Son having autism test any advice please what happens?

[mrshess]

Hi my son is having an observation done on tues for autism and i was wondering has anyone got any tips of what to do or not to do. It hasnt been made clear whether im present in room or not or what will happen. Any advice would be appreciated, also is the test usually one observation for just an hour?

Hi

My son has just had the ADOS test which is a play based observation for autism.

It lasted an hour and I was able to sit in the room. The session was videoed.

DS is 7 and I know there are different modules of the test depending on the age of the child, but, DS had to play a few games and answer questions about school and friends.

They are looking for specific things such as eye contact, the way they respond to the questions, their communication skills etc.

Thanks for replying, did they tell you what they thought at the end of the test?

No. It was very frustrating. This test and another, called the ADI, which is a 3 hour interview with parents, are scored afterwards and feed into a multi-disciplinary team meeting. After the panel has met, we will be told the results.

Has your son been seen by other people already e.g. speech and language, a paediatrician etc?

Hi. Another one here whos DS had an ADOS. We found out after the test that DS2 had autism. The professionals left us in the room afterwards to go discuss, and came back with the results. They did other observations before that though, the whole process took 6 months.

I found all the tests fine, not intrusive at all an DS2 was oblivious to them all. He tried to escape out of the window of the room instead of co-operating with the EP and SALT

How old is your DS?

Also this may sound an odd question but how did they talk to your son?
Did they talk in a normal low voice or in a really enthuiastic voice?
I ask this as my son is responsive if people are really over the top enthuiastic but completely blanks people if they talk in a normal tone.

Thanks for all replies, my son is 3 and half and has seen 2 paeditricians one who said to test him and the other just he had traits and it wouldnt be beneficial to test him at this stage.
He has also seen SALT and he has seen my sons odd behaviour but nothing which really confirms autism.
My son will make eye contact,
does anyone know if a child has eye contact is it definitely not autism even if they match a lot of other traits?

They don't really ask questions, more try to get the child to interact, do role play things and other little games.

My DS2 hs ok eye contact, the whole eye contact thing isn't true for some children with ASD.

My DS is 3.5 and he can make eye contact - sometimes he stares intently! Other times he is a master at avoiding eye contact.
He was dx at 2.5 and they just watched him play and tried to interact with him.

My son makes eye contact and has diagnosis of Autistic Spectrum Disorder.

They will prob ask you a lot of questions about development etc to date.
When DS was diagnosed, he was given toys to play with and they tried a few things with him. The paed pretended to hurt herself to see if he could demonstrate empathy (he didn't-he couldn't care less).
We were told after a break that he was on the spectrum but they couldn't say where as he was too young (aged 3.5)
Hope this helps. Good luck for tomorrow. Let us know how you get on and keep posting on here. Its the best support network around!