Anyone had problems with pre school? I think they are trying to label my son as autistic

[roseability]

I am pretty sure my ds keyworker was suggesting my ds is on the autistic spectrum

We are confident this is not the case, as at home and at family functions he shows no signs

We had a meeting today with the deputy head of the school (who oversees the nursery) as we had some concerns about how this has been handled

Does anyone else have experience of this?

MaryZ, not by a week or so. My point is that it isn't needed here, on this thread when Rose is clearly sick with anxiety.

Oh and I started posting that about 1hour ago but DD woke up.

piprabbit your post pretty much outlines my plan of action

i totally accept your apology, i really dont envy you the week you have had an understand that you are stressed.

teh one thing i realy value about MN though, is that when all my friends and family are soothing me and making the tea, or telling me stuff to make themselves feel better, i know that guaranteed i will get unbiased advice and support (often very knowledgable) here. it really is a valuabble resource to have all thses people here to call on, night or day for real advice and not just the "there there" kind. tonight or even tomorrow you mightn't be ready to face this but we are all here when you need to vent or ask advice. plenty have been through it and know how tough it it.

i am sick with anxiety but not because i think autism is this awful thing

but because i worry for ds

I think the consistent advice here has been investigate asap because posters KNOW what a difference early intervention can make (maryz's story being a perfect example).

You can ignore and be right (hooray!) or ignore and be wrong. The stories here, including mine, are just to show you the consequences of the latter course of action.

I'm a lists person rose, sorry .

You've dealt with point one - tick, done.
Phone GP in the morning for appointment - nearly tick.

it's the sort of stuff that makes me feel a little more in control of the chaos...

Ds1 is passive. He will go along with and agree to anything as long as there might be a chance that people will stop making demands such as "Talk to me about something that doesn't have a screen and isn't related to the width of people's shoes", "Stop squeaking and flapping your knees" "LOOK at me when I'm telling you something!"

Actually, ds1 could have very easily been missed, but once you know, there is no missing the unmistakable signs. I am so grateful to his old keyworker.

maryz i am sorry

Silverfrog, good non-verbal communication is very often a sign that ASD isn't present. Just because a child isn't talking, I wouldn't be worried they had ASD especially if, by 14mths, they pointed at things of interest spontaneously, had excellent joint attention (bringing things to you, showing things to you etc) Looked at things of interest, looked at me and looked back etc. If said child could also follow simple instructions like get your shoes, I would assume they were developing normally even if they had a speech delay.

I think there is more often confusion when a child has excellent speech. The presence of speech would not make me assume a child did not have ASD.

I'm sorry that the Op feels attacked, it's my worst fear about posting on here! I would listen to what the nursery has to say and get an assessment. Only because I feel it's not as though they are saying that there is anything bad about your child, just that there is a slight possibility that they may be showing indicators on the autistic spectrum. If so you will be able to help them sooner rather than later and if not then no harm done. You shouldn't see it as a criticism, just as a concern. I can't imagine that his key worker has an agenda for saying this other than genuine concern, she doesn't gain anything.

It's completely understandable you'd be worried.
Look, blatant plugging of my blog but if you do an advanced search for "blog" for January and February, to the ones that ask who has a blog, then you'll find a link to my blog. If you go onto it and go to December 2010 and "festive" then you'll see a video of my Ds2 singing. That bright, happy, exuberant lad is the one I was speaking about earlier who has severe difficulties.
There is every chance your ds is not on the spectrum. But no harm can be made by just going to the GP, or to the SENCO and asking just for an observation.

Roseability, I do hope you don't get this thread deleted as it seems to have come round to a good place, plus I think that there's so much help and wisdom on here that it would be a shame to lose it. I really hope you have a better night's sleep tonight and come back to this refreshed. Please keep posting - I'd be very interested to hear how you get on.

All the best

stovies, you are preaching to the converted here. I know just a little about ASD

I just don't like inaccuracies to stand. and good non-verbal communication does not rule out autism. neither does good receptive language, or good expressive language.

Being anxious and worried goes with the territory of being a parent. If you haven't been anxious before than you are lucky indeed. Also if you have someone to share those worries with then so much the better. Some of us have to do this all by ourselves.

Ds was assessed because of his behaviour. The result of the assessment was the discovery that his memory wasn't functioning properly (cons paed said most likely because of being a prem). Big surprise to me but a bit of reading was a revelation. Issues at school didn't occur at home at all. However if those issues had been ignored I'm not sure where we would be now.

Silverfrog, I think you misunderstood what I was saying. I wasn't saying good NV communication guaranteed a child was not autistic. I was saying it was a good indicator and in this case, the child showed no signs of ASD other that the fact he wasn't talking.

I was making the point that non-verbal communication such as pointing and joint attention is a much better indicator than speech. Too often I have seen people assume a child cannot possibly be autistic because they were talking fluently at 12mths.

Btw, as well as my SN early years teaching experience, I also have a 7yr old DS with mild AS.

sorry, stovies, i probably come across as really pedantic - I wa sreacting to your sentence "Well I was fairly sure that although his speech was delayed, he did not have ASD because his non-verbal communication was excellent."

this ihas, i think, been a good thread overall, with a lot of info.

the kind of thread that oyu can see people reading through when it turns up on search, to try to weigh up their own feelings/observations.

and I wanted ot just point out that it is not as absolute as you originally said (I knew you knew, but who knows who else is reading, iyswim?)

I completely agree that the non-verbal stuff in a toddler is a better indicator than speech. but, as you (I think) said, it is never black and white, and absence/presence alone does not rule anything in or out.

Rose
It really reads that you are more worried about what people (teachers, relatives) will think about your son being diagnosed than your son's actual needs.

your original title speaks volumes: "I think they are trying to label him as autistic"...your fear of autism is so clear from this. The NN will not just "label" your son as autistic and then sit him in the corner forever, you know. Nobody tries to "label" a child as autistic. The NN - in a cack-handed fashion, we are all agreed - has tried to flag what she thinks might be a need for assessment so that your son can get help not so that he can be generally labelled.

Your desire to conceal the possible need even for assessment from teachers in Reception demonstrates how far you are from trying to get the help your son might need.

Not many preofessionals, be they health professionals, teachers, nursery workers etc would seek to label a child just for the sake of popping on a well worn label.

Don't you see that the NN was trying to help?

Yes, I can see that. Problem is, I've reached the stage where I usually can tell from what I can see before me. Though that has come from my experience as mother to my DS rather than all my years working in the environment.

I think the non-verbal thing for me is when I see a young child with similar advanced NV skills that my DD had at that age (very NT) it seems clear to me that the issue is not ASD. Because NT toddlers seem to possess that 'fit to burst' uncontrolable urge to show you everything, point at everything and generally share in your world with an abundance of enthusiasm.

Eye contact, levels of affection, imaginative play etc can also vary from child to child but with all the children on the spectrum I have dealt with (inc my DS) what I described above just seems not to be there to the same extent. So when I see it in abundance as I did with the child who had the speech delay, I feel sure ASD isn't the problem.

However, my experience is just that. The spectrum and its signs and symptoms are so vast and varied that I'm more than happy to be corrected if someone posts thst their child was very much into joint attention etc but is autistic. I still have plenty to learn, DS is only 7yrs.

Stovies I understand what you are saying as that was the case with ds2 - he was query verbal dyspraxia but I knew he wasn't autistic as his communication was so good (and his speech sorted itself out by three anyway). However, one of the biggest signs I had that he was ok was that he knew instinctively what he should do in a group. I remember him going into a nursery circle time for the first time when he was 18 months while I had a meeting about ds1 at the same nursery. He was the youngest child there by a distance (it went from 2 they took him for the meeting tk make it easier for me) and I was amazed when I saw him looking around at the other chikdren and copying what they were doing. Ds1 can have very food joint attention btw and he is sevely autistic - what he has is bad directed attention - so if he is communicating something thatis important to him you see no problems with joint attention at all - (and he is 12 and non verbal) but if you try and direct his attention to something of interest to you then it's much much harder and more hit ad miss. He will perform quite complicated jokes for example using an object and reaching laughter and eye gaze - all done very typically but he still struggles to follow a point.

Wrt the school Rose - I think if he has trouble following instructions in a group setting it's even more important to get in earl to to check and rule out other conditions (whether hearing or a communication disorder).
Otherwise what can happen is that the child very quickly becomes labelled as naughty. I know two five year olds who were expelled- one went on to get an AS diagnosis (which now seems fairly irrelevant - he is doing exceptionally well in a very good school), the other started to get some 1:1 (still no diagnosis - probably not needed) in school and things are slowly getting better.

Whoever said that parents know from early on is mistaken I'm afraid. My son didn't really show any signs until 17 months - and that sign was a lack of pointing and a difficulty directing attention (but not in joint attention if he was directing the communication). No-one believed me. Some members of the family were absolutely furious with me- they saw me as almost wishing problems on him (WTF?) and a dietician who saw him at 2 practically accused me of msbp for thinking he had autism. Shortly afterwards we were told by the soecialist salt that he 'definitely isn't autistic. He's severely autistic. Nothing borderline about him.

Just to add when ds3 was 17 months we had hs urine assessed at the autism research unit in Sunderland (now changed name I think) and it came back as having the markers we didn't want it to have. Ayway the reason we did that was because he wasn't following other children's leads in a music group we were going to (he was doing his own thing entirely). He was pointing etc but the lack of group awareness concerned me enough to have the above test. It's hard to tell without seeing a child but in ds3's case his behaviour did feel like a red flag and I suspect was.

So we changed a few things, and within a couple of months the lights went on and eversything seemed to,slot into place and he's clearly fine now in year 1 with no problems at school at all or at home. Had we not got in there then I'm not entirely sure he would be fine now. But I'm pleased we didn't put it to the test.

Whilst it is possible that the NN has indeed observed some troubling signs, it is also quite possible that she is really talking rubbish. And if that is the case then harm has been caused, because rose is obviously very upset, perhaps totally needlessly.

I had something similar with my ds, his teacher raised the possibility that there was something wrong, and we were very receptive, talked about possibilities etc. Then we met with the SENCO who quite frankly said a lot of rubbish that was not substantiated by any other observations, nor by the various professionals that then assessed him. It turned out that he couldn't really see very well and thus was missing some verbal cues (picked up by the school nurse who the teacher had asked to see ds earlier). He is also dyslexic - after his (private) assessment the same SENCO then wrote us really quite a rude letter telling us that he would get no support for this, but would go on going to her little group for children with behavioural disorders (although the professionals told us he didn't really have any, although he is certainly not totally 'normal').

She also told my dh at one of the many meetings we had with her that she thought I was autistic (this appeared to be based on the fact that on a school trip with ds I chose not to socialise very much, this was because a)I'm quite introvert, b)and I didn't really want to be there because at the time I was recovering from both a broken arm and jaw, but the school had insisted.

So whilst there is a possibility that there might be issues and of course you now should follow them up, it is also possible that the NN acted way beyond her competence.

look greythorne I thought this thread had settled down a bit but you keep insisting I am putting my fears before my ds

In no way have I deserved to be critisised as a mother. I love my ds, I worry about him and he will get any help he needs - don't you worry

I maybe just don't understand the process as well as you but derogatory remarks about my abilities to put my ds needs first are hurtful and not true

We are not ignoring this how many times do I have to say that.

I was going to come back you know and ask more questions but greythornes post despite my apology and turn around has put me right off again

This is not defensive but just sticking up for myself against untrue insinuations

I will get ds assessed and I thank you for your time. I am taking a break and will try and update in due course