Reason my DS has learning difficulties

[Mumstheword37]

Posting here for traffic. My son has undiagnosed autism (hoping to have official diagnosis in a few
months). He also has a diagnosis of moderate learning difficulties and has working memory issues. He’s 9 years old. When he was approximately 3.5 his paediatrician sent him for a blood test to see why he had developmental delay as he was way below his age and had very bad and speech delay. He’s still under SALT now, but very much improved compared to when he was younger. The blood test showed nothing. When I asked the paediatrician why he has learning difficulties and if he would catch up, she just said who knows. She was utterly and incredibly rude overall.
I’ve been fighting for years for my son to get help-EHCP and official Asd diagnosis but i keep thinking about the learning difficulties side to it-why does he have them? My slightly older child is incredibly bright. I didn’t drink, smoke, take drugs-literally not even a single pain killers whilst pregnant despite desperately needing them. I stopped taking my antidepressants as soon as I found out I was pregnant. I’m just curious. Can I ask for this to be looked into more? I genuinely don’t know if that is an option. To me my son is absolutely perfect, but he finds life so hard at times and i feel bad for him. Like I said he’s 9, but developmentally he’s more like a 4-6 year old.

@DodgeDog Said it can be occasionally be related to being an older parent , which is a correlation rather than a cause which I have heard too ,I think there are probably loads if of correlation, s related to autism including genetics and environment after all its a huge spectrum and the way it impacts people varies massively.

I think that there is always a reason, we just haven’t learned about them yet. However it won’t be the reason like - you smoked and it happened, it would be a very tiny molecular reason e.g genes related and unlikely you would be able to influence this process.

There’s studies that show a correlation between older fathers and ASD.

what we don’t know is if it’s older fathers (and presumably some kind of mutation of their sperm) that causes this or if it’s because autism is genetic and men with autism take longer to find partners to have kids with.

Which is one good reason why 'the spectrum' is such an infuriating, tone-deaf revision of autism. There is very little similarity between the lives of families with non-verbal autistic children who stim constantly and will never outgrow this state, and those with HFA/Aspergic children who can thrive independently as adults given plenty of support and understanding.

please google infant reflexes not going dormant and see if this applies to your son

My children have ASD and adhd. One does not have LD but the other does. Both parents have undiagnosed ASD and adhd.

I do question why one of mine has obvious learning disabilities, I worry it’s something that I could have prevented. However, I have noticed (and this obviously is just my opinion not any medical evidence) that the effects of ADHD on the brain is severely under investigated. My son with global delays does show incredible intelligence in small moments of time, but his brain seems to working at such a high processing speed that it’s literally fried, leading to showing severe delays in ‘real time’. I had a parent who in hindsight had obviously undiagnosed adhd as well - they developed dementia at a young age. If the brain is a computer, it is not a huge leap to see that a condition like ADHD can overwork a brain to the point of early decline.

Again, this is purely speculative. I do personally feel that ASD is (quite rightly) seen as an ‘obvious’ disability whilst adhd is usually still dismissed, but the true effects of ADHD could actually be far more catastrophic than what is generally known right now.

That may be the case here, but my point still stands. A lot of people get the two mixed up, as you can see from this thread. A lot are talking about learning disability. And children absolutely can be diagnosed with having a learning disability. My own younger brother is autistic with a moderate learning disability diagnosed in childhood.

Pretty sure this is pseudoscience or at the very least extremely over applied. Very trendy at the moment which should make you suspicious.

I'd guess that learning difficulties are an aspect of his autism rather than two separate conditions. So both caused by having a brain that works differently in some way. It won't be your fault or anything you did in pregnancy but I don't think it's really understood why some people with autism have learning difficulties and others don't. I read something recently about connections/ connectivity between different parts of the brain being different which I thought was interesting.

Autism is always genetic. It's pretty well known to be fair.

That's not true though. There is no evidence environmental factors are causal.

Please, please, do a bit more research before posting things as facts, particularly in front of people who might be looking for answers that simply don't exist.

Yep. My eldest DS is diagnosed ASD, he has absolutely no academic learning difficulties. General life skills, we pull our hair out.

https://www.mencap.org.uk/learning-disability-explained/what-learning-disability

Is it ?
My son has a chromosome deletion thought tho be the underlying cause of his autism So in his case it is genetic although not inherited
But in many cases there is no know reason for a child's autism
I don't doubt there is a,strong genetic link but I think there are other contributing factors

Mindfulness was pretty transformative for our DS.

How many cases exactly? Have the parents and both sets of grandparents been screened in all these many cases?

When DS was diagnosed (a while back) we were told there were at least 12 genes associated with ASD and that it was entirely feasible he could get a few from each of his parents.

Neither myself or DP were diagnosed when DS was born but it has become increasingly clear I have ADHD and dyslexia, and DP has traits of both AS and ADHD.

Either way, OP this is not something you could have avoided. Enjoy your wonderful DS.

Lots of little "pseudoscience" has helped my son. If it only helps 2% but you find lots of little 2% things, 10% results in a big change.

Also I think being open to things being able to improve ( ie my non verbal son talking) helps ia tiny bit too. Ie just being cautiously open minded helps these kids

That's the best answer you are likely to get. They don't know why.
I've got a a DC with autism and moderate learning difficulties. I've also got super bright DC with excellent social skills and no SEN. Same father, same mother, same lifestyle.
There is no blood test to tell us why.
In the early days I researched every intervention, every 'cure' and therapy. For the most part, its a fools errand. Educating yourself on autism and learning difficulties will be beneficial for you both.
The best thing you can do is accept him, love him, make adaptions and be constantly looking at ways to help him work on or around, aspects of his difficulties.
You need to save your energy for getting every bit of support that will benefit your DS and helping him thrive to reach his full potential. To question why is natural, but it's not helpful to you or him.

That's anecdotal based on your child and genetic doesn't always mean it runs in the family my sons chromosome deletion was de novo

I think there needs to be more research into the explosion of kids being diagnosed with Autism. I understand there is better and earlier diagnosis now but it seems like such huge numbers of kids are suffering and they need to find out why. Do you have any history of autism in your family?

@DollyDoyle I am a specialist HCP working in Learning Disability.
the UK definition of LD is that it MUST be present before 18. It can be diagnosed post 18 but this is rare.
learning difficulties in the UK are autism, ADHD, dyslexia etc, these are linked to LD in that they often exist together but not to IQ necessarily. Lots of people with these have a normal range IQ.
They can be disabilities in their own right, but a learning disability is low IQ (under 75) problems with everyday functioning present before age 18.
Almost everyone coming into our service at 18 already has that diagnosis. We get some from overseas without it and the odd late diagnosis but it’s unusual.
sorry to sound pedantic but it is important to use the right terms to allow access to the right people. We often have referrals for people without an LD but neurodivergence or other conditions, who would benefit from our service but we sadly cannot help them.

i know you said you thought the doctor was rude but she was right when she said who knows. Sometimes things can't be explained or there is no obvious reason. Why isn't really important though I wouldn't focus in your child and trying to help him as much as you can.

How many cases?

Your sons genetic condition is still genetic, will he pass that on?

I'm not being argumentative, just that sweeping statements such as "many cases" without any kind of evidence is really not very helpful. Is many cases 1 in a million? 1 in a thousand? Half?

This

I think there needs to be more research into the explosion of kids being diagnosed with Autism.

There have always been children with autism. They were just called something else in the past. The main thing that has changed, and continues to change, is the criteria used to diagnose them. There aren't suddenly more children being born autistic.