It has been a while since I last posted... My son keeps me very busy. Anyhow I was wondering what others thought about my sons condition. He was dx last may with autism but a lot of the symptoms have gone away. He still does not speak although he will on a rare occassion say go or car but most of the time it is constant babble although he will look at you while he is babbling as though he thinks he is actually saying something to you, so I will pretend back and say stuff like" oh really, and then what happened" and he will keep babbling away with all kinds of sounds of words but none are english.... he has great eye contact now and he doesn't line things up anymore. He plays with toys the right way and loves people especially little kids his age. He will 50% of the time listen to what you tell him to do, he responds to his name now. He flapped his hands last about a year ago, and the same with holding his ears. He hasn't done that in a year either. He loves to hug his teddy bear and get comfy under a blanket and watch movies although he can be a booger when he keeps making me change movies till I find the one he wants to watch. When he gets upset about something and cries he will take a tissue and dab at his eyes as if to say look I am sad. I feel like he is more developmentally delayed more then anything now at this point especially where speech is concerned. He has not been in any solid therapy for over 3 months now and even that was only 3 half hour sessions a week of ST, OT, and BT, that lasted only 7 months. I did not find out what ABA was till a month before he turned three and by then it was too late to really get it for him because here in Florida Early Intervention stops helping you at age 3. I was able to squeeze 9 sessions of aba in just before his birthday due to a lot of hard work and coercing over numerous phone calls. They said he got the hang of it very quickly. But there has been nothing since then. Still waiting for the school board to move their extraordinarily slow process of getting him into a special class. Some of the bad things still though are he will bang his head when he is angry. But only once and not too hard. He still does not seem to grasp others emotions except perhaps laughing. He stilll goes around the house terrozing everything from the fridge to the toilet. We just installed locks on the bathrooms so that he could not put any more items down the toilet after our last plumber told us we would have to purchase and install a whole new toilet because the toy was stuck good behind some trap mechanism... He opens the fridge and dumps eggs and squeezes out mustard and catsup all over the white carpet, (Stanley Steemer is coming again tommorrow). If you try to discipline him in any way he cries like you have truly broken his heart. Even a pat on the wrist and he will cry and hold his wrist up to me to kiss and hug him and tell him I'm sorry....ohhh what do you do?? So I am unsure now if he is really autistic or just slow. I don't know. Just wondering others thoughts and opinions on this mini novel. Lol. Thank You

I think a misdiagnosis is probably unlikely. Doctors will not give a diagnosis of autistic unless your child fits the criteria. If anything I think they will say your child is fine before they would say autism. Why don't you start an ABA program out of your home? That makes me worry that he is not having Any therapy. The clock is ticking. I think you should have him in speech therapy and ABA especially since when he had ABA they said he did great.

I was not given any financial aid, but I knew that I could not let that stop me from helping my son. I would not spend my time worrying about whether my son has autism. The only thing that matters is getting him help. Try to spend as much time as you can teaching him until you can get help.

Some autistic individuals seem to be able learn some coping skills that make them appear less autistic. I've seen it happen in my son who is now 19. At times we have questioned whether the diagnosis was correct but we still see the social delays and communication delays. They just don't seem as severe at times.