Ds1 referred to a paediatrician

[sleepyhorse]

DS1 is going to be 3 next month and as he got language delay we have been seeing SALT. On his 2nd session she suggested that she is going to refer him to a paediatrician. She said he isn't giving as much eye contact as a child of his age should be and has got a short attention span. She hasn't mentioned autism so why is she referring him to a paed? Feeling so alone and worried. What should I expect?

sorry you are going through such a stressful time. I imagine the paed referral would be to look at his development in general, possibly with reference to autism but try not to panic, it's not inevitable that he'll end up with any sort of diagnosis just because he's seeing a paed, language delay can have knock on effects on social skills, if you don't understand what people are saying then that will make you less inclined to concentrate. The paed is likely to want to know all about his developmental from pg and birth onwards, and to know about his behaviour - social/eating/sleeping/communication/socially, and whether there's any family history of language delay. Paed will also want to see how he plays, get him to do a few jigsaws/drawings etc. There won't be any invasive testing or anything, possibly the paed might want to do a blood test. So from your child's perspective it will be someone watching him play etc, and more scary for you than for him.

Only a paed can diagnose or assess for autism so HV/SALTS tend to leave the word unsaid unless the parent suggests it even then they will usually not be able/allowed to say. As said above, the paed will probably ask you a lot of questions about the child's developmental history and also so some brief assessment of his/her own. You should try to find out how much help you can get now regardless of any diagnosis. You may not get an answer one way or the other even from paed unless you force the issue - which for obvious reasons., many parents do not want to . This probably all sounds depressing but the really positive thing is that the earlier you can get started with communication therapy the better the long term outcome is likely to be - again regardless of whether this turns out to be ASD or not.

Thanks for your advice. Going to try and chill out about it especially as waiting list is about 2 months apparently. Going to focus on improving my son's speech and help him as much as possible. Have just ordered a book called it takes 2 to talk which I have heard is fantastic. Xx