First Paed appointment

[neverputasockinatoaster]

Hi again,

Sorry if this has been done before but DS 6 and with possible ASD/PDA has his first Paed appointment coming up in June. ( We had to fight to get him seen as our county refused becuase he went to school out of county but my GP's lovely PA kicked some butt!)

What should I go armed with? I have copies of IEPs from nursery but he has no IEP at school. We do have a home school diary with details of incidents and also positives in and I kept a diary for a while to see if there was a food link. I also have a notebook filled with ramblings when I remember something else he has done!

I have until June 14th so should I start up the behaviour diary again? Any other ideas?

Thank you!

i had a paed apt last week with my son to follow up the educational psychologists thoughts on my son aged 6 (PDA/ASD), the paed basically had this great big form (some ASD questionnaire) that went through the whole developmental history and all the behavioural questions. I was stumped on some of them as the questions so had to ask her exactly what she meant! She asked my son to draw a picture, cue him sat there looking confused for 10minutes at a blank piece of paper and then he finally drew a pic which she said was immature, i knew that anyway. Paed was yawning loads, looking back i wish id asked her if she wanted a little sleep,lol. Definitely take your rambling notebook as its so hard when you are asked questions direct to think of the answers. Apt lasted about 1.5 hours and left me,my mum and my son exhausted! We left there with the paed saying she was in no doubt that my son had ASD, which surprised me really as he was (for him) quite well behaved and compliant. Have a bottle of something chilling for the evening as when you go home your brain runs riot with all that was said, or perhaps thats just me! Good Luck.xx

My first Paed appt was last week too.

She spoke to him and asked him if he knew which school he went to and who his best friend was. He answered these - he doesn't have a best friend but he thinks that the boy who sits next to him is - without any eye contact at all. Not like he was shy as he gave very clear answers, he just didn't look at her.

Like Brandy77, the paed gave him some paper to do "coloring" while we were talking but at the end of the appt she said that she would keep them. His pictures are definitely immature! He had some lego to play with while we were talking and he just built towers as usual.

My paed didn't have a form to complete, it was like a informal chat (but clearly every question was very carefully worded).

If you have one of the baby books where you are meant to complete when did your child first pick up a spoon, babble etc. Take that with you. She asked loads of questions about him at birth, re feeding, pointing, babbling, playing etc. Some of them we didn't really know the answer to as DS is now nearly 6 and I just seem to have blocked out a lot of his toddler years .

We also left with a "DS is very likely to be on the spectrum" which given that I answered all of the questions with answers that I knew were a pointer towards ASD wasn't surprising. She said that his lack of eye contact right at the start made her immediately think he did have it.

We have to have a multi discliplinary assessment which I think that Brandy's DS has already had but she was still willing to speak and write to the school to let them know how to deal with him in the meantime.

Unfortunately I am on meds so I can't do otherwise there wouldn't have been anything left in the bottle that evening

I actually emailed a list of the concerns over to the Paed's secretary prior to the appt so that she had everything that I could think of in advance as I always go a bit blank in appts.

Good luck!

Oh yes. If you can, go with someone else who knows him well as I went with my mum and between us we managed to remember much more than I would have by myself!