Cooking the books: Now 1 in 45 said to have autism in the U.S.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^Her child is in private preschool and not even in K. So not hugely expensive.

Just because your child does not need an IEP (yeah, you are doing everything private now), doesn't mean you won't need the IEP later if you ever want to send your child to public.

He's in second grade, not preschool. He will not qualify per many professionals as he doing fine

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Again, you are missing the point. School labels are not the same thing as a medical diagnosis. There are only 13 categories by law under which you can get an IEP:

There are ONLY 13 categories of special education as defined by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). In order to qualify for special education, the IEP team must determine that a child has one of the following:

-Autism
-Blindness
-Deafness
-Emotional Disturbance
-Hearing Impairment
-Intellectual Disability
-Multiple Disabilities
-Orthopedic Impairment
-Other Health Impaired
-Specific Learning Disability
-Speech or Language Impairment
-Traumatic Brain Injury
-Visual Impairment

Change the law or change your doctor and stop bitching and moaning about your wrong diagnosis.

The thing is, schools push kids into the diagnosis that works for them, for programming and money and their own labeling biases. Ofen you have to fight the good fight to have your child labeled with the correct thing in school, instead of the diagnosis du jour of autism.

Its not as simple as talking to the doctor. I have. He does not listen. We do not have an IEP or school services. We do all services and school privately. So, your comments are not relevant to us as our school does not do IEP's and provides support without one. And, when we go to private, we will do our best not to have an IEP and continue with private services regardless of the cost.

If you can pay for private school, then you can definitely pay to see a different developmental pediatrician or have a neuropsych evaluation done. Quit your whining.

+1. Second the suggestion for the neuropsych evaluation. Minimum age is 6. You can take it to the developmental pediatrician and have the misdiagnosis for ASD removed once and for all.

We have done all kinds of private testing locally and out of state. The man refuses to consider any opinions outside his own. I can get ten more disagreeing with him but no point if he will not change the the diagnosis and service recommendations. How many evaluations should a child be subjected to. If he has what he needs and we do not need it to benefit him why subject him to more testing when nothing will change. Our private school is very inexpensive compared to everything else we spent and cheaper than hiring an advocate and risking him getting lost in a large classroom.

So what kind of private testing and evaluations? Did your DS have a neuropsych eval or ADOS/ADI-R testing? Speech and OT evaluations do not diagnose or rule out ASDs nor a 10 minute visit with a regular pediatrician. So unless your developmental pediatrician is a complete fool like you are portraying, it's hard to believe that your dev ped is wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The schools are reading the same articles as us and are having the same debates. Our son was diagnosed with ASD. He is super high functioning, though, so the sped folks at his school are denying him an IEP. They say he is functioning at the same level as his peers and doesn't stand out at all in the classroom. The teacher flat out told me that she read a story about how our society is over diagnosing ASD and suggested that DS was misdiagnosed. So tge medical community moves the line, then the school community moves right along with it. It's a dance.

Yeah, it's a dance about $$ in the mind of schools, but keep fighting for your child. IEP meetings are no fun at all.
My sympathies.
Signed,
a mom of a high-functioning ASD Kid

We have been bluntly told by several evaluators our child does not stand out and doing well academically so not a chance he'd get any help.

My kid with ASD/ADHD does great academically without academic supports but I am still very happy that he has an IEP and gets help for his social communication issues. He has had an IEP since preK4.

I agree with you that it is nearly impossible to get an IEP for kids with this profile past Kindergarten. We try our hardest to keep the IEP (we already had his three yr reeval and renewal last year) since DS will most like need the social supports at school as he gets older.