Asperger Syndrome Support Group
Asperger syndrome - also referred to as Asperger's syndrome, Asperger's, Aspergers or just AS - is one of five neurobiological pervasive developmental disorders (PDD), and is characterized by deficiencies in social and communication skills, normal to above normal intelligence, and standard language development.
My son will be four next month, and he is going to see a specialist on March 15th (Why do we have to wait so long?)...
My question is, what can I expect to happen? How do they test for asperger's and autism? How can they tell? Is there going to be needles or bloodwork? I have no idea what they plan on doing to my little guy. He has been evaluated by a program here called 'Help Me Grow'. But they haven't said much, and neither has his doctor. His doctor just said that he wants me to get him in to this specialist. Then, I get ths huge stack of paperwork from the Cleveland Clinic with more that 500 questions to answer about my son. I sent it back, and then they called and gave me an appointment time. But this was in January. They made the appointment for mid-March.
Sorry for rambling on... Can anyone help me?
My question is, what can I expect to happen? How do they test for asperger's and autism? How can they tell? Is there going to be needles or bloodwork? I have no idea what they plan on doing to my little guy. He has been evaluated by a program here called 'Help Me Grow'. But they haven't said much, and neither has his doctor. His doctor just said that he wants me to get him in to this specialist. Then, I get ths huge stack of paperwork from the Cleveland Clinic with more that 500 questions to answer about my son. I sent it back, and then they called and gave me an appointment time. But this was in January. They made the appointment for mid-March.
Sorry for rambling on... Can anyone help me?
The team had a speech therapist, psychologist, physiotherapist, occupational therapist, and developmental pediatrician. They all tested him. This included some blood tests for genetic disorders like fragile X as he showed some characteristics of it. Then the team meets to discuss their findings with eachother and then calls in the family to discuss it with them.
The testing was hard on my son because he was severely hyperactive at the time. His attention span had been clocked them as literally under 1 min. So the psychologist couldn't complete the tests but did enough to gather he had likely mild MR.
Though my son hand flapped, avoided eye contact, high pitched screeched, didn't always play appropriate with toys, etc he was deemed not autistic. Genetic tests showed he didn't have any disorder despite having characteristics of Fragile X(FMR A was done and was negative. The other tests that now exist didn't then so he could still have fragile X)
Family history was also done at an interview. This includes both parents childhood profiles and health profiles of the family. This is to help for finding hereditary or genetic conditions.
The tests that were done were IQ, fine motor and gross motor. The social type testing wasn't really done due to problems with him sitting still. Also if they can have interview letters or insites from teachers or other people outside the parents that is helpful in any diagnosis. ADHD people go through a specific battery(I can't remember the test name right now). It involves parents, teachers, caregivers, and others involved in the childs life filling out the same form ranking things on a scale to give a picture of the child in different circumstances. It wasn't the Conners test but another.
When I had my testing as a child it was simlar to my sons. I did a lot of IQ tests, and ink blot tests. I didn't like the ink blot and I'm sure they saw me as giving them a hard time because I told them all I saw was an ink blot which was the truth.(they saw all sorts of weird stuff in giving me examples and couldn't fathom I wasn't seeing whatever abstract weirdness they were)
As an adult I had the WAIS IIIR, Baron EQ, and a bunch of others for academics. My inter/intra personal skills were in the slow learner and mild mentally handicapped range. My IQ was above average with best scores in the vocabularly and visual tests.(My block tests were better than some children. Usually children score better than adults I was told)
Expect either way to be in where your being tested all day. If it's like my sons sort of testing it can take up to 3 days if they split it up for you. I don't like them making them do it all in one day as it's rough on the child and they act out because of it. The genetic tests can take 3-6 months I think.