Misdiagnosis?

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I'm diagnosed with asperger's but I seriously think that I'm somewhere else on the spectrum.
Mainly because I didn't speak until I was 4 years old, and people stress that people with asperger's "have no significant language delay", and I hardly call 2 years insignificant.
I think I may have PDD-NOS. What do you think?
Autism
Asperger's
PDD-NOS
P.S. I brought this up with my mum and she told me that she was told I have autism when I was 4.

My son was diagnosed with pdd-nos at about 2 1/2. When my husband found out, he said, "Hm, maybe I have that, too." because he has a lot of the same issues. But the doctor said that that diagnosis is only for young children who are having developmental delays. At the age of about 8, if my son continues having problems, his diagnosis will be changed to either high functioning autism or Aspergers.

The dr said that they do not diagnose Aspergers until about 8. They will, however, give an autistic dx much earlier. It is a spectrum, though, so perhaps you fall somewhere in between?

My son seems to have a lot more physical delays than the other spectrum kids I have seen.

His language, on the other hand, has always been normal to high according to any lay-person who speaks to him, but the doctor still says that he falls into rote patterns and doesn't have the back and forth conversational element to his speech.

Anyway, I write that to say that I see a lot a variation, just with the other kids in his programs that I have met.

Last edited by laplantain on 21 Apr 2007, 3:28 am, edited 1 time in total.

I didn't really speak until I was four either, but I did start reading at three. Yeah, I'm weird.

You're in Australia, where the diagnostic criteria don't draw a distinction between AS and HFA based on language delay, as they do everywhere else!

I feel better now about myself. Frist of all did you have hearing loss when you were young. That causes a speech delay. I lost my hearing in my infancy and was deaf till I was a year and a half and it left me speech delayed till I was 6. When I was 5 I was very hard to understand and I was only saying single words when I was 2, 3 and 4 but I seemed to play like a normal child after seeing me in the family movies my Dad took of me. I did dress up and pretended to iron my clothes and did imagintive play. I also had friends my age till elementary school when they started to be in a rush to grow up and didn't want me around anymore so I went to the younger kids and played with them.

WHO KNOWS! When I was older, I practically NEVER spoke unless I really had something to say etc... Maybe YOU were the same way. My mother even said I didn't speak until I was like 18 months, although she earlier said 14 months.(I was in the hospital twice, and she didn't remember me talking the first time). That never made sense to me, because she is NEUROTIC! She would have been a nervous wreck if I took that long to say ANYTHING. NOW, she says 9-10 months! I guess I just didn't speak in complex sentences until about 18. My point is that her memory wasn't perfect. The information might have been gone FOREVER if not for PICTURES!

As for lightning88? HOW do you READ without understanding the words? And WHY would anyone believe you were reading? In any event, reading requiers much of the same processing and, if I was a psychiatrist, I would count it in the same way. Kids are exposed to speaking more, it is more obvious what is going on, and it is probably interesting to a baby. It makes sense that babies at least TRY to emulate it. You would think that all able babies would pick it up. As I said earlier you might simply have chosen not to talk.

Steve

Does anyone recall which genius didn't speak until age four, and then in fully-formed sentences?

MAYBE you are talking about einstein. My mother accused me of almost the same thing, though it was about 18 months. NOW she is still saying sentences, but by 9 months. The memory is a funny thing.

Do you really think he acquired the whole ability all at once? When I was younger, I was a PERFECTIONIST, was STUBBORN, etc... Apparantly, Einstein was the same. MAYBE he rehearsed it all MENTALLY. I STILL do this most of the time with words. Maybe he rehearsed the sentences internally before saying them. I still do this much of the time. MAYBE he was stubborn enough to not talk until he got it perfect. That was the original belief, and I find that more believable than he just started talking.

Steve

is there anything other then the Language Delay that makes you think that you are not AS?

sounds like you fall under different DX criteria. A lot of people contest the validity of seperating HFA from As based ONLY on a language Delay.

If it makes you feel better, I have an As son ,and an NT daughter. my Nt daughter was the one with the language delay. She shows a very "few" autistic personality traits, but is definately not AS. To me, this says that Language Delay and ASDs does not always mean a whole lot.

While there is a direct correlation between the sevarity of the autsim and the time a child started speaking when you are talking stats, as in 1000's of people with ASDs, I believe that you always have exceptions. Some aspies I am sure just talk late, like some NT children talk late. Unless other things back up these feelings in you, I would not worry about it.

I would say HFA, if you had a speech delay.

If someone talks late, but reads early, they could be hyperlexic. I think I have some signs of hyperlexia. I spoke at the regular time and also had advanced reading skills, but poor social skills.

I never looked for a specialist to say I am aspie, anyway, when I read Hans Aspergers paper defining the syndrome I became absolutely sure I had so many ressemblances with people he was describing, I was absolutely sure that my idiossincrasies were shared by some other people.
I believe I am very aspie, what facilitates my own recognition of it, if I was only a litle aspie I couldn't, perhaps, not notice it.
So, what I believe is that those who doubts are aspies, or, have only a few aspiecity, or, are not aspies. Other option is to have a very bad image of what is to be aspie, that is not your case.
In order to identify if we are really aspies, probably, the best to do is to read Aspergers article. Do anyone knows where to find it?

Mom claims I said my first word at age of 3 weeks. However I didn't even attempt to try to walk until I was age 2 and mom said I never crawled much either.

I have heard of a baby being diagnosed as Aspie at 6 months old. I know a BUNCH of people who have kids that are like in preschool or kindergarten getting diagnosed. Personally I think its a bad idea to label one so young. With kids its hard to tell anyway. I see people labeled as Aspies that seriously appear to me more to be mentally ret*d or low spectrum autistic. I think there are lots of misdiagnosis going on.

I read somewhere that there are some asperger's sufferers who had language delay.

I myself didn't speak until age 3, and I have it... so don't discount your diagnosis because of one single missing factor.

Either the baby was a GENIUS, or the doctor was an IDIOT! 6 months!?!?!?
Autism is possibly easy, but AS requires SOME kind of ability to communicate, and DOES call for verbal communication. The average baby doesn't even start to try to say words until like 6 months, and that doesn't cut it.

Steve

Sorry - I was a little unclear there. I didn't mean he all at once became able to speak, but rather that he'd been able to for quite a while but just didn't speak until he had something to say !