A lot of information....

I know I just posted a lot of information and if you don't care to read it all that is fine. I felt it necessary to try to at least post the basics on both autism and Asperger's syndrome as they are closely related and confused all the time. MANY children are misdiagnosed or have their diagnoses changed over time again and again. The reason for this is because all of these syndromes and disorders all fall under the BIG umbrella of "autistic spectrum disorders".

SO a child, like my Noah, can and usually will have many characteristics of many of the disorders on the spectrum. This makes it extremely hard to just label them with one specific thing. Noah's doctor told us (and I believe her) that he has symptoms of about 10 different things. However, it all falls back into autistic spectrum disorder as it covers the entire range of the spectrum and characteristics, even though he would officially be classified as having autism.

While he is officially classified as having autism, he has also displayed characteristics of Asperger's syndrome (except for the fact that he had no language till about 3 which means this would normally be ruled out), PDD, and PDD-NOS. BUT it still all comes back to autism. Some say he has Asperger's syndrome but if the "qualifying factor" means he needed to be talking when he was not...then he would not have it. However, other than the language part he has had ALL the other symptoms of Asperger's syndrome.

I know it can be so confusing. AND our local school district won't even recognize the term "autistic spectrum disorder" as THE OFFICIAL DIAGNOSIS for a child. They want to break it down further and know which exact part your child fits into. SO when our physician notified the school that Noah has autistic spectrum disorder she said they would question that and want to know WHAT part of the spectrum he was on. She felt saying autistic spectrum disorder was more appropriate as there are so many characteristics involved. However, he officially was diagnosed with infantile autsim (not recovered obviously), sensory integration disorder (not recovered obviously), speech language delay (both receptive and expressive), hypotonia (low muscle tone) with some motor skill delays that Noah has recovered from, hyperflexible joints, and generalized anxiety disorder.

So anyway...there you have it. The basics...but not always so easy to understand I guess. I have come across many definitions for autism but the fact that it is so complex I think is why the definitions end up becoming complex even if they started out sounding simple.