
Originally Posted by
pinky
My son was in an early childhood program beginning at age 3 due to delays in receptive and expressive language. In IL, you can have services for speech related issues up to age 7 and then a diagnosis has to made in order to continue receiving any special services. Our school district insisted my son was autistic and got very pushy. It's a long story that I actually discussed on another thread on here but it resulted in us pursuing having testing done at our own expense to get the right diagnosis. He was tested by a pediatric neurologist, pediatric psychiatrist, speech pathologist and audiologist. The testing was extensive. He was also prescribed adderall, dexedrine, and ritalin to see if meds made a difference... none of them helped; in fact they made it worse. He met with the psychiatrist for quite a while so he could assess him. He felt he was not autistic. The neurologist agreed. The speech pathologist was able to determine exactly what the issues were with his speech that hindered his language. She ran tests on him for 3 days. She suggested a language disorder (CAPD) and referred us to the audiologist who diagnosed Central Auditory Processing Disorder which is actually a brain disorder that impacts how you hear sounds and leads to language problems that impacts social skills. Audiologists who are trained in CAPD can diagnose it. Other doctors cannot. There are a lot of subcategories of CAPD, too, but once you get the correct diagnosis, compensation skills and preferential seating and test taking, etc., help the kids to cope and to learn to succeed. CAPD is often misdiagnosed as Autism. Don't allow a school to diagnose your child. Schools get federal funds for certain diagnoses so they push labeling. Get independent tests done by your own doctors and not those recommended by the school. Had we not done testing, he wouldn't have gotten the help he really needed. He had an IEP for Writing Composition because that's what he really struggled with but was pulled from special ed in grade 10. He graduated with a regular diploma and is now a senior at a 4 year college. He came home yesterday with an A+ on a research paper he had to write for one of his classes. The professor wrote on it that it was perfect and best in the class. Finding the RIGHT diagnosis is critical.
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