questions about upcoming assessment for Asperger's

[vocalise]

Ds (8) is being evaluated for potential Asperger's, and I have a few questions for those who have been there before...

The assessment involves a psych-ed eval (done), a speech and lang. report for the school's speech therapist (done), a 1.5 hour appointment where he's evaluated by another speech therapist and observed by two psychologists, and then a 4-5 hour appointment for only me where I will be interviewed by these two psychologists. 4-5 HOURS? It sounds like an interrogation! Seriously, for those who have been there, what did this look like?

They also mentioned that many of the questions I'll be answering will surround ds when he was four-to-five years old. Why would this be? From everything I have read, Asperger's becomes more and more apparent as a child gets older. Are there particular markers that show up in the age 4 bracket?

[christinelin]

I think every professional does evaluations differently. We only did 2 hours of initial interview and then two hours again to get the evaluation results. I don't think thorough can ever be bad, though.

That 4-5 age range is a pretty common time for Asperger's to become more evident because that is when play becomes more fluid and children begin to develop more truly reciprocal relationships. I am guessing that is the reason for the focus on that time frame. My son is participating in some research and one of the questionaries asked me to recall that same time period.

How are you doing with the upcoming evaluation?

[Linda on the move]

Every eval is different. With my DD's recent eval., I spent 2 separate appointments chatting with the doctor about my DD. It was great. I really like the doctor doing the eval, I asked lots of questions. She asked me lots of questions too.

My DD has had a couple of very intense life experiences and we spent time talking about that and trying to sort out what is special needs vs. life experience and how they are interplaying.

This was at the end of the eval process and we talked a lot about DD and how she fit and didn't fit into a "classic" dx.