Can anyone tell me about PWC Child Find?

[Maude]

We strongly suspect that DS has some form of ASD/SPD/AS. He is 3.5, highly imaginative and highly verbal, but his imaginary play is very scripted and obsessive. He would spend all day running around tooting like a train if we let him. He has been doing that since April. He prefers playing with adults to playing with children, and has recently had several bad encounters with kids when he attempted to play with them, but he didn't notice. For example, on Wednesday, he tried to play with some kids, they yelled at him to stop being weird, that he wasn't a train, and to just be normal. He didn't notice that they had been yelling in his face, and proudly came over to tell me that he had been playing with them. However, with the exception of one or two really calm, accepting kids, he generally prefers to play by himself, with adults, or with his imaginary friends.

He is extremely sensitive to a variety of sensory stimuli, particularly smells, sounds, and tactile things. He isn't completely potty trained yet b/c he is scared to poop on the potty. The smell makes him gag, and he doesn't like the way it feels to poop. He also refuses to flush any public toilets b/c the sound of them flushing causes a complete shaking, crying, screaming meltdown. He tries to run completely out of the bathroom when we flush the toilet for him.

I don't even really know where to start. Is PWC Child Find a good place, or should we just skip it and go straight to a developmental pedi?

[Anonymous]

Most of the ChildFind programs in the metro area are very good. It's once the child hits K that everything can fall apart.

For more responses, you might post this on the Virginia Public Schools board.

GL!

[Anonymous]

I don't live in PWC, but I would go to child find and get advice and also make an appointment with a developmental pediatrician at the same time. It can take a long time to get that first appt, so do both now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't live in PWC, but I would go to child find and get advice and also make an appointment with a developmental pediatrician at the same time. It can take a long time to get that first appt, so do both now.

I agree with this advice. Do both at the same time. We ultimately found that the services child find provided were not enough and were more of a supplement to private therapy. It can be a long road to figuring out what the issues are but taking multiple paths to get there is a good idea.