Thanks for your help. I'm getting a lot of things to bring up at tomorrow's appointment.
Their reason for ruling it out is that they are capable of engaging him and getting eye contact. They just don't "see" autism.
Autism was intially brought up by a counselor I had taken easy child 1 to for some minor issues. difficult child 2 was there and she wasn't "geared" towards kids, so he was quickly in his own world, doing the video thing, and bouncing around the room. She asked if we could talk about him for a bit before we got on with easy child 1's session, and turns out, she was the coordinator for the early education intervention program in her county (not the county we live in). She said he looks and acts just like the Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) kids she works with. So that's how we even found the devped we're working with. She didn't actually refer, because she really couldn't, difficult child wasn't her patient or in her county, etc, but she gave us the name and we got ourselves in.
The dev pediatrician's autism evaluation was the longest and it was maybe an hour, at most, spent with one person, and again, this was when he was almost 4, I think. (we requested the autism evaluation when he was just 2). He'd been going to the early intervention preschool for 3 or 4 months by the time of the evaluation. He had started to interact with other kids (on his terms, but it was interaction) by this time, and he had some eye contact by this time, but from MWM and other parents of autistic kids, and his BT and Occupational Therapist (OT) (who see/saw autistic traits), we had some ideas on how to work on some things - we had worked intensly on eye contact. Getting down on his level, taking his face in my hand and pointing it towards me, pointing to my face with the other hand, saying "Look at my face. I happy face has a smile, does this face have a smile? Does this face look happy?" and pointing out faces/emotions on other people. The "emoticon's" on this website were key in that - he saw them one day and could pick out features of emotions from them, so we started working with the "smileys". He had to learn that. So did his brother and his bio dad.
And we had read the Explosive Child by then and I was the one to implement it in our home. And when we did that was when he "attached" to me. My mom, my ex-mother in law, and I beleive the attachment is less an emotional mother/son bond than an attachment to someone that he could, for once, could somewhat understand. At age 6, he is now overly attached, but again, it seems less an emotional attachment than a "functional" attachment. If that makes sense.
The neuropsyche testing came later, was ordered by devped to "rule out" autism. It was scheduled to have lasted 6-8 hours, but they stopped at just under 4 because they couldn't keep up with him. He became obsessed with worry about me not being in the room and anxious and started hopping on/over/under the tables and chairs. It was conducted by young, attractive female college students (a class of people he is attracted to). Put a middle aged man in there (especially who speaks broken English - anyone who he's not attracted to) and he'd be under the chairs for the duration.
If there's something that catches or keeps his interest, he'll not always do what you saw in the video, and its getting less as time goes on, but its still prevalent in his day-to-day existence with us. He's getting to where he will sit for some time watching tv without doing it, but its interjected here and there, still. At the early intervention preschool, when they were prepping him for the regular kindergarten class, prior to our decision to send him to Montessori, his teacher made cues to help him stop the hand action - the video behavior was very prevalent there, too.
Like I said, even Lego's, which he LOVES, and he will absolutely lose himself in, will have to "take flight" every few minutes. And he generally makes his noises when he's playing Lego's, too. But in Dr's offices, etc, he can "maintain" long enough that he doesn't get into this for them to see. He saw an Occupational Therapist (OT) every week for 2 years and it wasn't until 6 months into it that she saw the physical aggression, and we had to leave because he was physically hurting her (and she was pregnant). The behavior therapist has seen it, but it was under similar circumstances. She'd seen him weekly or bi-weekly for a year or longer before he attacked her and we had to leave.
They have just enough toys and "stuff" going on that he can maintain for that hour or so, but stick him his seat in the car and the flying hands are almost instant. Stick him in his seat in the car when he wants something and he'll lean forward and fling himself backwards into the seat so hard he's left marks on his head. Put him in a situation with a doctor (or anyone, really) he doesn't like the looks of and he'll crawl under the chairs, curl up in a ball, and make noise til they either leave or enuf time passes that he can work thru it (with his dentist, it took over an hour and half). His dentist treats a lot of special needs kids and she told her staff to treat him as an autist. One of the assistants, after the hour and a half, actually made a tent and got under the chairs with him to start the exam, then was able to work him into the big chair (with periods of running under the other chairs intertwined).
Sorry, I'm rambling...Hope that answered your question...that's the only answer they've given me.