Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi there! My sons 3 years old and is currently in the early stages of trying to get the diagnosis.
My health visitor told me to join this website and get some support from families who are going through the same. I'm not quite sure whether she believes he may have autism as he covers his ears a lot to noise. I don't believe he's autistic, but I know for a fact he has ADHD. I don't even need a professional to tell me. His development is around a year behind due to no patience to learn anything. He's also going for speech therapy at the moment. I'm hoping things may move sooner when he starts nursery next week.
Anyway, just looking for a bit of support and understanding from people going through a similar situation!
The sensory processing problems are very common in ASD but they aren't part of the condition and don't contribute to the diagnosis. Your health visitor may well be right though and he may have an autistic spectrum condition. You have to be clear that it does not mean that he is necessarily mentally disabled - intelligence is a different thing to the communication problems that autism involves.
He may find nursery school difficult. ASD children can find the quantity and quality of social interaction that nursery provides to be unbearable. The noise and commotion in the class may be stresful for him and he may have meltdowns as a consequence. You need to tell the school of the HV's suspicions so that they can handle him slightly differently.
How does he behave with other children? Does he play nicely with other children or play on his own? Does he make good eye contact with you or not? These would be classic signs of an ASD.
P.S. The website is grievously slow at times so you have to wait patiently for things to happen after you have clicked the submit button. This leads to a lot of multi-posts - we are used to it :-)