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Here are some suggested organisations that offer expert advice on special needs.

Just got paeds report...confused

9 replies

debs40 · 02/05/2009 22:56

DS (6) was seen by community paed about a month ago. We discussed his various sensory/routine issues - largely tactile and smell/taste related.

Paed also thought he had hypermobility and hypertonia and agreed he demonstrated AS traits. She has referred him for OT/PT/SALT

I reported all this back to school ((where he is largely ok). There have been a few incidents recently where he has hiddend when going into school or had problems with shoes and or PE and they have asked me what the paed said she thought it might be.

I was hoping the report would provide a suggested prognosis but it does not. It has taken the problems seriously and reiterated everything we discussed but the summary is effectively - there are lots of problems here to be investigated so I'm referring on.

The doctor has also provided a copy of the letter she has sent to consultant paeds at the hospital asking for advice and possible referral to Child and Family.

Is this the normal approach? What do Chiild and Family do? Is it usual for the community paed to seems so confounded. She seemed very experienced and level headed when I spoke to her. Fortunately, school are doing really well with accomodating any issue, but the report doesn't reallly help anyone understand what might be going on

OP posts:
amber32002 · 03/05/2009 07:33

I suspect people with more direct experience of Child and Family will have more useful things to say, but it sounds like your DS has presented them with quite a challenge. Goodness me, that's quite a list of people to see!

Really pleased the school are still doing what they can to help, but it's just really difficult when there isn't 'an answer', eh?

wasuup3000 · 03/05/2009 09:53

I don't know about child and family perhaps it is a child developement centre or somilar to child clinical psycholgy services. Either way you need reports of all of the people you have mentioned to establish your sons needs and if a possible diagnosis is required. It is quite normal in our area to see all of the above as part of this process.

magso · 03/05/2009 12:18

Ds had to be referred by the cummunity to child and family to get his ASD Dx. Child and family used to be CAMHS here. Every area seems to have slightly different systems!

Deeeja · 03/05/2009 15:00

Yes, was also about to suggest 'child and family' sounds like camhs, it may be where the asd diagnosis team is based, it is in my la.

debs40 · 03/05/2009 19:07

Thanks..I did some internet searching and I think you're right about it being CAMHS. Paed didn't say anything to me so I wondered what it was.

Guess it is just the start of a long process. DS's teacher was chatting to me about it all last week, asking what the doctor had concluded (this was before we had the report) and I said possible AS but we will have the report soon which might help!

Amber, DS is sociable (with children he knows) and seems imaginative/affectionate. Sorry, you've probably been asked this a million times, but how does this fit in with any ASD?

Thanks all

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amber32002 · 03/05/2009 20:30

It might not be an ASD. Can't tell until the team do their work, of course, but I can generalise a bit..

I'm sociable with people I know. And my goodness me I have an imagination (though it's a bit odd!), and I can be affectionate on my terms. And I'm aspie as hell itself - right off the scale on most of the things tested, and well on the scale for the rest too.

The thing is, our sensory world is such a nightmare unless we can plan it. And we have no people-recognising bit really. So if we a) know who someone is and b) know enough about that person to be able to predict what they're about to do/say, then we can prepare ourselves for any sensory issues.

Eye contact can be a big one, because it can be wired directly into the "arrrghh! scary monster!" part of the brain.

Touch can be a big one, because if we're not expecting it, it's like being punched.

Sounds can be a big one - a noisy group is like a wall of sound to us, and totally overwhelming.

So it's not that we can't be sociable, or friendly, or imaginative, or affectionate, it's that we need to test each step of it so very very carefully before we know if it's safe or not.

A noisy group of strangers? Urk - anything could happen, and the noise hurts.

A sudden unexpected hug from someone we hadn't realised was there? Hell itself.

Meantime, our brain stores hobbies in ridiculous detail in the bits it's supposed to store the people info in, so we can get obsessed with things and patterns etc as they seem hugely important to us. And our language bits don't want to work in ordinary ways at all, so we can seem pedantic, little-professorish, very literal, etc. Or not talk at all well/or indeed at all.

Just examples, but it explains a lot about the sorts of problems and ways we try to solve them.

People had this idea that all autism involves very distant, unimaginative people. That was before we started writing about ourselves and revealed more about what we're actually like.

debs40 · 03/05/2009 20:40

Amber, thanks for this, it makes alot of sense and fits him perfectly.

What other alternatives can there be to an ASD like AS? Paed mentioned social communication disorder in her report and I have looked around a bit on the net but couldn't really put my finger on what that is compared to an ASD.

Thank you for taking the time to reply. It really helps to read what you say

OP posts:
amber32002 · 03/05/2009 20:44

Sensory processing disorder? Similar to ASD but without the antisocialness?

Dyspraxia is often ASD-like, but again without so much of the antisocialness and has much more of the lack of physical co-ordination on things?

Sometimes I wonder if they're realy the same sort of thing but just in children with different personalities and natural abilities - more sociable, less sociable, more sporty, far less sporty. But that's me just musing a bit. Do feel free to ignore that last comment.

wasuup3000 · 03/05/2009 21:36

Sometimes Paeds use the term social communication disorder instead of ASD as far as I am aware.

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