Thank you for your support.
I'm feeling better now, after a good night's sleep - two nights of being up almost every hour tending either to the needs of a very sick preschooler or a very needy infant who I am sure feels that I am somehow absent have taken their toll, and have made me more despondent than I should be! A friend has reminded me that I may need to look into support for myself, if we end up with a diagnosis. I owe it to myself and my family I suppose, but I just can't handle more appointments at the moment. I am constantly exhausted as it is, even though it is on the surface not that much I am doing.
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I don't understand. Are you saying that you are afraid that if you get your child a diagnoses, that having the dx will cause a bigger gap? or are you saying that if your child qualifies for the dx, then that you will know that you are dealing with the bigger gap? There's a difference.
The latter of course - I understand that an AS diagnosis does not change who my child is, but it will change my expectations about what he might become. I had been aniticipating advocating for a gifted, quirky child, and while i know from my own experience how hard that can be, I felt i was somewhat prepared. I was not prepared that we might be looking at special needs. Or the fuzzy bit in the middle. I mean who is? You've all been there.
I fully understand that putting my head in the sand and waiting for it all to blow over might mean waiting for it all to blow up, and denying my child options in the meantime. Butbutbut:
I live in a country where autism carries a definite stigma, where people simply aren't aware of the differences between hospitalism created by neglect, classic autism with mental retardation and the high functioning/Asperger part of the spectrum and of the different needs of these children. Heck i live in a country where giftedness carries a stigma! (The first gifted programs around were established in 2006, and need to justify their existence at every step. My mom clips newspaper articles about gifted kids who finish high school early with straight A's while being enrolled at university at the same time and every time there is a passage about how the kid doesn't want to be called gifted, don't want to tell their IQ to the paper, how they are really quite normal, with teachers confirming they were actually nice to their classmates and always happy to have their gifts serve others in their learning, that yes they do play sports and have friends just like anyone, in short that they can justify their existence. It's sickening). I read about the advocacy and the fights y'all go through in order to get accomodations and services for your gifties and your 2es but at least the idea of gifted education has been around for generations, with generations of research and experiences. And there is inclusive schooling with services provided through school for 2e children.
I just hate people's attitude to all this around where I live. hate hate hate. There is a reason I hang out here.
I mentioned our interim results in the eval process to the osteopath who first encouraged me to seek an evaluation for AD/HD and she agreed that if the diagnosis was in any way fuzzy, it was imperative to avoid any diagnosis with the word "autism" that might lead to a special ed designation, and if he does need therapy to go for anything else that might him provide the therapy without the stigma. She suggested AD/HD, which however I am sure now does not apply, I am thinking pragmatic language disorder, nonverbal learning disorder or SPD. (Unlike in the DSM-IV, PDD-NOS does not exist as a diagnosis in the ICD-10, instead there is a diagnosis called "atypical autism" for children who do not show all the symptoms, or atypical onset of the symptoms, auf classical autism. A highly verbal child like DS, if considered to be on the spectrum, would receive an Asperger diagnosis after age three).
I think there are schools, like the local Montessori, where he does just fine in a once-weekly K class, but which would not be allowed to accept him with a special ed statment, which would serve him MUCH better than the local special ed school for children with "socio-emotional difficulties" . I read somewhere that putting gifted sensitive Aspies with soial difficulties in these classes together with emotionally disturbed children who come from difficult backgrounds but who are socially highly astute and streetwise is tantamount to providing the perfect victims to the perfect bullies. Even the local public school which would have to accept him if his statement qualified him as a candidate for inclusion who I am sure does very well by regular kids would not know what to do with him. At all. And I still think he is gifted, even though he came across as a child that had rote-learned all his information in the first consultation, and there is no way special ed would provide him with the mental stimulation he needs (and i know this may be different for other countries, too).
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I know that all of this is so much more loaded for you given the limited range of choices available to you where you live. I can't imagine how difficult this must be to consider navigating.
That's it. Word for word.
It's a hard thing to wrestle with. It's hard to stand at the brink of a diagnosis (or not) and contemplate what that means.
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