If you printed out the results, it would be worth taking the printout to the doctor. Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) is Pervasive developmental disorder and is an umbrella which includes autism and Asperger's. This is not necessarily bad news - those with Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) think and learn a different way, that's all. But this often means they need to be handled a different way and taught a different way. They may have problems but they also have gifts. even if your Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) child is not the sharpest tool in the shed (and a lot of them are), you have a person who is likely to be intensely loyal, loving, basically more honest than most (other than "I didn't do it" kind of lies) and generally law-abiding. Often they have areas of capability beyond other people's, although it can be in something seemingly useless, like lining up toy cares in a row. Mind you, especially if you have one obsessed with numbers and letters (hyperlexia) you have a potentially brilliant librarian!
ON the cognition front, Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) kids are very difficult to assess. difficult child 3 "failed" his first psychometric assessment. So did difficult child 1. I was told, with both of them, that they are "retarded" (a term no longer used). At a later stage (not a lot later, with difficult child 1) further assessment showed IQ so high in some areas that it couldn't be assessed. Both have since scored between 120 & 145. The trouble with IQ testing is, it was never designed to accurately pinpoint the capability of someone way outside the norm. The further your child is from the original test group, the more ulikely the test is to have given useful or meaningful results.
So don't sweat the low numbers, but use them to your child's advantage. Don't look at the fial number if the subscores show wide discrepancies.
Looking at Braxton's language area, for example, they said his receptive language was a SD lower than his expressive. This sounds like pure nonsense - how on earth can a child SAY more than he KNOWS? I'm not saying they scored him wrong, but for Braxton to have got a score like that should have set up a big red flag for a more detailed Speech pathology assessment, with aview to identifying the problem.
Language isn't just about speech (or shouldn't be), it's about what words the child understands. It's about communication. A child we knew well, former neighbour, was not quite three years old and bilingual, Spanish-English. The child was in a drowning accident and brain-injured, he lost his English. He also lost his ability to speak and as far as we know, has never regained it. But if you said to him in Spanish, "Touch your nose", then the only thing stopping him was physical inability. If you said to him in Spanish, "Your father looks silly when he crosses his eyes and pokes out his tongue," the boy would laugh while looking at his father. Good receptive language, good sense of humour, interacting well. But difficult child 3, at the same age, was very different. You could say to him, "Your father looks silly when he crosses his eyes and pokes out his tongue and difficult child 3 might look at him calmly and say, "Yes." But not laugh, because he didn't 'get' the humour of the situation.
difficult child 3 had good expressive language but poor receptive language, if you counted the movie scripts he could recite from memory. But did he have understanding?
Technically, the testing should distinguish between the echolalia (repeating strings of sounds which may or may not happen to be words heard either recently or some time earlier) and language with comprehension. But often it doesn't. Because often, the tsts applied are not designed to assess kids with problems. They're designed to scale "normal" kids.
Go back in your own memory, to the time Braxton was tested. What can you remember about the way he spoke? I do wonder how much he was simply repeating what he heard, perhaps singing along to the radio (and again, without the radio, like your own portable tape recorder). "Light's on but nobody's home" kind of thing (it's OK, they do get better - this is the way a Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) kid practices concepts like speech and language).
Now, I haven't gone to much trouble with looking at the rest of the test because, frankly, applying a psychometric test like this to a kid whose receptive language scores are so low, is pointless. The kid will score badly across the board, BECAUSE HE DIDN'T UNDERSTAND THE QUESTIONS well enough.
I saw this happen, with both my boys. I was present for the assessment on difficult child 3, but difficult child 1 was tested without my knowledge or permission. He was extremely anxious, knew somehow he was in trouble and felt like a criminal, because his teacher was mishandling the situation. The school counsellor had been called in but wouldn't speak to me until our appointment (made for me by the school). It was only at that appointment that I was given the news that he had failed his IQ test (because he was too anxious to complete it, it turned out). I got sandbagged thoroughly, which I strongly believe was the aim of the school counsellor and the teacher. I later got on better with them, but at the time they felt they needed to teach me a lesson. Long story, not appropriate here. But watch for that phenomoneon; teachers, school counsellors, psychologists are human too. Often the first case they try to make with achild like this, is that you are neglecting your child. How could you have fialed to notice that there is a problem? What they don't often accept, is that WE have been trying to tell people there is a problem, but we keep getting told to stop fussing. If we keep fussing, then we're over-anxious pressure-cooking parents. If we do what we're told and back off, we're neglectful and complacent. And the child risks getting lost in the blame game.
OK, I was curious, I did go back and have a longer look at the other tests. They describe his cognition subtests as being unsual in pattern - again, worthy of further examination. "Something curious here" in a child who is clearly under-performing; so go find out! (I address this to the tester). But the testing as a whole - a classic example of precise, but inaccurate. They measured him in great detail, but what they measured is meaningless, considering he probably wasn't fully understanding what they said to him. "Draw a line here" with a poor result, COULD mean he doesn't know how to draw a line, or it could mean he hasn't got the physical skill to draw a line, or it could mean he didn't understand the instruction. Or he could have a hearing problem (do make sure it's been checked) which is a common cause of language delay. A kid shouldn't be classified as "slow" if he didn't hear the instruction in the first place!
The first adjective of the report is where you've been snookered - they describe him as "sociable". This stops people considering Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD), because too many people view autism as the kid being socially withdrawn, not making eye contact, sitting in a corner banging his head on the wall.
That is te old, classic view and again, it is a narrow concept no longer widely applicable.
difficult child 1 was withdrawn, to be sure. But he had friends at school that he played with, he made eye contact with us his family, he was fine until you made him the centre of attention (such as sining Happy Birthday to him). Then he would curl up in a ball on te floor and not come out until all chance of being looked at was gone. It could take hours.
difficult child 3 - none of that. Never shy, socially outgoing, but would have gone home with a total stranger. He didn't distinguish between family, and strangers. He loved everybody. He still does - he knows who we are now (it took until he was about 3 or 4) but will talk about intimate detailed stuff with a person he's just walked up to and introduced himself to.
I told difficult child 3 to not talk to strangers. Some new people were staying in a house up the street and we really were worried about them - loud parties, bottles msashed inthe street, vandalism, swearing at people as they walked past - they were not nice people. I knew better than to tell difficult child 3 that they were not nice people because he would have told them what I said and it would have caused more trouble, so I just said, "They are strangers; stay away." But as he rode his bike past, he introduced himself. They exchanged names. Therefore they are now no longer strangers (mods - we need an icon for smacking your forehead in exasperation).
What I'm trying to say here - a kid can be socially outgoing, but still inappropriate with it. Autism is about being inappropriate, rather than merely withdrawn. Being withdrawn is ONE way of being socially inept. Talking incessantly to every person you meet, is another way.
I do think it would be good to get another assessment done. If you can, get copies of the subscores of the original tests. If tey won't let you have them, then make an appointment with another neuropsychologist and get copies of the original subscores faxed to the new person. It really helps to have the older data, to see the pattern.
YOu can use the pattern of the subscores to pinpoint areas to work on. For example, the poor receptive language - you can actively work to biuld his receptive vocabulary. I found the way for difficult child 3 was to put it in writing. That's what really worked - for him. Every kid is different. But chances are, what will work is a multi-pronged approach, where he experiences the word, he hears the word, he sees the word and sees it in context so he gets a 'feel' for its meaning, all at once. it requires formal teaching of this, you have to do it (it's cheaper) but if he is brighter than they tested him as (and I think it's highly likely) then he will learn new words FAST.
Meanwhile, let him watch movies on DVD with subtitles on. Make sure they're only in English - one language to begin with is probably all he can handle. Let him control the action - when they continually rewind/replay the same bit over and over, you should let them. It's rehearsal. In his own mind, it makes sense. If you try to control it, you will trigger a rage.
Read "Explosive Child". It will help you cope now. Because of the language issues it could take a little longer and a lot more patience, but there are other factors in his own make-up that will step in to compensate.
There is hope. There is help. And there can be really good news. If only you could meet my boys, and see where they've come from, you would rejoice.
Marg
