Do you ever question your kid's ASD diagnosis?

[Anonymous]

Yes and no. I think that he does not and possible never did meet the criteria for a clinically significant impact of his symptoms. I think his main challenges are unrelated to autism but attributed to it. He socializes fine, communicates fine, is flexible enough to deal with school and every day life. Just because someone has “quirks” that fit the description of autism doesn’t mean they have autism - those quirks are supposed to cause an impairment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes and no. I think that he does not and possible never did meet the criteria for a clinically significant impact of his symptoms. I think his main challenges are unrelated to autism but attributed to it. He socializes fine, communicates fine, is flexible enough to deal with school and every day life. Just because someone has “quirks” that fit the description of autism doesn’t mean they have autism - those quirks are supposed to cause an impairment.

OP here: That's my kid.

[Anonymous]

Yes, but it was made very young and it turned out to be something very different. The testing is not inclusive of many other things and can be bias as the tests are subjective.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes and no. I think that he does not and possible never did meet the criteria for a clinically significant impact of his symptoms. I think his main challenges are unrelated to autism but attributed to it. He socializes fine, communicates fine, is flexible enough to deal with school and every day life. Just because someone has “quirks” that fit the description of autism doesn’t mean they have autism - those quirks are supposed to cause an impairment.

OP here: That's my kid.

Then ignore if you want! We have never been big on emphasizing it or attributing everything to it. Every prediction based on his diagnosis has been wrong. The main impact is really body language/stimming.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Tell us about her. Why are you questioning it?

Don't, some posters will say that's what my kid is like and it has to be XXX.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes and no. I think that he does not and possible never did meet the criteria for a clinically significant impact of his symptoms. I think his main challenges are unrelated to autism but attributed to it. He socializes fine, communicates fine, is flexible enough to deal with school and every day life. Just because someone has “quirks” that fit the description of autism doesn’t mean they have autism - those quirks are supposed to cause an impairment.

OP here: That's my kid.

Then ignore if you want! We have never been big on emphasizing it or attributing everything to it. Every prediction based on his diagnosis has been wrong. The main impact is really body language/stimming.

OP here: Why so hostile? I was just asking about other parents' experiences to help me think about this. FFS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes and no. I think that he does not and possible never did meet the criteria for a clinically significant impact of his symptoms. I think his main challenges are unrelated to autism but attributed to it. He socializes fine, communicates fine, is flexible enough to deal with school and every day life. Just because someone has “quirks” that fit the description of autism doesn’t mean they have autism - those quirks are supposed to cause an impairment.

OP here: That's my kid.

Then ignore if you want! We have never been big on emphasizing it or attributing everything to it. Every prediction based on his diagnosis has been wrong. The main impact is really body language/stimming.

OP here: Why so hostile? I was just asking about other parents' experiences to help me think about this. FFS.

The reply you quoted is not hostile at all. It's giving you permission to ignore a diagnosis that doesn't ring true to you or that doesn't address your concerns.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No. They're in line with the new, lower thresholds for diagnosis. My husband and son have more classic autistic traits, with socio-communicative impacts, and my daughter and I have the so-called "girl autism", which means we have a greater capacity for social integration and communication and major social anxiety, and fit the other ASD criteria at a minimal level.

Which is not to say my daughter's recent diagnosis, at 15, didn't come as a surprise - I didn't think her symptoms were sufficient to cross the threshold, because I was stuck on my son's earlier diagnosis from years ago. But when the psychologist explained all the criteria, I was convinced. And it was very apparent during that meeting that I, too, am on the mild end of the spectrum.

Do you feel like your and your daughter's "girl-autism" requires professional intervention, or is it something that you both can manage without outside support?

I wonder if the diagnosis bar has been set so low that anyone who falls outside one standard deviation of the mean for social skills ability gets an ASD diagnosis.

I did ask the psychologist what she thought of the lower threshold, and she said quite honestly that the entire umbrella of autism was unwieldy, but that it wasn't in the power of her field of psychology to break it up into categories, given that the criteria applied are all the same. They tried in the past, with Asperger's, to identify a threshold between high-functioning and more profound autism, but could never agree on where the threshold was! As a geneticist, I told her that new 2025 research has identified 4 main groups of genetic variants plausibly linked to autism. I think genetics might be the next big tool to break up the autism spectrum into distinct categories.

My daughter and I have rather severe anxiety. Right now my daughter is not under treatment, but she might be in the future. I've tried both meds and therapy, and neither have worked great, so I've had to right-size my life to cope with my anxiety. Right now I am the talking-through-it point person for my daughter, and I don't think that we need outside therapy specific to self-awareness and social skills, because that has been part of my own personal self-help focus for years (without knowing I was autistic!), and I've coached my husband and son through their social blindness issues. My adult son would probably benefit from anxiety meds, but he has yet to try them and is usually resistant to seeing doctors and mental health specialists of any kind (as is my husband... who is a doctor himself!).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tell us about her. Why are you questioning it?

Don't, some posters will say that's what my kid is like and it has to be XXX.

Or worse your friend says, “My nephew with Aspergers whom I see 3x a year doesn’t do that, it must be something else. That doesn’t sound like ASD.”

[Anonymous]

I sometimes wonder if our daughter has social pragmatic communication disorder instead.

She really does not have any repetitive patterns or behaviors. And while she prefers predictability, she isn’t really inflexible or rigid. She doesn’t have any particular deep or narrow interests. She is very imaginative.

But she does avoid eye contact. And she can experience sensory overload but it’s like on loud crowded subway cars and things like that. It is not a normal occurrence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I sometimes wonder if our daughter has social pragmatic communication disorder instead.

She really does not have any repetitive patterns or behaviors. And while she prefers predictability, she isn’t really inflexible or rigid. She doesn’t have any particular deep or narrow interests. She is very imaginative.

But she does avoid eye contact. And she can experience sensory overload but it’s like on loud crowded subway cars and things like that. It is not a normal occurrence.

She sounds like a normal person with likes and dislikes, like everyone else.

[Anonymous]

We didn’t question the ASD diagnosis that DD received at 21 months because it seemed to fit perfectly then. She had a very severe speech delay. As time went on it and her speech came in a lot of the ASD symptoms faded away and it appeared to be more like what Dr. Stephen Camarata describes in his books. She’s 7 now and still hasn’t fully found her footing socially but otherwise seems okay.
We had an RBT shadow her for the majority of her preschool years to help with social skills but the school system said she isn’t eligible for anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I sometimes wonder if our daughter has social pragmatic communication disorder instead.

She really does not have any repetitive patterns or behaviors. And while she prefers predictability, she isn’t really inflexible or rigid. She doesn’t have any particular deep or narrow interests. She is very imaginative.

But she does avoid eye contact. And she can experience sensory overload but it’s like on loud crowded subway cars and things like that. It is not a normal occurrence.

She sounds like a normal person with likes and dislikes, like everyone else.

Yes maybe that is what I think too. She clearly has the elements that overlap in social pragmatic communication disorder and autism. So the autism diagnosis isn’t totally from left field.

But the rest of the diagnostic criteria it feels like on a scale of 1-10 she’s maybe a two or three? And some not at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We didn’t question the ASD diagnosis that DD received at 21 months because it seemed to fit perfectly then. She had a very severe speech delay. As time went on it and her speech came in a lot of the ASD symptoms faded away and it appeared to be more like what Dr. Stephen Camarata describes in his books. She’s 7 now and still hasn’t fully found her footing socially but otherwise seems okay.
We had an RBT shadow her for the majority of her preschool years to help with social skills but the school system said she isn’t eligible for anything.

If she’s 7 the speech and other things can still change and improve.

[Anonymous]

yep..it is a very broad spectrum. Sometimes I think they put all the other non-specific neurodivergents under the umbrella