Hi

Again ditto to what everyone has said here already and double ditto to popping over tot he autism/sensory integration chat thread it's a great place to hang out and chat with others who know where your at.

It took a long time to get my DS diagnoised and it was the best thing we ever did but it was not an easy road and I get sick of having to stand up anf force the issue and argue with stupid people who think they know autism and my son after 10 min.

We first took DS to the child health nurse at 2 when he wasn't speaking and had some strange obsessions - we were told we were being paranoid and not to worry. years went on and finally his kindy teacher suggested we see our dr.

Our GP didn't really believe there was an issue, the first Ped we saw suggested we download some checklists on the internet and come back. We saw another ped who told us Xander has traits but was not autistic and said if we needed help at school he would tick the PDD box so we could get some funding. His teacher suggested we get him to do that so that Xander could get some support at the same time we sawThrough Gymbaroo - who witnised one of DS breakdowns after we were 10 min late we saw an OT. She spent 3 hrs with us and Xander and told us in her opinion Xander has Aspergers. She wrote a detailed report to the ped and also told us to get the school to do the same - DS went to this appointment in his usual form and this time after 15 min we walked out with a diagnoises of Aspergers - he couldn't wait to get us out of his room. He also told us he saw no reason for us to come back - nice!

DS does not have all the classic autistic traits all of the time. He does talk now - a lot. Infact you can't stop him but he rabbits on about his little obsessions and tries so hard to play with the other kids but they just don't get him.

Autism and aspergers are such variable things, every kid is different and demonstrates their needs in differnt ways. Unfortunately many teachers and even some dr are too busy to really see the variences in kids also we as parents don't want to sit there and rave on about the unfavourable things our kids do to dr and teachers I think often try to protect us from the truth about how our kids are coping at school or perhaps they just are too busy to notice??? We have had terrible troule with DS teacher who has no idea about Autism and what DS stress signals aredepite all the info and mettings we've had - drives me batty.

He does have a lot of social problems with school as he so badly wants to fit in which makes him the target of bullies that get him to do things and play games that he shouldn't but he also responds well to rules so we work with him on this and the special needs teacher also sturctures play time at breaks to help him

We have had such a huge improvement since DS has been diagnoised with the help of OT and just knowing a little bit more about what goes on in his head and why he does what he does. We can also avoid or redirect thigs that trigger his meltdowns.

If you do want to go down the diagnoises route, gather up all your observations and notes from others - it sounds horrible but you may have to fight to get an answer which can be so hard when you yourself aren't really sure. I wish these dr would get it through their heads that us parents don't stand around coming up with things to be wrong with our kids and that we wouldn't go through all this if we didn't really think something was up!!!

Finally - you are not letting your little boy down - you are an awesome mum and doing a great job!!