Has anyone else been to see Dr Gillian Baird for a second opinion on their child?

[Mercythompson]

We believe DS1 has HF ASD and all the professionals who deal with him agree - however you have to get to know him to see it.

Most professionals meet him the first time and go "Oh HE doesn't have ASD!" and then they meet him again and say:

"Oh HIM - HE has ASD" - like its obvious.

The issue with this is that you have to get to know him a bit - he is very bright and on the surface at least, good at blending.

He is seeing a psychologist at the moment, and after the first session she thought he was very confident about his academic skills, and after three sessions she fed back that he is actually really insecure about everything!!!

The point is (there is a point I promise), is that hte only people who haven't seen the ASD were the ones who formally assessed him for it, as they only saw him for an HOUR!!

This is why we are seeking a second opinion, but I am now really worried about what happens when you see Dr Baird. Is it just the one meeting with an assessment, how good is she (or her team) etc.

I am just so scared that again, because soemone doesn't have the time to spend with our little boy, they won't see past the surface layer.

And yes I have reports from everyone agreeing with me to bring to her, but I had them last time too, and they didn't make much difference!

We saw Gillian Baird and her team about a year ago. We were there about 3 hours and it was very intensive. The speech therapist, child psychologist and OT took DD2 into another room to assess her whilst Dr Baird spoke to us. She was very nice but it was a very clinical environment, nothing relaxed or comfortable about it. DD2 scored really badly on all the tests, she wasn't giving them anything, and some of the tests were ones she had done before and had much higher percentiles. Dr Baird even said its a very unnatural environment for assessments and if nothing else our report will help with your DLA. For us personally, we didn't achieve anything by taking her out of school and putting ourselves through that.

DD2 is a totally different child at home to anywhere else, even school. It's where she is most comfortable, if they'd all come to our house it would've been a different story!

Mumgoingcrazy, thank you very much for the info, did she give you a diagnosis, did you only see her once?

Ds appears much more "nt" outside the house as he conforms and blends, so my fear is that they won't see his difficulties.

Yes we saw them just once. I don't think we'll see them again. They didn't give a diagnosis as such, but said she had traits.

It's a bit up in the air really as school are adamant she's ASD, Paed (ASD specific) is adamant she's not. Dr Baird and her team say maybe.

To be honest Dr Baird and her team are the top of their game so I'm inclined to go with them, although As I said before it wasn't a natural environment at all and they didn't see the true DD2, so as you can see we still don't have a concrete answer.

I'm afraid I'm not being much help to you.

It's a really big help to have some idea of what I'm going into.

Did they suggest a way forward, I.e. Re-test in a couple of years, or did they just leave it at that?

How old is dd2 (if you don't mind me asking?) ds1 is 5!

Dd2 is 6.5yrs, we saw Dr Baird when she was 5.5.

To be honest, DD2 has everything in place with regards to school placement, support and therapy provision. We also do a fair bit privately as well so she basically said, you're doing a great job and keep what you're doing. So we've reached a point where we're not too bothered, and we're fed up of all the appointments anyway so will stick to the ones that actually benefit dd2 and just let the professionals battle it out between them. School needed a dx for juniors placement, so the Ed Psyc did that, but paed disagreed with it.