4 year old new autism diagnosis
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Anonymous
A main question is, what is the ABA for? If you use it to try to teach your child language, you will often get a short term fix with long term consequences. I have several friends who used ABA for language. Their children's speech is scripted and they are not conversational, although they can communicate their needs and wants. But they vary little from their scripts. We used naturalistic therapies at home and some official speech therapies from the school, EI and some private SLPs, and we have a child who is just shy of conversational now. (His bottom percentile receptive language holds him back.) Check out The Hanen Method and Jim D. McDonald's Communicating Partners website and Youtube videos. Depending on your state, an ASD diagnosis will kick in a lot of coverage for ABA and speech therapy, which is why so many parents willingly accept the diagnosis even if they don't feel it's totally accurate. I have one friend whose child has a severe genetic condition and who thinks the ASD Dx is probably bogus, but it gets his child a lot of paid-for therapies. But ABA is a massive time sink and even with the coverage, the ABA daily co-pays hit several hundred dollars a month. I have several other friends who also sought out an ASD diagnosis even though the root cause of their child's disabilities is certainly not autism and they know it. I would take a thoughtful look at what my child needs at the moment and go from there. ABA can teach skills and behaviors, but it's 9 times out of 10 it's not a good fit to teach conversational language. |
Anonymous
| My DS was diagnosed with ASD at 2.5. He has a speech delay and some social deficits. Prior to the ASD diagnosis, my insurance would not pay for any speech, OT or ABA therapies. With the diagnosis, all of these services are covered. I was very wary of ABA therapy because of all of the negativity associated with it. However, I have been pleasantly surprised with both the progress and my DS enjoyment of his ABA therapy. I would not, however, rely on it solely for speech. While they are working towards increasing my DS ability to ask for his wants/needs through sign language and spoken language, it is not a substitute for speech therapy. ABA is definitely not working towards conversational language. However, the combination of ABA, OT and speech therapies is working very well for my DS. |
Anonymous
Your article is from 2011. Why don't you find some information for 2012 and later, since that is when the ADOS-2 came out. People still say "ADOS" but practitioners have been using the ADOS-2 for years. Also, I don't know of any professional who wants to use it as a "stand alone test". "People here" are not the ones administering it. Professionals are. It's part of a comprehensive assessment. It is possible to receive a diagnosis of autism on the ADOS and yet not receive a final, clinical diagnosis from a professional. And vice-versa. Finally, I also don't know anyone who recommends "autism interventions". Interventions should address symptoms, not labels. That is true no matter what the diagnosis is. I'm sorry if you had a bad experience, but there is no ASD conspiracy going on. The ADOS is a good test and if autism is possibly part of the diagnostic picture it should be included in the assessment. The professionals will use their best judgment to interpret the results, and parents should use their best judgment when following the advice of professionals. |
Anonymous
| Children with apraxia are often misdiagnosed as having autism. Many of the characteristics are similar. so, while both are possible, you may not have received an accurate diagnosis of autism....or apraxia, for that matter. |
Anonymous
Knowledge is power, and we are trying to give the OP a heads up to do her research. And you only need to look to this thread to see hiw parents are incentivized to take an ASD diagnosis. |
Anonymous
You need to stop making every single thread about you and your agenda. It is so unhelpful and unfair. Many of our kids need all the therapies regardless of the diagnosis and most of us just don't care to die on this hill. We treat the symptoms and the names are fluid and changing. I am sorry you found getting a label or a code for your child's disability so deeply stigmatizing but you continue to perpetuate a false reality and stigma on here constantly. My child does not have autism, but his peers that do are far more functional than my child. The label given does not change that. OP, autism often does not travel alone. It sounds like your child may be almost non-verbal, is that correct? Are you doing PROMPT therapy? ABA was helpful for us in getting our child available for therapy - it taught him how to do things for longer stretches and to sit and work for a reward, etc. It was very helpful for my non ASD child. We also do speech and OT. As for when your child will/if they will show signs of ASD - I found that my child looked and seemed much more impacted at 7. The gap just widened. Most 4 year olds are still not extremely verbal etc., but that changes very quickly and the disparities become more evident. |
Anonymous
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OP here. My private insurance already covers unlimited sessions of speech therapies for my 4 year old WITHOUT autism diagnosis. He has been doing 7 sessions/week for speech therapies through EI (public) & private for his speech delay (apraxia of speech).
The ADOS doctors say that the autism diagnosis is not solely based on his limited speech, but it is more about his social behaviors. He is self-centered, imitate people conservation without understanding the meaning, not aware of the other's people emotion/reaction etc., and he has been followed by different developmental pediatricians from children hospital since he was 15 months old suspicious of spectrum but cannot get the conclusion. It is just now that it is the first time he did the ADOS test from children hospital time (almost 18 months waiting list) that they give him an autism diagnosis. I will continue to do speech therapies through ST, and they recommend ABA therapies & OT for his social communication behaviors. They recommend 25-30 hours/week of ABA therapies, is it too many hours or standard for 4 year old that is in private full time daycare? What ABB therapist do actually? As a social behavioral therapist to model correct behavior? And, they recommend me to pull him out from private full time daycare (even he is happy & learning at his own pace there), but put him in special need public preschool program (I bet autism diagnosis make him definitely eligible for the program)? I don't know about that. |
Anonymous
And, also I know that my private insurance covers unlimited OT therapies WITHOUT autism diagnosis as well, but just I don't have time to pull him out from daycare to take him to do it because of his some mild sensory behaviors. How can full-time working parents take their kids to do 25-30 hours of ABA therapies on top of other therapies? To me, it is impossible. And, I still have no ideas what ABA therapies are? Are they working like a shadow or something like that? I have not called the insurance because I am still waiting for the official ADOS report before I call the insurance to ask coverage. I wonder anyone has luck that insurance will pay for ABA therapist to come to daycare or home? Or I have to pay for their transportation. |
Anonymous
There are lots of problems with ABA. Evidence from research shows it can help with developing life skills and rote language responses, but in practice it doesn't always work. It is a huge time commitment, 20 hours a week or more is common. 10 hours is the fewest I've heard of. It can be very taxing on both parent and child. Some autistic adults claim that the ABA they had as children did them more harm than good. ASD kids often have a deficit in social learning. They don't learn basic skills spontaneously by watching parents and other kids. ABA therapy uses a reward system to teach these skills explicitly. So if you want the child to come when called, you show them what to do, and if they do it, give a reward. This can take many trials, and there are a lot of skills to learn, so that's why there are so many hours involved. Here is some more on ABA. https://www.autismspeaks.org/applied-behavior-analysis-aba-0 It's hard to say if your kid would do better in a special needs preschool. There is benefit to being with NT peers and there is also benefit to focused SN learning. I'd visit at the SN program and see if it is right for your child. Ask them lots of questions about what they do and how it will help your kid. Every kid is different and you know your child best, so there is no one right way to go. I think most of us go on a combination of professional advice and parent instincts. Hope this helps. |
Anonymous
I am the PP with the Ds who was diagnosed at 2.5 with ASD. He currently receives 25 hours per week of ABA therapy. 15 hours are at his preschool and 10 hours are in the home. We chose not to put him into a special education public classroom, he is in a private regular education preschool with the support of an ABA therapist while he is there. He also gets OT 2x per week and Speech 1x week. |
Anonymous
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ABA is based on a cruel premise — of trying to make people with autism ‘normal,’ a goal articulated in the 1960s by psychologist Ole Ivar Lovaas, who developed ABA for autism.
Adults with autism who were forced through childhoods with ABA advocate for, instead, acceptance of neurodiversity — the idea that people with autism or, say, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or Tourette syndrome, should be respected as naturally different rather than abnormal and needing to be fixed. |
Anonymous
It would be nice if the world was kinder |
Anonymous
I wasn't working and we got offered that much ABA. We couldn't find a provider to do it nor did we need it (give it to someone who needs it) but there is now way we could have used the hours between preschool, speech and OT. I think kids with moderate or severe ASD would benefit from that much but not mild and you don't want to do it instead of OT/ST/PT. We were told that the ABA therapist could join us on activities or going out to eat to work on behavioral issue (we had none so it made no sense to me but for someone else I could see it being helpful). They come to the house. Only one wanted us to come to them. Ours came to our house. I found OT useless except for later on for holding a pencil as I couldn't teach it for the life of me. I think doctors and specialists just ask for the moon and its up to you and the provider to decide how much but few provides have that much time nor are willing. |
Anonymous
Have you tried ABA or are you just slamming it? We spoke with many ABA therapists and picked one. She was sweet, gentle and kind. There was no forcing or pushing and she tried to work on basic skills. She'd come and play games and make it fun. My child enjoyed seeing her. The only thing unnatural was her documenting the intervention (i.e. say ball 5 times). I didn't see the point in it, but it didn't do any harm and ABA today is different than the 60's and it depends on the provider. |
Anonymous
You are basing it off of what you don't know or tried. We did 4 hours - 2 two hour sessions. We were offered a lot more but no provider had the time nor was it necessary. For Apraxia you want a prompt trained therapist 3-5 days a week. |