Speech Delay & ADHD

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You wouldn’t do a neuropsych until 7. She’s suggesting you test for autism. Get on the waiting lists for a dev ped.

Thank you. I will follow up with dev ped. I think it'll be helpful for the ADHD. I really don't see the ASD and neither do any of the other clinicians. DS is very social. Always going up to people, laughing, smiling, singing, etc. He is also quite silly and kind of a jokester. He doesn't hyperfocus on anything (the opposite he can't pay attention to anything for more than 10 seconds). The only behavior I can see that is concerning is that he does have extreme tantrums if he doesn't get his way.

Honestly this describes my now 4 yr old exactly and everyone from the ped to the speech therapists said this is pretty likely to be evaluated as ASD. You don’t have to hyperfocus, line things up, repeat, etc. We’ve also been told 4 is too young for an ADHD diagnosis, too. Good luck - it’s very time consuming and frustrating to get answers and try to make progress

It describes my 3 year old ASD kid too. He probably has ADHD too but dev ped says it’s too young to diagnose.

Sorry to be obtuse, but I still don't see how emotional sensitivity, ADHD, and expressive speech delay equal even high functioning autism. I've read so many descriptions and it doesn't match up.

Bottom line, OP - you’re not a developmental doctor and you can’t diagnose. Stop trying. Posters on here can’t tell you what’s going on. You need a specialist. Regardless, you will treat the symptoms. So just keep on working on speech. Not much you can do about the attention issues now. My child who was similar did benefit from aba to learn how to sit and do something for more than a few seconds.

You're right. I just need to go to the appts and see what they say. Either way, I think the interventions are helping and OT is going to help more. I need to get off the internet. I just felt blindsided yesterday. I thought it was going to be a routine appt about speech.

[Anonymous]

Be grateful that you caught it as early as you have. 2 years is a great time to start early intervention, regardless of the diagnosis the intervention will likely be the same. Put all the resources you can into EI, you will see the quickest progress between 0-7. Be thankful if you get an ASD diagnosis because you can get more services covered under insurance. Don’t focus on the diagnosis as much as you focus on the interventions and daily improvement.