ASD - mild, moderate, severe, Classic, HFA, AS...

[lougle]

Can someone clarify something for me?

I saw on other threads that HFA is ASD without language impairment.
AS is ASD without language impairment at age 3?

Is that so?

Say DD2, who is being seen in January, is dx'd with ASD, but it's taken until she's 5 for us to be sure there is something not quite right and she most likely has some disordering of language...what would that be?

Would she be likely to be classed as HFA because in many areas she can pass for NT to the untrained eye? Or would she be classed as ASD but mild, because she has language disordering? I'm all

Well I agree DS really wants to communicate and doesn't shut up but only to certain people,however this last week he has become obsessed with telephones and is not as select about who he will speak to on the phone.
He started at his new school in September but hasn't said a word to the HT at all until this week when he told her all about his lines and dislikes and what he would change about school over the phone (from classroom to office) lol when she came off the phone and entered his classroom he wouldn't speak to her again and wouldn't acknowledge they had had a conversation.
She phoned me at home to tell me that all the years she's worked with ASD kids she's never met a child even similar to him,as he appears to have very severe autism and very severe learning diffs but as proven also has great potential on his terms.we get a mixture of wow shockingly amazing and Omg can't believe your doing that at home..he really is a puzzling child but at least now they I have prove that I'm not making his abilities up. :)

"The most important thing to remember (and I say this with both my professional hat and parent one) is not what 'it' is called but what is gonig to be done about it."

Very wise words, Moondog. The issue I'm having is that until I have an 'it', precisely nothing is being done, because 'it' isn't even being noticed.

See, I think a 5 year old completely blanking another child when they directly approach them is quite significant. I've certainly not seen other children do it. Yet the teachers say she is perfectly fine.

I think a 5 year old squirming up and down like a kitten against a teacher is significant, but the teacher just absent-mindedly rubbed DD2's back.

DD2 was scratched by a boy in class this week, because the teacher said 'tidy up time' and the boy stayed on the computer, so DD2 marched over and turned it off, apparently. Her reasoning was that Mrs X said 'tidy up time' and the boy wasn't tidying up, so she helped Mrs X by turning the computer off.

www.asasb.org/PDFs/AccessGuide/CriteriaForAutism.pdf

Not sure if useful or not but above is the precise definition of autism (and AS,Pdd-nos) currently prevailing, in the shape of DSM 4, which is due to be updated with DSM5 next year. They are quite precise about how many of the criteria a child must meet in each part of the triad for a diagnosis,though the criteria themselves are quite broad .

DD2 jus doesn't seem to realise that we don't know what she's thinking, too.

?Mummy, why does Matilda always get all the good things??
"Pardon, Jasmine? All the good things? What are the good things?
"Matilda gets all the good things and nobody else does"
"Can you tell me what one of the good things is, so that I can understand?" "Matilda gets all the good things she could eat at the restaurant and the others couldn?t."

It turns out she was refering to the scene in Matilda, where Harry Wormwood falls on a table at the restaurant and a cake flies through the air, landing on Matilda?s plate, then she triumphantly she eats it.

I think it's true teachers don't often catch this stuff and/or dismiss it as quirky.
That isn't to say they should be on the the constant lookout to view any quirk as an aberration and flag it up.
As it stands, s/lt clinics are packed to the gills with kids with funny 'th's or very slight language delays who really shouldn't be there at all, but are, often for weeks and weeks of very expensive 1:1 s/lt whilst kids with real problems languish.

I'm sure that's so, moondog. I honestly wouldn't persue this if I didn't think there was a significant issue, though. Honestly I wouldn't.

Of course not.
I think, for what it is worth, you are right to be concerned.
I hope you find someone who can help you, not just tell you using dazzling impressive terms what the issue is.
Someone who can say 'This is how we can address these issues and this is how we can measure whether the input is having an effect. If it isn't, we will methodically try something else and continue to keep data all the while.'

Thank you for the reassurance. I'd happily be told I'm imagining it, but I don't think I am.

That is exactly what I want. Someone to say 'ok, this is what she's doing, and this is the approach you need to take.'

I'm obviously doing some of it, because after a year of me chanting 'look at [Headteacher], smile and say good morning' as we walk up the school path, she now does. Likewise with the crossing lady. She gets eye contact, a smile and 'thank you!'.

However, I'm very aware that I'm only scratching the surface, because my perception is that she needs concrete, explicit teaching - she doesn't seem to just absorb stuff.

Whereas, DD3 (3.6) saw a newsletter on the side today, and said 'Is that DD2's?' I looked, and said 'yes, how did you know?' She replied 'because I saw that on there.' and pointed to the school logo. She just picks stuff up without anyone saying anything. She drew an elephant's head today. She said 'I do a 'M' for DD1, then add a trunk.' No-one has shown her that, she's just done it.

'my perception is that she needs concrete, explicit teaching - she doesn't seem to just absorb stuff'

Quite.
And unfortunately most 'support' is based on the premise that vague, throw everything at the wall and hope summat sticks approach is the way forward.

It certainly wasn't for my child, whose (not inconsiderable) repertoire of academic and language skills had to be broken down and taught painstakingly.
By me, I may add, not the powers that be.
Bloody lucky I knew what I was doing eh? They certainly didn't.

I am about as cynical and jaded as it is possible to be about the SEN industry.

It all makes so much sense. Why she can make progress in reading, loves magnetic polydrons, repeating patterns are still an obsession and her yr R teacher taught that in early Yr R. Rhyming words are also a key part of our discussions (pity me). It's all stuff with 'rules'.

As has been said, next year it all changes internationally. DSM V means that it all becomes Autism Spectrum rather than half a dozen things.
It loses the link to learning difficulty and to speech and language stuff.Those will be separated out.
It makes it clear that it's nothing to do with violence and general disruptive behaviour (though frustration and meltdown and anxiety etc can cause those things in addition).
They're still arguing over how to categorise it as mild/moderate/severe.
Some daft person thought of doing it by "how much help does a person need".
But...I have a friend who is totally Blind. She copes magnificently. Would it be correct to diagnose her as only mildly blind as a result?

Thus, all will change.

I'm hopeful it may be for the better, if sensibly done.

Meantime, my Government Advisory work continues and we're well on the way to getting the legislation for the new SEND stuff in front of Parliament in the early part of next year. If all goes well, it'll mean far less fighting for resources and far more co-operation. I'm working flat out with the NAS and other major charities to ensure that the pressure is kept up on this.

Amberlight...can I just check - are you not amberleaf?

All these similar names are killing me

Nope. I've been amberlight for years. Amber32002 before that.

amberlight, just thinking about what you heard/read about classifying the level of ASD by how much support people need, my Dd3 needs different levels of support from day to day, week to week.

That would be a totally useless way to assess an autistic persons needs, IMO.

Sorry for the hijack lougle.

Btw, dd3 does the whole tapping and repeating to get someones attention. She also blanks people when she feels like it. She does not do social greetings at all which can be really tricky for other children.
She has a dx of ASD, she is high functioning academically but struggling socially. It is such a complex condition and very confusing for everyone involved

The severe/moderate/hf thing is very hard and very subjective. Sometimes it can annoy me when people claim their child s severe and I can see the child talking in full grammatical sentences, or doing maths, or knowing to stop at he side of the road rather Han walk out in front of a speeding car. Some of that I think is more bout iq than autism.

But by the same token, I expect some mums look at my boy taking himself off to the toilet, or using words, or reading simple words and think "what is she on about, calling her son severe".

So amberlight I can see why your people are finding it hard!

Yes zzzzz I think a figure would actually be good. Points for how many bits of each triad's list you have. I have friends whose kids have such severely and profoundly affected kids that I feel bad for even complaining about my life around them. Kids who self harm 500 times a day, drawing blood, who arent toilet trained at 10, who have almost no cognitive ability, who bite all who come near them, who will have maybe one sign. That is why I get angry on threads like the TH one - that anyone would even suggest bouncing around on a ball or eating special bread would "cure" what is effectively catastrophic brain damage, with an autism label.

My son is very high functioning in terms of IQ and his diagnosis is asperger syndrome. However he is not 'mild' because he is clever and in mainstream school. In terms of reciprocity and communication initiation, I would put him in the 5 worst kids I have ever seen with autism (and my job involves working with autistic kids, so I see a lot of them). So I agree that it's not as simple as clever / aspergers = mild. On the other hand, in terms of how much his autism affects our family, it is not too bad, he is not hard to cope with or look after and doesn't have challenging behaviour. I don't claim DLA for him because I would feel like a fraud. But in a few key areas, he is very significantly affected.

I think the intention is to classify the 'severity' of the 'ASD' in some way with DSM 5 but I am a bit worried about how.