Autusim

MY SON DOESNT TALK WHAT DOES THAT MEAN HES ALMOST 4 YEARS OLD

[Abhijeet Deshmukh, MD]

Dear Erica,

The information you have provided here is relatively insufficient for anyone to suggest you a specif course of action. If you could add more details, it would help others to give their inputs.

As you may know, there could be causes other than Autism, responsible for your son not talking. I would also be interested in knowing if your son does communicate in a non-verbal way! Does he have any other symptoms (actions, gestures, habits ...) that you notice as different from other kids?

Regards

Abhijeet Deshmukh, MD

[snickersin610]

My son is 30 months old.  We became concerned when my son wasn't using words at 15 months.  we had him evaluated by Early intervention and they found a significant speech delay.  They were concerned about some behaviors and referred us to Developmental pediatrician. She diagnosed him with mild PDD.  Since then we've had speech therapy, OT, itenerant teacher, behavior specialist and psychiatrist for almost a year now.   Each of his therapist including the psychiatrist do not feel my son has austism.  If our son has autism we can accept that and do all we can to get him what he needs.  But if he is being misdiagnosed... we still need to find the appropriate help for him.  Our meeting today with the Developmental pediatrician ended very bad today.  The doctor cut us off when we tried to ask questions.  Didn't read the reports from his therapists or acknowlege the improvements made and when questioned if he is diagnosed correctly she was quite annoyed.  She showed us a graph that says he is PDD but we are concerned because she didn't take anything else into consideration.  My main question was:  Can children with speech impairment be mistaken for autism.  she said No.  Can anyone answer that question for me?
We do plan to get a second opinion. just be sure he is diagnosis is correct.