independent evaluation.

Read the entire thread. The MERLD mom said over and over on this thread (and others) that the doctors give out autism diagnoses so kids come see them or are incentivized by the insurance companies to give an ASD diagnosis. This is hogwash.

9:12 poster looks like a good example of this very idea, and there's more than one poster on this thread who has said they took the ASD label they thought was wrong so they'd get services. So, not hogwash at all.

Parents accept an IEP designation so they get services, in't the same thing of doctors conspiring with insurance companies to give autism diagnoses. That's what MERLD mom keeps repeating, and that's hogwash.

Not everyone fully relies on IEP services. We have no IEP. We do everything privately so yes, the diagnosis is important as that drives funding for the services. For HMO care, the doctor directly or indirectly works for the insurance and the codes and diagnosis determine the funding.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:[
Doctors, like ours, do have an incentive. With an autism diagnosis, we can get ABA, speech, OT and PT, without much difficulty. Before we had the diagnosis, we had to private pay services and they would not cover it. Doctor wanted child in services, so doctor gives the diagnosis to make sure we can get the diagnosis paid for. Many insurances only pay for services under autism.

They aren't getting kick-backs, but they are doing it to get kids services that kids may not have access to depending on the parents financial situation.

We go the diagnosis after a 30 minute visit, mostly talking to me. Our follow-ups are 15-20 minutes.

You go to a lousy, lazy doctor. There are examples of people doing their job poorly in every profession; just because you got a junk ASD diagnosis after 30 minutes doesn't mean that most -- or even many -- doctors hand out autism diagnoses because of "incentives."

Again, you keep failing to understand what "incentivizing" here means. Didn't do well in English class, eh?

They hand it out as that pays for services.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op here. I think I mentioned this in my first post but I have a friend whose son had an ASD diagnosis at age 2 and by 5 it was removed. He's since actually proven to be hyperlexic and was incredibly skilled with large numbers at around age 3.5-4. He has interests in things like bridges, roads and routes and things like that and what it seems like happened is when he was younger, his brain was simply working on things too complex for him to adequately process and it presented as autism but as he got older and could better handle it, he no longer presented as ASD and does not have that label any longer nor an IEP. So he seems to have definitely been in that group of kids diagnosed too young and wrongly.

What it shows that child development and diagnostics are fluid. He presented enough at the time of his evaluation to be given an autism diagnosis. Early intervention obviously helped. His re-assessments should that it wasn't on the spectrum, so either he has no new diagnosis or a different one. (I do know plenty of kids on the spectrum who don't have IEPs.)

Or, just as likely, he simply matured.

Its impossible to say if early intervention helped or not as you have no baseline. Services are good in many ways, but some kids can do just fine without them (I'd always recommend doing them but services don't cure things).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:[
Doctors, like ours, do have an incentive. With an autism diagnosis, we can get ABA, speech, OT and PT, without much difficulty. Before we had the diagnosis, we had to private pay services and they would not cover it. Doctor wanted child in services, so doctor gives the diagnosis to make sure we can get the diagnosis paid for. Many insurances only pay for services under autism.

They aren't getting kick-backs, but they are doing it to get kids services that kids may not have access to depending on the parents financial situation.

We go the diagnosis after a 30 minute visit, mostly talking to me. Our follow-ups are 15-20 minutes.

You go to a lousy, lazy doctor. There are examples of people doing their job poorly in every profession; just because you got a junk ASD diagnosis after 30 minutes doesn't mean that most -- or even many -- doctors hand out autism diagnoses because of "incentives."

Again, you keep failing to understand what "incentivizing" here means. Didn't do well in English class, eh?

Regardless of what you want incentivize to mean, my point is that by diagnosing after only 30 minutes, you/your child did not get good medical care. You cannot extrapolate from your experience to the experiences of those of us that did get careful, thorough medical care and evaluations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:[
Doctors, like ours, do have an incentive. With an autism diagnosis, we can get ABA, speech, OT and PT, without much difficulty. Before we had the diagnosis, we had to private pay services and they would not cover it. Doctor wanted child in services, so doctor gives the diagnosis to make sure we can get the diagnosis paid for. Many insurances only pay for services under autism.

They aren't getting kick-backs, but they are doing it to get kids services that kids may not have access to depending on the parents financial situation.

We go the diagnosis after a 30 minute visit, mostly talking to me. Our follow-ups are 15-20 minutes.

You go to a lousy, lazy doctor. There are examples of people doing their job poorly in every profession; just because you got a junk ASD diagnosis after 30 minutes doesn't mean that most -- or even many -- doctors hand out autism diagnoses because of "incentives."

Again, you keep failing to understand what "incentivizing" here means. Didn't do well in English class, eh?

Regardless of what you want incentivize to mean, my point is that by diagnosing after only 30 minutes, you/your child did not get good medical care. You cannot extrapolate from your experience to the experiences of those of us that did get careful, thorough medical care and evaluations.

The money trail of autism is easy to follow, actually, if you get your head out of the sand.

This doesn't mean children aren't accurately diagnosed. It means the whole system is set up to encourage doctors to give ASD diagnosis for a much broader range of symptoms, and parents to accept because they are desperate for speech, OT, ABA, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FYI, Ivymount Outreach also has a social skills group just for girls.

Op here. Part of the reason I'm not totally sold on ASD being a possibility for my daughter is her social skills are fine. She doesn't struggle at all there- lots of friends, participates in activities. She misses unspoken things like passive aggression and sarcasm (the pragmatics issue) but other than that, does not struggle at all with social skills or in social situations.

if she does fine socially it is not autism, period. is it even age appropriate to expect 7 year olds to understand sarcasm and passive aggression? it sounds like you might be over-focusing on things within the range of normal as you try to sort out the actually functionally problematic stuff.

I'm not trying to focus specifically on anything. I'm simply trying to see if what professionals suggest for my kid fit her. The specialist mentioned the things like sarcasm, someone leaving her out on purpose but not telling her why (passive aggression) as things that she is not correctly perceiving or noticing. Since she knew my DD's age and mentioned those, I assumed she meant those were age appropriate things she should be picking up on now.

I am absolutely seeking all avenues of helping her and am not swayed in any one particular direction as to what she has or doesn't have. I have no hang ups about any potential diagnoses. I just brought up ASD because it was mentioned to us as a possibility for the first time and I was curious since I could see my daughter meeting the standard for PDD which is no longer in existence, but not ASD since she lacks many of the things for that diagnosis. But, if she would have been PDD at one time although not ASD, she would now be ASD simply for showing the signs of PDD I would assume... It's hard to get your brain around!

Some kids who would formerly be considered PDD-NOS would not be on the spectrum (ASD) since they tried to make the criteria more coherent. PDD-NOS was kind of a hodgepodge. But if your daughter has issues, there should be a diagnosis out there for her to get her the help she needs. It may be 'just' DCD or that plus something else. Maybe ASD, maybe something else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:[
Doctors, like ours, do have an incentive. With an autism diagnosis, we can get ABA, speech, OT and PT, without much difficulty. Before we had the diagnosis, we had to private pay services and they would not cover it. Doctor wanted child in services, so doctor gives the diagnosis to make sure we can get the diagnosis paid for. Many insurances only pay for services under autism.

They aren't getting kick-backs, but they are doing it to get kids services that kids may not have access to depending on the parents financial situation.

We go the diagnosis after a 30 minute visit, mostly talking to me. Our follow-ups are 15-20 minutes.

You go to a lousy, lazy doctor. There are examples of people doing their job poorly in every profession; just because you got a junk ASD diagnosis after 30 minutes doesn't mean that most -- or even many -- doctors hand out autism diagnoses because of "incentives."

Again, you keep failing to understand what "incentivizing" here means. Didn't do well in English class, eh?

Regardless of what you want incentivize to mean, my point is that by diagnosing after only 30 minutes, you/your child did not get good medical care. You cannot extrapolate from your experience to the experiences of those of us that did get careful, thorough medical care and evaluations.

The money trail of autism is easy to follow, actually, if you get your head out of the sand.

This doesn't mean children aren't accurately diagnosed. It means the whole system is set up to encourage doctors to give ASD diagnosis for a much broader range of symptoms, and parents to accept because they are desperate for speech, OT, ABA, etc.

Again, paranoid B.S. that you cannot prove. The articles you posted previously only highlighted that some kids who are profoundly intellectually disabled sometimes get lumped in with autism. Also, not every kid with autism needs ABA or OT. Plus there are lots of specialists that you need to pay out of pocket for like psychiatrists or educational evaluations regardless of diagnosis.

There are actually evidence based instruments that diagnose autism, learning disabilities, or communication disorders. You would actually know this if you got your child a neuropsych evaluation. Talk about head in the sand. You cling to an out-of-date diagnosis. You choose to accept services under a diagnosis, IEP or not and pay out of pocket. Your choice.