paed said HFA, SALT said no sign of asd

[othermother]

The paed recently verbally diagnosed my ds (5) with HFA and referred him to SALT as he was sure they'd pick something up re his speech. He was an early talker and never had any problems with his speech apart form a stammer about a year ago which has since cleared up.

Anyway, the ALT said that there was nothing at all that she would flag up as ASD re his speech and understanding etc. His eye contact was good, his turn taking was good and his understanding and recognising facial expressions etc was good.

She did pick up on his licking, tapping, repeated ticcy things, not sitting still, great sense of humour and grunting though.

So I've taken to videoing him now to show the paed next week exactly what he does.

Do you think the paed was maybe hasty in his dx of HFA? Also, HFA would suggest he'd had speech delay, which he didn't.

Is it possible to have an asd without any speech problems, great understanding, good eye contact etc?

When I first took my son the the gp I suspected something like tourette's...and now I'm back to wondering if maybe I was right.

Any advice welcome as I'm just doing my own head in about it all.

TIA

[TotalChaos]

have you had a proper report through yet from paed? when you are due to have next appointment? if it's really doing your head, then phone up the paed's secretary tomorrow, and explain you're a bit confused and ask if paed could give you a call to discuss it.

[othermother]

I've not received anything from the paed at all. The SALT woman has told me she will be sending her report to me though. His next appt is next monday, so I shall wait until then to discuss things.

[TotalChaos]

btw was SALT woman any sort of ASD specialist salt, or as far as you know a bit of a bogstandard one? I know it's still possible to have ASD with some of those things, but having all 3 (good eye contact/understanding/speech) would make it less likely. On the other hand - sometimes it's higher level language skills that can be affected with ASD/Aspergers - things like not drawing appropriate social inferences, understanding things very literally etc. So I'm a bit dunno - because on the one hand my experience with S is that they don't rush to diagnose ASD at all - but on the other - I can see why with your DS's language and social confidence you are a bit sceptical.

I wonder if the diagnosis of HFA instead of Aspergers maybe a political thing - maybe it gets better access to services, or maybe they genuinely think there's such a fine line between the two that they use it almost interchangeably as a label?