can you have multiple diagnoses? say ADD, Language disorder and Auditory Processing disorder
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Anonymous
This describes my child perfectly. As the speech is coming in, the functioning and social skills are coming very quickly. The autism therapy was worthless as we didn't have the typical behaviors that needed addressed at home (or we were doing ok with them). Our primary focus is on speech. Everything else is coming naturally when it is ready as the speech progresses. Every child is different and should be looked at in that way. |
Anonymous
A study like that doesn't surprise me, unfortunately. Too many people don't do enough research to get the specific help the children need. Luckily, in the MERLD groups I'm involved in, most of the children are progressing well. Autism is a severe lifelong developmental disorder. Most do not marry nor hold jobs. MERLD is something different, although with plenty of its own challenges. Now, lots of kids today are being called "ASD" -- but they are not truly autistic. Instead, the have a mixture of challenges that a sloppy system lops together as ASD. |
Anonymous
Oh. My. God. I have no problem with the idea of MERLD, with the fact that your children have MERLD, but for goodness sake can you educate yourself about ASDs? My DS has an ASD, aspergers type. So do both my brothers and my nephew. Trust me, this is something I know about. It is a spectrum disorder that ranges from people who are nonverbal and intellectually disabled, to people who have learned to compensate for the disability and function fairly well. I assumed everyone knew this, but I guess not. To address some specific misinformation in this thread: 1. People with ASDs are not incapable of social interaction. It is much more difficult for them because they cannot read social cues. But even nonverbal kids can be affectionate and interactive with their parents. My DS has quite a few friends. In some ways he has learned how to interact with them, learned the things that come more intuitively to other children. In other ways its pretty clear that his way of interacting is different than other kids. But the friendships are genuine and he has just as many as my NT DC. 2. It is a severe, lifelong disorder. I would guess that most lower functioning people with ASDs do not marry or hold jobs. But I have a married sibling with an ASD, many people with ASDs do work. This is especially true in the tech industry where the skills align with some people with ASDs (not all -- my DS is not a tech or STEM guy). Not all kids with ASDs are completely detached. In fact, many of the kids who would have been in a previous generation have received interventions that have helped tremendously. My DS was initially nonverbal but because of extremely early intervention is now a good student in a mainstream school (with some issues -- attention, some challenges with abstractions). You really, really have to stop with this idea that if a child is functioning well he must not have an ASD. Its a new world and things have gotten much better. You are working way too hard to wall off MERLD, like you are threatened by kids with ASDs who can communicate. You need to educate yourself. |
Anonymous
Autism can be severe or it can be mild. It varies widely. The apparent increase in people with ASDs is largely due to treaters recognizing more cases taht are mild and providing help for those kids. That's a good thing because more people are getting help. Please stop spreading stigma and stereotypes about what it means to have an ASD. |
Anonymous
| Our diagnosis soup is autism, ADHD combined type, generalized anxiety disorder and dysgraphia. |
Anonymous
It may describe your child perfectly but not my non-ASD kid with MERLD and APD. It also doesn't even come close to describing the many children I know who are on the spectrum. I agree with PPs you definitely have many misconceptions about ASD. It's sad that you often perpetuate them on this board. |
Anonymous
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8:09 again. I think my post makes this clear but let me be explicit: there is nothing hopeless about having an ASD.
Honestly, this is how stigmas are created and perpetuated. |
Anonymous
If your sister can take your nephew to the Camaratas, she will likely get a lot of answers and a path forward. They are a cut above everyone else who saw my child. Yes, you can have a lot going on that is NOT ASD. In fact, the latest DSM removed language as a symptom of autism, because so many parents and doctors were leaping to that conclusion when a child has a language delay. Also, check out "The Mislabeled Child." Great book, written by doctors, on how language disorders and ASD are quite different, need different treatments, and why so many people get the diagnosis confused. |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
I am not the PP to whom you respond. I read the link posted. It doesn't say anything about MERLD outcomes compared to ASD outcomes. It does say that kids with mixed language disorders (like MERLD) have long term issues, but there are no stats and no specific comparisons to non-language disorder diagnoses, so your statement is not supported by your citation/link. Personally, I think it's pointless to make an overarching statement about MERLD vs. Autism outcomes. Each diagnosis has a very wide range from mild to severe disability. In each group you can find one mildly affected person who will have a better outcome than a more severely affected person with another diagnosis. In other words, a person with mild MERLD will likely have a better outcome than a person with severe autism. Or a high functioning Asperger's-like autistic child might have a very good adult outcome when compared with a MERLD child who is so severely affected that they really don't have much expressive speech. IQ is probably also a confounding attribute. It's not a competition. |
Anonymous
The "stigma" actually comes from studies like this: http://sfari.org/news-and-opinion/news/2011/people-with-milder-forms-of-autism-struggle-as-adults People with milder forms of autism struggle as adults Blurred boundaries: Social skills have a greater impact on quality of life for people on the autism spectrum than do any specific diagnoses. Contrary to popular assumption, people diagnosed with so-called mild forms of autism don’t fare any better in life than those with severe forms of the disorder. That’s the conclusion of a new study that suggests that even individuals with normal intelligence and language abilities struggle to fit into society because of their social and communication problems. In fact, people diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS) are no more likely to marry or have a job than those with more disabling forms of autism, according to a Norwegian study published online in June in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders1. |
Anonymous
| PDD-NOS is autism and the diagnosis (which no longer exists in the DSM5) is not an indicator of "mild" or "severe" and never has been. |
Anonymous
No shit. Therefore you shouldn't characterize kids with ASDs as "hopeless" while you (or PP) insists that kids with MERLD fare well after their language "comes in." You can't make that kind of blanket statement. |
Anonymous
You might want to read more than one study. The same foundation promotes research that states clearly that it is not possible to generalize outcomes for adults with ASDs. http://sfari.org/news-and-opinion/news/2014/social-skills-contentment-evade-adults-with-autism |
Anonymous
| Of course adults with ASDs have challenges. Duh, it's a disability. But what you writes before is that they cannot interact socially, do not marry and hold jobs and are hopeless. That's BS. Maybe you are changing your arguments because you see that now. I suspect your little MERLD group of parents has been passing disinformation around. I don't understand why but, seriously, you don't know what you are talking about. |