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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have a 4 year old boy that has apraxia of speech, and a new autism diagnosis (by developmental pediatrician & also through ADOS test). He has been doing speech therapies through public & private to work on his speech, and the new autism diagnosis is kind of thrown me off. I always know that he has some social delay, but I thought that it is mainly due to his language delay. His pediatrician/daycare teachers(teach him for 1 year)/speech therapist through public & private/family members & friends are all surprised with his new diagnosis because he is so happy, social & interactive. Anyways, now I am confused if he truly has apraxia of speech or not, or his speech delay due to his autism spectrum. And, even the ADOS test doctors tell me that he has a lot of good qualities that hide his autism symptoms, and that is why a lot of people don't think that he is on the spectrum. They say it is difficult to say if he has mild or moderate autism, and he is recommended ABA therapies.

Please tell me something about ABA therapies since it is all new to me. And with autism diagnosis, anyone has experiences if insurance will cover it or not? And, I also want to understand what does that mean he has a lot of good qualities that hide his current autism symptoms, does that mean he will outgrow it or if I don't do anything, the symptoms will show up more obviously when he gets older?

Thank you![/quote]

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.

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