Seeking diagnosis for my son

[autumngirl714]

I was just wondering, if anyone could give me a bit of advice as to how I go about Seeking a diagnosis for my nine-year-old son.
I suspect my son is autistic. Whilst he’s definitely high functioning, I do believe he’s autistic and I want to make sure he has the right support in place particularly as he approaches high school age in a few years.
As I said, he’s very high functioning, and is very intelligent and well behaved at school so no concerns for autism as such has been flagged directly from school. However, the signs are absolutely there and I cannot ignore them. There’s lots of little things That I have noticed, I will list some of them below to see what I think -
He hyper fixates on things to an extreme. He’s either into one thing and cannot talk about anything else. It is very intense. For example, if he is into Minecraft, he will only talk and play with Minecraft. Everything he wears has to be Minecraft. His pyjamas has to be Minecraft. It’s all he will draw. It’s all he will think about.
He avoids eye contact. Whilst he does give eye contact, rarely, when you are talking to him, his eyes are always wondering across the room and he will avoid directly looking at you at all times. He’s always done this.
He’s very sensory sensitive. When he was younger clothes were a massive issue for him particularly socks and shoes. Whilst this has improved over the years he’s still very sensitive to certain things for example noises smells certain clothes and textures. I wouldn’t say this is a challenging as it once was, however it is still there.
He struggles socially and making friends. He likes to have small circles of friendships which I know on its own is perfectly normal however he struggles with social norms. For example he will approach older boys in playgrounds or when we’re out and about and try to talk to them completely out of the blue which feel sometimes a bit inappropriate and worrying as to who he might be approaching. He’s very nervous socially as well, and if somebody upsets him, he takes it to heart deeply.
He’s great at masking. As I said, he just really well at school and sometimes when he gets home the load of putting on a front all day can take its toll.
I don’t know whether this is a symptom or not, but he’s extremely creative. He loves drawing and escaping into his little gaming worlds through drawing.

My biggest concern for him is socially. I do think he’s going to be very vulnerable going into high school and unfortunately I suspect because of how he processes things he could be subject or vulnerable I should say to being bullied. Whenever I read about autism I don’t believe he is on the extreme side of things, however I relate so much to it with my son.

I’m just after advice as to how I approach this. Do I speak to school? Do I go to the Doctors? I have spoken to school before about his social skills so it’s not a new conversation I would be having with them although I’ve never discussed my concerns about him being autistic.

I would speak to the school and the GP. Schools can refer to some services. For other services, it needs the GP to refer.

I would speak to the gp in the first instance. I think they prefer school to refer though, but from experience this may be where you come unstuck because if he's masking at school then they'll say there's little to no evidence. Part of the referral criteria is that children have to evidence multi-setting impairment (e.g. both home and school). Have you spoken to the school senco? Would they support a referral?

It is possible to get a diagnosis even if the school isn’t supportive. Not least because just because they don’t see the signs or see them but don’t recognise them for what they are doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

Yes, but it's more challenging. It's why girls in particular (like my dd) often aren't diagnosed until much later - even when their parents just know. It took a term of school avoidance before dd was finally taken seriously. We actually applied for the ehcp ahead of the diagnosis just so we had access to an educational psychologist who could help provide evidence of need to the school because they weren't seeing the things we did. At the beginning we were stuck in a loop of the gp telling us that the school needed to refer her and her symptoms needed to be present across two settings and the school telling us they had no evidence to enable a referral. It was one hell of a battle. She finally got her diagnosis two weeks ago - after 4 years in the system.

Yes, it can be more difficult. I was just pointing out it is still possible to get a diagnosis.