Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

OP, what a crock of lies you are spreading. As someone who had to fight tooth and nail to keep a false ASD diagnosis off my kid, I know it makes a huge difference if you are incorrectly labeled. I've seen it firshand.

Parents should ALWAYS insist on accurate labels, even if lazy, incompetent school personnel try to tell you otherwise. I've gotten every service we've needed AND forced them to use the correct label.

You didn't actually read any of the original post. A medical diagnosis ISN'T the same thing as a designation to receive IEP services. It's not a crock of lies; it's the law. You can receive an IEP for only the following:

• autism;
• deaf-blindness;
• deafness;
• emotional disturbance;
• hearing impairment;
• intellectual disability;
• multiple disabilities;
• orthopedic impairment;
• other health impairment;
• specific learning disability;
• speech or language impairment;
• traumatic brain injury; or
• visual impairment (including blindness).

So your child may not have autism, but unless the school can attribute one of the above 13 potential diagnoses, he won't get an IEP either. That is my point. Until the law changes and has more inclusive language, the "label" the school uses may not be accurate but will get you accommodations and services.

But honestly, PP if you've been fighting tooth and nail to keep off an ASD diagnosis from your child, my guess is you are fighting the wrong battle.

Oh no, I read your whole post the first time.

You left out Early Childhood Developmental Delay. In my state you can be under that until you are 7 years old. At 7, my son was switched to Language Impairment. Specific Learning Disability also would have worked.

I well know a medical diagnosis isn't the same as an educational label. I had multiple medical assessments of my child saying he was not autistic, but instead severely language impaired, with processing issues and learning disabilities. But school districts do whatever is easiest for them. So if they have invested their resources in an ASD program, that's where they want to throw as many kids as possible. Very few outsiders or even parents understand the difference between school labeling and medical diagnosis, though. Our school district outsources a lot of services, so to have an incorrect autism label leads to a whole lot of wasted, unhelpful therapies and approaches.

My school district personnel was also under the false assumption that Language Impairment would only get you speech therapy. They were wrong, of course; any tick of any of the categories gets you ALL the services a child needs to access the curriculum. It took a parent with guts like me to stand up to them for them to realize they weren't following the law.

I've met only one parent who was happy they accepted an ASD label for their language-impaired child. The rest curse the day they let themselves be talked into it by the schools, or even doctors who were only trying to "help" because the inflated diagnosis brought more services.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

OP, what a crock of lies you are spreading. As someone who had to fight tooth and nail to keep a false ASD diagnosis off my kid, I know it makes a huge difference if you are incorrectly labeled. I've seen it firshand.

Parents should ALWAYS insist on accurate labels, even if lazy, incompetent school personnel try to tell you otherwise. I've gotten every service we've needed AND forced them to use the correct label.

You didn't actually read any of the original post. A medical diagnosis ISN'T the same thing as a designation to receive IEP services. It's not a crock of lies; it's the law. You can receive an IEP for only the following:

• autism;
• deaf-blindness;
• deafness;
• emotional disturbance;
• hearing impairment;
• intellectual disability;
• multiple disabilities;
• orthopedic impairment;
• other health impairment;
• specific learning disability;
• speech or language impairment;
• traumatic brain injury; or
• visual impairment (including blindness).

So your child may not have autism, but unless the school can attribute one of the above 13 potential diagnoses, he won't get an IEP either. That is my point. Until the law changes and has more inclusive language, the "label" the school uses may not be accurate but will get you accommodations and services.

But honestly, PP if you've been fighting tooth and nail to keep off an ASD diagnosis from your child, my guess is you are fighting the wrong battle.

Oh no, I read your whole post the first time.

You left out Early Childhood Developmental Delay. In my state you can be under that until you are 7 years old. At 7, my son was switched to Language Impairment. Specific Learning Disability also would have worked.

I well know a medical diagnosis isn't the same as an educational label. I had multiple medical assessments of my child saying he was not autistic, but instead severely language impaired, with processing issues and learning disabilities. But school districts do whatever is easiest for them. So if they have invested their resources in an ASD program, that's where they want to throw as many kids as possible. Very few outsiders or even parents understand the difference between school labeling and medical diagnosis, though. Our school district outsources a lot of services, so to have an incorrect autism label leads to a whole lot of wasted, unhelpful therapies and approaches.

My school district personnel was also under the false assumption that Language Impairment would only get you speech therapy. They were wrong, of course; any tick of any of the categories gets you ALL the services a child needs to access the curriculum. It took a parent with guts like me to stand up to them for them to realize they weren't following the law.

I've met only one parent who was happy they accepted an ASD label for their language-impaired child. The rest curse the day they let themselves be talked into it by the schools, or even doctors who were only trying to "help" because the inflated diagnosis brought more services.

PP, I didn't leave out Developmental Delay--they will give that label to kids who start in early intervention services b/f age 3. (Read the link I provided.) A child can keep that label on their IEP until age 9. Then your kid will be given one of the 13 above labels. (My guess is that your child is younger than 9 and probably not older than Kindergarten age b/c it's relatively easy to keep off an autism label when they're young.)

So, if a child is school age and needs an IEP and has never had one, you can have all the medical documentation in the world, but they need to assign one of the 13 labels. The creation of IDEA has artificially inflated who is counted as autistic, however, it's creation has also created specific programs. There are designated publicly funded Autism and Asperger programs available in the public schools. No specific, equivalent program exists for kids with ADHD for example.

So here's where you need to take the good with the bad as it were and accept where there is overlap and commonality among children. Children on the spectrum may have difficulty in executive functioning. So will children with ADHD as well as children who have LDs related to Disorder of Written Expression--what used to be commonly called dyslexia or dysgraphia. So some kids are given "other health impairment" or "specific learning disability" but when they have more than one diagnosis, like so many kids have but may not have autism, the schools often push for the Autism label b/c it covers more than one area and since the 70s there's been concerted efforts to develop programs specifically for autism.

When you look at research methods for teaching children, the initial research may have been conducted with a certain group of children--Unstuck and On Target was developed with children on the spectrum. The Kazdin Method was developed with children who have ODD (oppositional defiant disorder), which is quite rare. However, these are best practices that can be used with pretty much any child--SN or not.

It's an imperfect, frustrating system. There was a recent post by a mom who couldn't get OT for her child with fine motor delay primarily b/c her DD's speech had improved to the point that she would not longer eligible for services. So a kid who can't hold pencil correctly can't get OT to practice b/c she doesn't fit into 1 of 13 checkboxes. That's ridiculous, but that is the system we have.

That is why I was trying to give a historical context to how we ended up with what we have. (The emphasis on autism also coincided with de-instutionalization of children, so it may explain why it was included specifically. It may have been a product of good lobbying, that's why ESRD is included in Medicare coverage. It's not the most common but a catastrophic disease.)

It was partly tongue and cheek but that is why I was encouraging parents to focus on what services their child needs and make sure that these are what gets included in the IEP regardless of what label it's under. Unfortunately the way they run meetings is that everything gets hung up on the designation b/c it's an outmoded, bureaucratic system. But again it's what we have and given the state of Congress not likely to change any time soon.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

OP, what a crock of lies you are spreading. As someone who had to fight tooth and nail to keep a false ASD diagnosis off my kid, I know it makes a huge difference if you are incorrectly labeled. I've seen it firshand.

Parents should ALWAYS insist on accurate labels, even if lazy, incompetent school personnel try to tell you otherwise. I've gotten every service we've needed AND forced them to use the correct label.

You didn't actually read any of the original post. A medical diagnosis ISN'T the same thing as a designation to receive IEP services. It's not a crock of lies; it's the law. You can receive an IEP for only the following:

• autism;
• deaf-blindness;
• deafness;
• emotional disturbance;
• hearing impairment;
• intellectual disability;
• multiple disabilities;
• orthopedic impairment;
• other health impairment;
• specific learning disability;
• speech or language impairment;
• traumatic brain injury; or
• visual impairment (including blindness).

So your child may not have autism, but unless the school can attribute one of the above 13 potential diagnoses, he won't get an IEP either. That is my point. Until the law changes and has more inclusive language, the "label" the school uses may not be accurate but will get you accommodations and services.

But honestly, PP if you've been fighting tooth and nail to keep off an ASD diagnosis from your child, my guess is you are fighting the wrong battle.

I don't think this is true. I think states can designate other labels for IEPs.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

OP, what a crock of lies you are spreading. As someone who had to fight tooth and nail to keep a false ASD diagnosis off my kid, I know it makes a huge difference if you are incorrectly labeled. I've seen it firshand.

Parents should ALWAYS insist on accurate labels, even if lazy, incompetent school personnel try to tell you otherwise. I've gotten every service we've needed AND forced them to use the correct label.

You didn't actually read any of the original post. A medical diagnosis ISN'T the same thing as a designation to receive IEP services. It's not a crock of lies; it's the law. You can receive an IEP for only the following:

• autism;
• deaf-blindness;
• deafness;
• emotional disturbance;
• hearing impairment;
• intellectual disability;
• multiple disabilities;
• orthopedic impairment;
• other health impairment;
• specific learning disability;
• speech or language impairment;
• traumatic brain injury; or
• visual impairment (including blindness).

So your child may not have autism, but unless the school can attribute one of the above 13 potential diagnoses, he won't get an IEP either. That is my point. Until the law changes and has more inclusive language, the "label" the school uses may not be accurate but will get you accommodations and services.

But honestly, PP if you've been fighting tooth and nail to keep off an ASD diagnosis from your child, my guess is you are fighting the wrong battle.

Oh no, I read your whole post the first time.

You left out Early Childhood Developmental Delay. In my state you can be under that until you are 7 years old. At 7, my son was switched to Language Impairment. Specific Learning Disability also would have worked.

I well know a medical diagnosis isn't the same as an educational label. I had multiple medical assessments of my child saying he was not autistic, but instead severely language impaired, with processing issues and learning disabilities. But school districts do whatever is easiest for them. So if they have invested their resources in an ASD program, that's where they want to throw as many kids as possible. Very few outsiders or even parents understand the difference between school labeling and medical diagnosis, though. Our school district outsources a lot of services, so to have an incorrect autism label leads to a whole lot of wasted, unhelpful therapies and approaches.

My school district personnel was also under the false assumption that Language Impairment would only get you speech therapy. They were wrong, of course; any tick of any of the categories gets you ALL the services a child needs to access the curriculum. It took a parent with guts like me to stand up to them for them to realize they weren't following the law.

I've met only one parent who was happy they accepted an ASD label for their language-impaired child. The rest curse the day they let themselves be talked into it by the schools, or even doctors who were only trying to "help" because the inflated diagnosis brought more services.

Anonymous wrote:Parents, to be your kid’s best advocate, remember it’s an extremely imprecise numbers game. Don’t get hung up in the IEP meeting, “But my kid’s not autistic!” It may be true, but focus on the end game—what help does your kid need to function and succeed at school.

There are 3 categories of 504:
http://www.kidslegal.org/section-504-what-does-it-mean
The purpose of Section 504 is not about getting special education services for your kid rather about preventing discrimination.

There are 13 categories of disability listed under IDEA:
http://www.parentcenterhub.org/wp-content/uploads/repo_items/gr3.pdf

Lawmakers defined and wrote these in the 1970s: http://dredf.org/advocacy/comparison.html

(It’s not a secret that Congress is slow to respond and fraught with partisan politics that it doesn’t get much done. Our current 113th Congress and the 112th enacted fewer laws than any other Congress in modern history, so at least we have something: http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/first-read/113th-congress-not-least-productive-modern-history-n276216)

There are over 300 codes in the DSM and it is published by the American Psychiatric Association so there is standard langue in classifying mental disorders. It’s on it’s 5th edition since 1952. Not perfect, but again what we have.

Doctors use ICD codes (International Classification of Diseases) to specify diagnoses. Insurance companies use these codes to determine coverage of services and reimbursement. In the ICD 9 which established in the 1970s, the are about 4,000 codes. In the proposed ICD 10, there will be 72,000 codes: http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/04/10/300976034/doctors-billing-system-stays-stuck-in-the-1970s-for-now

(Just for fun, here is a list of where ICD and DSM codes cross-over: http://www.dr-bob.org/tips/dsm5a.html)

To make it more fun, ICD codes don’t need to match insurance billing codes for neuropsychological testing (NPT or CPT). Many insurance companies don’t consider neuropsych testing medically necessary for educational purposes b/c ha, ha, ha it’s “usually provided by school systems under applicable state and federal rules.” Schools aren't required to test, they can't legally suggest that you test your child, and do not have to accept independent testing you do.

CPT codes used in neuropsych evals are “time based codes for billing.” http://www.codapedia.com/topicOpen.cfm?id=B19F9E03-8CA3-48DE-85F96AA3F38CC8D5 As an FYI, here’s a list of CPT codes: https://www.theaacn.org/userdocuments/neuropsychology_model_lcd-1.pdf

Have I lost you? Is your head spinning yet? The point is that, a medical diagnosis is not the same thing as an educational designation at all. It may not have any bearing on what insurance coverage for services you receive, if your child is eligible for an IEP or 504, or what will be offered on an IEP/504.

In a nutshell, out of a potential 72,000 possible diagnoses and treatments and the 300 of them could possibly apply to your child, and the dozens of codes the insurance company will use to deem it medically or non-medically necessary, the public school needs to put your kid in 1 of 16 categories. That's it. Ta Da!

So, don’t get hung up on the public school “label” on your kid’s 504 or IEP—designations created nearly half a century ago. Ask yourself what accommodations and modifications does my kid need? e.g.,: http://www.wrightslaw.com/info/fape.accoms.mods.pdf

Now focus, focus, focus—what help does my kid need and how do I get it? Labels don’t matter. Substance does.

Good luck and Godspeed.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

OP, what a crock of lies you are spreading. As someone who had to fight tooth and nail to keep a false ASD diagnosis off my kid, I know it makes a huge difference if you are incorrectly labeled. I've seen it firshand.

Parents should ALWAYS insist on accurate labels, even if lazy, incompetent school personnel try to tell you otherwise. I've gotten every service we've needed AND forced them to use the correct label.

You didn't actually read any of the original post. A medical diagnosis ISN'T the same thing as a designation to receive IEP services. It's not a crock of lies; it's the law. You can receive an IEP for only the following:

• autism;
• deaf-blindness;
• deafness;
• emotional disturbance;
• hearing impairment;
• intellectual disability;
• multiple disabilities;
• orthopedic impairment;
• other health impairment;
• specific learning disability;
• speech or language impairment;
• traumatic brain injury; or
• visual impairment (including blindness).

So your child may not have autism, but unless the school can attribute one of the above 13 potential diagnoses, he won't get an IEP either. That is my point. Until the law changes and has more inclusive language, the "label" the school uses may not be accurate but will get you accommodations and services.

But honestly, PP if you've been fighting tooth and nail to keep off an ASD diagnosis from your child, my guess is you are fighting the wrong battle.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

OP, what a crock of lies you are spreading. As someone who had to fight tooth and nail to keep a false ASD diagnosis off my kid, I know it makes a huge difference if you are incorrectly labeled. I've seen it firshand.

Parents should ALWAYS insist on accurate labels, even if lazy, incompetent school personnel try to tell you otherwise. I've gotten every service we've needed AND forced them to use the correct label.

You didn't actually read any of the original post. A medical diagnosis ISN'T the same thing as a designation to receive IEP services. It's not a crock of lies; it's the law. You can receive an IEP for only the following:

• autism;
• deaf-blindness;
• deafness;
• emotional disturbance;
• hearing impairment;
• intellectual disability;
• multiple disabilities;
• orthopedic impairment;
• other health impairment;
• specific learning disability;
• speech or language impairment;
• traumatic brain injury; or
• visual impairment (including blindness).

So your child may not have autism, but unless the school can attribute one of the above 13 potential diagnoses, he won't get an IEP either. That is my point. Until the law changes and has more inclusive language, the "label" the school uses may not be accurate but will get you accommodations and services.

But honestly, PP if you've been fighting tooth and nail to keep off an ASD diagnosis from your child, my guess is you are fighting the wrong battle.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:".....So, don’t get hung up on the public school “label” on your kid’s 504 or IEP—designations created nearly half a century ago. Ask yourself what accommodations and modifications does my kid need? e.g.,:..."

Except when you want apply to a school that very clearly states that they don't take children with ASD, yet you went ahead and allowed the school to add it to your child's IEP and school records so that he could get accommodations! There is no way in hell I'm allowing any label to be attached to my child and his school records for the next 10 years because "its just a public school label".

+1, We have an autism diagnosis and its clearly false. It carries with him and people treat him differently. It may not be a big deal to have a false diagnosis to OP but its huge for us.

Anonymous wrote:

OP, what a crock of lies you are spreading. As someone who had to fight tooth and nail to keep a false ASD diagnosis off my kid, I know it makes a huge difference if you are incorrectly labeled. I've seen it firshand.

Parents should ALWAYS insist on accurate labels, even if lazy, incompetent school personnel try to tell you otherwise. I've gotten every service we've needed AND forced them to use the correct label.