Autism assessment for 8 year old

[ElephantGrey101]

I was wondering if anyone has experience of their child being assessed for autism. DS has finally come to the top of the waiting list. We did NHS right to choose as school said he wouldn’t be on the list for about 4 years with the local authority.

I have been sent a lot of form to fill in. A lot of questions about when he met milestones etc. I am also autistic and DH says that I don’t see how different he is.

How should I explain it to him? He is a clever boy but his communication is a bit different.

I am feeling really nervous for him.

Can I ask what you’re worried about specifically @ElephantGrey101? The diagnosis itself won’t change much as things like an ECHP and DLA are based on need rather than diagnosis, but it should help your DS to understand himself better.

One thing we did before assessment was to talk about successful people on the public eye who are ND in a positive way.

when you say that his communication isn’t all there, how does he do on this simple progress checker?

I was first assess for autism at a similar age and I was told I didn’t have it. I struggled a lot in school and never had a full explanation for my difficulties. I was diagnosed with dyspraxia as a child but my other difficulties were down played. I think I worry that they will knock us back.

He was getting support in school before this. Unfortunately a diagnosis is needed to get support with sleep which is what he needs the most.

I will have a look at the speech therapy thing.

On the speech and language progress checker her score as having difficulty with attention and social communication. He went to football training but they said he would be able to play in any matches as he didn’t understand what he was meant to do.

He is doing well in school. He was getting extra help with maths but he caught up. I don’t think it is obvious to others that he is different.

I think if you worry that the assessment won’t give him a diagnosis I would sit with your DH and try and write as many examples as you can think of. Will your DH be going to the assessment with you?

It’s fairly typical for parents with ASD to not recognise or believe that their DC might be ND. I remember my DH being very reluctant to our DC2 being assessed and they are both very similar.

If sleep is an issue, can you write down everything you’ve tried already and keep a sleep log for the next couple of weeks and take those to the appointment with you?

As for his speech, you could ask at the appointment for a referral to SaLT or you could ask the School SENCO or speak to your local School Nurse service. There might be a long waiting list for SaLT but it sounds as though it will be beneficial for him.

Sorry I wasn’t sure from your post if he currently has an ECHP?

I worried about missing details so I created a Google doc (but anything would do) and just made notes every time something happened, I just noted it down.
Then every so often I read through it and tried to condense it a bit, or group things a bit better.
Then once we had the phone appointments I could just be completely neutral about it and just answer the questions confidently.
In the end they are looking for specific evidence for social differences and repetitive interests, but they do ask a lot of other things like sensory differences.
I also found it worth going through the assessment myself, as although I was pretty sure I was also autistic, I wanted to know how it would be like for my son and also make it more like a helpful thing than a bad thing if you get my point. In the end it turned out having a diagnosis really helped me personally as well as being helpful for supporting my child
Good luck, everyone involved in the process wants to get things right so don't worry about struggling.

Thank you both, this is so helpful. I think what I want is to be able to explain it confidently.

In terms of sleep I have tried a lot of things already. We had a sleep consultant we did a CBT course all sorts.

He does have social differences and also repetitive interests. A lot of his conversations are do you know when this actor’s birthday is? He loves films and music.

I think the sensory difficulties is something I want to have documented because he struggles with this a lot.