to not fully understand this ASD assessment (and be arguing w my dh about it)

[obligations]

Hello - to cut a long story short, today my 13 yo ds was scored as a '7' on the ADOS-2 for social affect and 0 for restricted and repetitive behaviour, the psychologist said 7 is the 'cut-off' point for ASD. The level of support he needs is 1 for social communication and 1 for restricted and repetitive behaviours. He meets all the criteria for DSM-5 ASD. Can anyone help me interpret this? My dh is annoying me by saying our ds is 'just borderline'. He didn't think it likely he would be diagnosed with ASD whereas I did, and I think he is in a bit of denial. Can anyone with some experience let me know if a '7' means mild (or if that kind of language is unhelpful). Please be gentle, while not unexpected it is upsetting to read about the challenges our ds so clearly faces every day in black and white.

I don't know anything about the diagnosis criteria (I was the child), but I've got ASD. I work, in a professional role, I'm educated to masters level and working beyond it, and I'm married. So I guess some people would consider me mild. But autism still has a huge effect on my life, and I still very much am autistic, even if I don't appear to have traditional struggles. So regardless of perceived "level", your dcs autism should be acknowledged.

thanks Stoptheworldandmelt - I think my dh is struggling with acknowledging it, and that will be the first step towards trying to do the best we can by our ds. I wondered if anyone had any advice on what the scale means as well.

anyone?

Sorry I can't help, DS was diagnosed without ADOS. Are you in any online ASD support groups? I know in mine there are lots of families who have been through ADOS assessment who would probably be able to help. Or are there any guides online, NAS site maybe?

There are 3 levels in the dsm 5 that they diagnose level 1 is high functioning mild support , level 2 is moderate support child is somewhere in the middle and level 3 is high support so most likely the child would be non verbal or very basic communication , possible learning disability etc , my son is level 2 , it sounds like your son is level 1 , 'mild autism' means we only see there autism mildly not how they feel it if you get me , its very much frowned upon now to call it mild , hope that helps x

There’s really no such thing as ‘mild’ autism. They’ve done away with the ‘Asperger’s’ element of diagnosis too. If anyone suggests I’m ‘mildly autistic’ I would say they experience my Autism mildly. There’s a concept of ‘high functioning’ which relates to those of us who can hold down a job, maybe live independently (although I have always relied on family support).
Essentially, there are some of us who are able to mask to the point that we don’t seem that Autistic, most people would probably still describe me as a bit odd!

So I would say if your DS meets the threshold, then he is Autistic. I would suggest you and your DH start to read up, personally I would avoid Simon Baron-Cohen (somewhat condescending towards his subjects) but Tony Attwood and Sarah Hendricx are lovely. There’s some YouTube videos as well. Have you been able to access any support yet?

The level of support he needs is 1 for social communication and 1 for restricted and repetitive behaviours

Were other levels given for different areas?

My ds struggles with different things on different days. Some days he can't deal with noise, other days he won't talk to anyone. So I think the score he would get for certain things depends on how anxious he is, what kind of day he is having. He has long periods of time where I would say his autism would be described as 'mild'. But then periods of being very anxious and needing more support

Holidayshopping thank you - no, just those two areas. But specific advice due to incredibly poor fine motor skills - he will need extra time in exams and assistive technology to access all areas of the school curriculum and OT. He has also been referred to a psychologist for social communication. Just got the diagnosis yesterday so no supports in place yet, although his school are going to talk to me today.

FaithInfinity thank you, he was scored very low in terms of daily living skills and processing speed but not much suggestion of how to help him on those counts other than suggestions of how to talk to him and to give him extra time to understand things.

DanielRicciardosSmile no, I'm not in any groups. Diagnosis was just yesterday and we weren't 100% sure beforehand

DS had the exact same score on his ADOS. We were told the diagnosis would have been aspergers, but they didn't diagnose that on its own anymore. Its all under the same umbrella.

Hi OP,

There are lots of knowledgeable people on the SEN boards here - pop over if you have questions. There's lots of support too. You are definitely not the first MN member whose parter is in denial/can't deal with/is ASD themselves. In our case it was ADHD - and yes, indeed DP is also ADHD, thought DS was 'normal' (because that's how he was) and once he realised got diagnosed himself and it's changed his life.