ASD related - I don't understand.

[CrunchyFrog]

Went on a course today, it was about "Asperger's Syndrome and HFA." DS1 has HFA, but previous to that DX, he had a DX of sensory processing disorder and a speech disorder.

Today seemed to me to be all about Aspergers - there was little to no mention of speech difficulties (apart from to say that traditional SALT models do not work on children with ASD )

No mention of sensory integration therapies, or sensory seeking behaviours.

Anyway. I Don't Understand. The lady next to me had a child with AS. My son has HFA. Both were DX'd by the same team, who were giving the lectures today, and using the terms interchangeably.

It probably doesn't even matter, but I am really, really struggling to understand what is going on.

DSM IV is the big book of mental health problems, and separates asperger's from hfa depending on whether major language problems were noted before age 3 or not. Although we all know sensory stuff is huge in all the spectrum diagnoses, it doesn't appear in the official criteria which are purely social / communication / imagination. This may or may not change in future.

The AS/HFA distinction is probably going to vanish in the next version of the book (DSM V) due in 2-3years as observed speech fluency by age 3 probably doesn't actually differentiate between two distinct conditions.

It was indeed NHS, Starlight. I was going to mention it, but I had already had faces for telling some people that an IEP was probably a waste of time for their son, and that he needed a statement. Bad person I am disturbing the equilibrium like that.

DS1's speech isn't age appropriate yet at 5, although his language is good.

It is surely extremely difficult to differentiate the causes of major language development before the age of tree. There could be a multitude of reasons for language development delays.

the age of THREE