Aaargh stress

[fanjoforthemammaries7850]

Ed psych is coming round for first visit with DD today (language delay or ASD, hypotonia)..

She has improved so much since her first meeting with paed in May, and I am so keen to get that across so am stressed about it ANYWAY..but..

Not only does she have a terrible cold which means she keeps hanging her tongue out and flicking it in and out, which looks extremely strange, and chewing everything a million times more than usual and literally slobbering, she hasn't eaten for 3 days.

And it just took 90 minutes for her to get to sleep for her nap (which she is a nightmare without) as the gardeners (we are not posh, its a communal landscaped garden round our flat) kept waking her.....I kept relaxing thinking she had finally gone off and she would be awake again.

YOu know I wouldn't focus too much on theb improvements

The Ed PSych is employed by the LEA, part of her remit is to get the minimum in place because of budgets. You on the other hand do not want that, far better to have too much and reduce it.

Do spell out significant changes but don't give the impression that if they stall you your D ewill 'go away' and if the cold etc gets her a bit extra supprt- hallelujah for viruses.

My experience is that if you go in asking for 150%, they'll come at you with 50% and you might then just get that 100% that's needed

Thanks..actually I had just said that to DH on MSN..too much support is better than too little!

I suppose it's just that they are trying to decide at the moment whether she just has language delay or ASD and I don't want her to be misdiagnosed either way.

But you make a very good point and I will certainly bear that in mind when he comes today and not let him think everything is fine!

Thanks

I need to concentrate on not blubbing on the poor man too, have a tendency to do that when i talk about her at the moment, not ideal!!!

If you want to cry, do. I have on many occasions.

DS3 had a while being shuttled around the SLD- ASD thing 9though was obvious that he was ASD to anyone who knew him). IME as they get older the right DX becomes more evident and what is unclear at pre-school age rarely is by 6 or so.

I take it you have a copy of the NAS triad?

Yes, she has had a lot of them..no eye contact, no communication, hand flapping, hasnt socialised at ALL, but seems to be growing out of a lot of it.

She is now starting to talk to us ALL the time, is pointing, waving, becoming affectionate, making eye contact and playing imaginatively.

She still handflaps and obsesses about things and won't play with other children yet though, although she is noticing them now.

So its just not clear. She has already got motor delay and hypotonia so we could just be looking at GDD.

Just want her to get correct "label" I suppose, if there is one.

Good luck for the visit.

Thanks bullet. Am trying to see it as a GOOD thing and not a stressful one

you know that eye contact isn't asd dx criteria yes? It's a very common symptom, but (despite the confusion of a lot of proessionals) shouldn't be dx'd upon- should be one from each triad section. DS3 has intermittent eye contact though and that didn't half confuse people!

Sounds like she does need time to develop into herself though, can be difficult to pick out early on, and of course can be co-morbid with a GDD dx, I know a child close to us who has GDD and aquired the ASD dx in his teens.

fanjo, how old is she, just out of interest? ds also seems to have outgrown some of his mild ASD tendencies (patchy eye contact etc) He'll be 4 in summer. DH outgrew all of his tendencies at 5.

Good luck with visit. I'm sure it will be fine - I remember how I stressed about ours and she was lovely.

It hasn't been so much lack of eye contact as that she would seem very distant and almost in a trance, like when i would pick her up from playgroup and she wouldn't interact with me at all, but would sing a song over and over in a manic fashion. Now she points at me and says "there's mummy, it's mummy, hello mummy" USUALLY...

I wasn't aware that wasn't a criterion though, i don't know enough about it yet.

She is only 2.8 at the moment. She is generally young for her age, didn't walk until 2 and can't jump/manage stairs/feed herself yet.

And thanks for the good wishes

To complicate the picture further she had lots of single words early, knew all her letters and numbers before 2 and would crawl around reading things...!

She is lovely anyway, and very sweet and easy going!

After all that worrying, DD didn't give us any choice re telling us about the improvement in her communication..the history he had been sent had said "she does not interact with her parents"..she never stopped demanding our attention and interacting with us!!

but she fitted in a good old hand flapping session too, just to confuse him!!