What does the diagnosis mean?

Hi everyone,

After 18 months of constant assessments from the CASBAT team my daughter finally got a diagnosis of "Autistic Spectrum Disorder" i just wanted to ask a few questions as I'm new to this so I apologise if they seem silly questions to ask.

1) is a diagnosis of "Autistic Spectrum Disorder" the same as being Autistic? I tried looking this up but ended up gettimg rather confused.

2) now that my daughter has a diagnosis whats likely to happen next?

3) my daughters school have reported that she is significantly behind Her peers in everything. Will the school reports help if we go down the route of statementing?

Thank you for any advice 

  • Autism is known as spectrum disorder which varies the way that affects people. Every child facing autism spectrum has different abilities, symptoms and challenges, so learning about the whole disorder will certainly help you to better understand your own child. I think you may have heard many different terms like high-functioning autism, atypical autism and pervasive developmental disorder for this problem, as doctors generally use them in dissimilar ways. However, you don’t need to confuse with the terms, it’s important to find out proper diagnostics that can address your child’s needs, rather than focusing on other things.

  • Twostepsbehind21 said:

    2) now that my daughter has a diagnosis whats likely to happen next?

    3) my daughters school have reported that she is significantly behind Her peers in everything. Will the school reports help if we go down the route of statementing?

    Thank you for any advice 

    2) Nothing you do not make happen.

    3) Yes

  • Atypical said:

    People used to get diagnosed as autistic or aspergers, aspergers being a milder form.

    Not accurate. Aspergers can be more or less severe than other forms of ASV. The defining characteristic of Aspergers is that it does not impact cognitive development.

  • Hi, can answer 1) yes, they basically mean the same thing.  People used to get diagnosed as autistic or aspergers, aspergers being a milder form. However they realised that really there was a scatter/spectrum of symptoms and people didn't fit neatly into boxes so they decided to just call everyone asd.  You will still see people using the labels in the old way though. You may have been given some indication of how severe her problems are?

    There are other people on here know more about the other stuff!