2.5 yrs on and the "is mini Kettlechip on the ASD spectrum or isn't he?" saga has almost reached its conclusion..

[kettlechip]

I haven't been nearly as regular on here of late, as I once was but some of you might remember my posts from ages back, usually on the ASD/language disorder threads. MN was a lifeline in helping me recognise ds' difficulties and get him support.

Fast forward 2.5 years - ds1 is now 4.6 and has been under observation since he turned 2 for possible ASD / lang disorder (he went through a kind of regression period where he didn't make eye contact, speech development stalled, and he just seemed a bit detached - this all vastly improved virtually overnight when I totally removed artificial sweeteners from his diet.)

Since then, his language and social skills have come on in leaps and bounds, he's coping well in mainstream school without any support but he still has significant receptive and expressive delays, and processing difficulties. His social skills are very immature compared with his peers, and he still struggles to string functional sentences together sometimes.

After much thought, the paediatrician and I decided that we would go down the ASD dx pathway (I have to move ds to another school for other reasons, and wanted to organise as much support for that as possible) and it's nearly done. The ed psych came to observe today, and has told me off the record that she is not worried at all about ds, she feels he is very unlikely to be on the spectrum, his social difficulties can all be attributed to his language issues, and she's very pleased with what she's seen.

So, although I am greatly relieved to finally have an answer to the is he or isn't he dilemma, I'm now wondering what will happen from here.. It's odd as I'd totally convinced myself to expect a HFA dx, and have no idea what, if anything, they will come back with now. Has anyone else had experience of their toddler having strong ASD symptoms which then recede back as they get older and language improved? I still have massive concerns about his language, and am really hoping that a lack of an ASD dx doesn't throw us out of the support system..

This is interesting as one of the questions the paed asked me in my interview last week was whether ds had an accent. He said that many children he's seen have an American accent(!) and I think it's something to do with the echolaic aspect of it all.

The other questions were geared towards how flexible and adaptable ds is, whether he has any unusual interests or obsessions (one child he treats has a fixation with extension cables!!) sensory issues, how he reacts to other children, how appropriately he reacts to different social situations etc. I had to think of lots of specific examples of how ds would behave in different scenarios (it was a heavygoing hour's worth!)

When I next see him I'll ask for more info on the accent business.

We have a different accent issue, in that DS2 is acutely sensitive to variations in accent.
This is one of the things that stopped him being able to understand language.
now he's constantly pointing out the differences between how DH (American) says things and how I (southern England) say things.
He says them DH's way "because I'm a boy".
But he has no unusual accent himself - sometimes you'll hear him from another room and think it's his older brother talking.

btw, is anyone else's son obsessed with the whole "I'm a boy, I'm 4, she's a girl, she's just 3, girls like pink things, boys play trains, etc,etc" thing right now? I've a feeling it's a normal stage, just delayed.

Ds2 has an unusual interest in toilets btw - when told he is going to a new house for the first time his eyes will light up and he'll say "ooh, I'm going to wee in X's toilet!" Typically "autistic", or a continuum of the whole male "ooh look I farted!" type thing?

DS2 sounds posher than the rest of us, with certain words veering towards American eg. wawder for water etc.. It has always niggled me a bit, makes it more difficult to convince myself that he is not on the spectrum. Mind you, DH had to have speech therapy as a kid and ended up sounding posher than his family too.

Will save me money, he sounds like a public school boy without me having to fork out for fees.

Lingle, DS also has the toilet issue, he wants to visit different people, friends and relatives, so he can flush their toilets. We thought this only started since DS started nursery school and he was using it as an escape to get away from things (he does not do it at home, he only plays with toilet water. Now you are making me think it is ASD related.

DS has 'the accent' too. Sometimes sounds American, sometimes just odd. I'm inclined to think its too much telly and that combined with echolalic tendancies, but who knows.

Maybe its just the inability to imitate well from real life that exacerbates it.

I've been listening out for accents today. None as such, ds just can't pronounce properly. Spaghetti is persghetti, for example. You know what he means (in context!), it just isn't coming out correctly..

We have the I'm a boy, ds2 is a boy, Mummy is a girl etc etc too. ds1 is a big brother, ds2 is a little brother etc etc.. It's worn off a bit, it used to be a daily routine. Pretty normal I think, ds2 has started with it as well so I have it in stereo -

lol at the Reading accent, troublewithtalk, I have a bit of that, I sometimes drop the g on the end of ing words and that's only from living there for a few years!!