Reply to "probably never really had autism in the first place"

Forum Index » Kids With Special Needs and Disabilities

Reply to " "probably never really had autism in the first place""

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I say this as someone who had a kid with lots of red flags for autism around age 1.5-2 and now by 3 it's clear that ASD is not what DC is dealing with, according to two dev peds and our school system.

As a parent with a delayed child, you basically have two options:
1. Therapy.  You assume your child will not catch up naturally and you pursue therapy to help your child's development as much as you can in the early formative years.
2. No Therapy.  You assume your child will catch up naturally.

When you make this decision, there is no way to know whether your child will catch up or not.  You have to guess.  For me, that guess was to do therapy.  I am comfortable with the idea that I will never truly know if it was necessary.  But, at the end of the day, I would rather look back and this time and laugh at myself for being too neurotic than look back and regret that I didn't do enough during this time.  So, therapy it is.

Then a second issue comes into play when choosing which therapies to do.  ABA is said to be great for kids with ASD, but less progressive forms of ABA can be too restricting for kids with other delays.  So, again, you have to guess.  For me, I have chosen to do the therapies suggested to me by our dev ped (speech, OT, and developmental preschool).  If my dev ped had said ABA, I would have done it.

There are no easy answers.  [/quote]

I agree. I don't know many parents who chose option 2. Most did some sorts of therapy. But the  second issue is so huge.  As a PP brought up, how MUCH do you do? Do you empty out your bank accounts, declare bankruptcy, lose your house in endless treatment after treatment or to sustain ABA therapy? Do you force the school systems to pay for ABA like the parents in the LA Times story did? Do you try the unproven, possibly dangerous treatments?

That's why a good diagnosis, to figure out EXACTLY what you are facing, is so crucial. And I'm surprised at the amount of posters who say, "Just call it autism, so we can start therapy -- ANY therapy!"

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics