paediatrician report

[storm1279]

hiya, just looking for some advice.

My son is 7 and has been reffered through school to the pathway for suspected autism, hes seen the speech therapist and a paedatrician so far. The paedatrician report has arrived and contains all the things we discussed and what he observed but at the conclusion part it says "he is a boy with social communication difficulties which are borderline ICD-10 criteria, he was also hyperactive and easily distracted with short attention span" and wants to be reviewed in 8 months time. I'm puzzled, does he have autism or not? does anyone have any experience of this and what the next step is, any advice would be appreciated.

That sounds like he's saying there's signs of autism, not enough evidence at the moment, but more might present over time, hence the return in 8 months. For many autistic people we sort of skirt along the edges of typical development for years (even decades) until something tips the balance and our autism beckmes more noticeable to observers. For children the big transitions to nursery, reception, juniors and secondary can do that.

Hi, thanks for your reply. He does struggle with change especially at school, he starts juniors in September and his y2 teacher has made sure he has had extra visits to his new class so he is familiar with it because he has meltdowns if he doesn't like something or runs off. I've yet to receive the report from the speech therapist, her oberservations of him could be more detailed so I can get him more support in school so he doesn't fall behind.

Took 2 years to diagnose ds with asd as he is quite an atypical presentation. He got his diagnosis when they got all reports from different professionals and went over them. They also repeated school obs 3x and group and single sessions.

So far he's only borderline social and communication - there a great post in here about the three areas to get an asd diagnosis. Perhaps they are thinking adhd - my eldest has adhd with minor social and communication issues