Hiya, and apologies for the long post...
I'm worried because my son (5) has just started school and everyone's struggling :(
To contextualise, we think he's HLP (and wish he wasn't).
I'm beginning to realise I was "gifted" as a child - my Mother always claimed this but as she has mental health issues I didn't really believe her. I was a really early talker who taught myself to read at 3, saw ed psychs who didn't put me up a school year as I was emotionally backwards etc. I had rubbish social skills, struggled to fit in, day dreamed though school and underachieved significantly. However, I'm managed to find my niche in the world now.
DS has always been very alert and demanding with a developed sense of humour. He was always able to focus for an unusally long time, has an amazing memory and asks endless questions. He knew colours and numbers at incredibly early age ie counting to 1000 plus and solving mental maths problems at 3 and has taught himself to read before the start of school. He has a number of sensory difficulties which also fit the profile.
He struggled at the start of preschool but settled really well after a few months. His reception teacher noticed he was having difficulties early on. These have included huge anxiety, regular meltdowns if things go wrong, distress at loud noise in the classroom, refusal to go into the playground and some unfortunate incidents of hitting/biting which have thankfully stopped.
We're taking him to the GP about his ears and hoping to get an OT referral. She's promised to get a school referral to educational psychology and the behaviour team which we've agreed to although we feel it's early days as he's been at school a matter of weeks. After some research I learnt about HLP and printed off loads of literature which she agreed looked really relevant.
However, she's now saying that the school want the ASD team to come in to do an assessment?? We're beyond upset as we're worried about misdiagnosis. Our son has friends and has always interacted socially, he's loving and incredibly affectionate, makes eye contact, has appropriated conversations, a sense of humour and is relatively flexible at home. He has dreadful meltdowns too but not the behaviour that school describe.
My DH wonders if this is a funding issue. Of course we'll have to accept it if our son has ASD but surely he should be seen by Educational Psychology first? Should we push the school to do this or seek advice privately? I really think the school think we're in denial but I want to explore every avenue before exposing my son to this assessment.
Does anyone have any wosdom to offer? Huge thanks :)
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11 replies
Bergitte · 18/11/2012 23:20
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