What to expect from paediatrician appointment?

[Fivebyfive2]

Hi all,

Just wondering if anyone can give me some advice on what to expect at an upcoming paediatric appointment with my 3.5 year old son? We had a paediatric nurse (sorry this is probably not the fully correct title!) come out last week and ask us questions, then do activities with him like block building, looking through a picture book and asking questions etc. She said the next step was an appointment with a paediatrician, but I'm just wondering what to expect at that appointment?

He's being assessed for autism due to a few things-

Being "in the black" on a few things at his 2.5 and then follow up 3 year hv review, mostly fine motor and social/emotional skills.

He's a good communicator, is fully toilet trained etc with a wide vocabulary but is very sensitive and gets really anxious about alot of things. Like worryingly anxious, if that makes sense? Sensory wise he can't wear certain fabrics, have any labels in his clothes, likes cold baths (an improvement, as until recently we couldn't get him in a bath) he spins and runs in circles alot and also likes to do this thing where he'll kind of...make himself out breath?? If that makes any sense, I'm not sure how to describe it? His sleep has always been a real struggle, he doesn't seem to need as much as most kids and really struggles to wind down. He still wakes multiple times a night. His memory is amazing, even as a baby he'd get upset if we went a different way in the buggy and has always been very sensitive to noise.

We're not sure if it's autism or if he's just a really sensitive kid, or something else but either way just want some help supporting him, especially with school looming next year.

I'm just a bit nervous of what to expect from these appointments I guess? Sorry that was so long!

Hi @Fivebyfive2, I think it differs by area. For ours we didn’t have a nurses appointment first, just health visitor assessments.
For the Paediatric Consultant appointment she just asked a lot of questions, from birth through to his current age, about all mile stones, sleep, eating habits, speech.
She also observed him just playing and doing his own thing, and tried to engage in conversation.
At the end of his appointment she advised he was autistic, and would be writing up the diagnosis using the notes from this appointment, his SALT appointments and his EP.

As Frustratedandmotivated posted, the process varies area to area. Unless one has already been taken they will probably ask about DS’s history. They will probably ask about nursery too if DS attends.

It can help to write a list of things you want to mention/ask. For example, do you want to ask about melatonin to help with DS’s sleep or OT to help with the sensory difficulties.

Ours was 5 years ago now but very similar to Frustratedandmotivated. Ds saw SALT initially and then we had an appointment at the child development centre with a developmental paediatrician and another SALT. They took a detailed history (was about 90 minutes) and observed ds. At the end of the appointment we were given a diagnosis of autism. He was 3.11.

Oh and I was completely unprepared for the detailed history as the letter said it would be a ‘play based assessment’. It was good dh was there as ds did not want to stay in the consulting room and I’d never have got through it.l by myself.

Thanks all, this is really helpful! I'll definitely take DH (his dad) or my mum to the appointment for back up, we've had instances where it's a real struggle to get Ds into places and even if he's happy it is quite hard to focus on questions and things when I've got him by myself.

They'll have reports from his old nursery and his current one plus the hv appointments and whatever the nurse wrote up. But going from the advice here I'll go armed with copies of everything plus his red book and our notes, like what our concerns are, what his strengths are and what we'd like "out of" the process.