Sorry for the silence last few days--we were on vacation (more on that later). It occurs to me that this is probably a good time to clarify my stance on the dreaded "A" word. It's been a psychic and semantic battle since day one (in our case, the first day that word was uttered to us, as parents, about our son). But to be clear: Isaac's diagnosis is actually the apparently milder, but spectacularly undescriptive "PDD-NOS," which stands for "Pervasive Developmental Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified." I'll let you look it up but basically it is used for kids who don't meet the full criteria for autism but exhibit some of its features. But, to confuse things further, PDD-NOS is considered to be "on the autism spectrum," which opens up a whole host of issues, questions, decisions.
Some reject the notion of a spectrum and say that autism is binary: it should only be diagnosed using the DSM-IV, and kids who don't meet the criteria don't have autism. Under that scenario, people tend to describe the symptoms (speech delay, sensory integration difficulty, etc.) but not ascribe them to a broader category or syndrome. Others accept the notion of "spectrum," however broad and ungainly. Our point of view has been to accept the label inasmuch as it gets us services, with the understanding that it is entirely provisional--not predictive of the future--as Jesse says in his post below ("What I Wish We'd Done"), not prophecy.
This is an intensely personal decision, and not one to enter into lightly. I can't tell you what you should do, but wanted at least to lay out how we've been thinking about it. I'd love your comments.
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