I am asking this question for my sister she wants to know is PDD a form of autism or on the spectrum of autism?? If anyone knows we appreciate it. Thanks.

Autism is one form of PDD. There are several other PDDs, and all PDDs share a commonality of some sort of difficulty with socialization & communication.

But PDD-NOS is on the autism spectrum. Could they make it a little more confusing?

PDD is on the Autism spectrum. At one extreme is severe, classic Kanner's autism, at the other, mild high-functioning autism or Asperger Syndrome. PDD and PDD-NOS are somewhere in the middle.

Hi,

This is always a confusing one. Think of PDD as the "father" of the disorders.
Under him is Autism, Aspergers, PDD-NOS, Childhood disintigrative disorder, and Rett's Syndrome. All of the disorders share similar symptoms, but the most commonly diagnosed are autism and PDD-NOS (which is usually made because the child doesn't fit neatly into any one of the diagnoses).

But, to add to the confusion, a doctor will sometimes label a child "PDD" because he or she doesn't exactly know where the child fits, maybe because of a young age, or to make it sound like a milder label.

Hope that helps a little.

nakama3

I was once told that PDD which stands for Pervasive Developmental Disorder is the Umbrella term for all the varying degrees of the spectrum.

As the last posters mentioned, there's HFA, AS, PDD-NOS, Classic Autism(Kanner) and Retts. It depends on how the child presents which catagory they fall in under the "umbrella".

my son has Pervasive Developmental Disorder he is 14. it is a form of autism. A high functioning autism. If I didnt tell you my son had it unless you spent alot of time around him you would never know it! I think he was labeled with it because he didnt wute fit in other categories but they could tell there was something there.

I'd love to hear what your son is like at 14. My son is almost 4 and was dx PDD/NOS at 27 mos. In his case most people can't tell. He's a bit quirky, but has full language. He doesn't always answer questions when asked with the correct answer, but even this skill is coming. I have high hopes for him.

I'd love to hear about how your son presents today if you care to share it. I'm always looking to the future and how my son may present as he gets older.

Thanks

My daughter was just diagnosed this summer with PDD, NOS. They tell me this is an autistic spectrum disorder. They consider her High Functioning.
You probably would not know she has this disorder to look at her, but you would notice she has some odd behaviors and tantrums easily. My daughter also has some anxieties (loud noises, bugs, new environments, changes in routine, etc).
She is progressing in school with the rest of her peer group. She does have an IEP and has a TSS with her at school. The only class she has seperate from the rest of her class is math because she seems to having a learning disability with math. She can't seem to retain formulas to solve the problems and is very easily frustrated by it.
She is a wonderful reader and speller though.
These kids have their good days and their bad. I can remember not getting enough sleep when my daughter was a toddler. She had a lot of fears like the dark, noises, and things under her bed. It took a long time to get her settled at night and she had night wakings for a long time. But, she did eventually outgrow it.
Living with one of these kids is an adventure and a hoot! You never know what they may say or how they are seeing or comprehending something. They give you a whole new perspective on the world.
God bless.

Thank you for sharing about your daughter. My son appears sounds like he may be similar down the road. He is three and is now saying so much but is very literal about things. He gets very upset if someone says something like hey little dude; he will say in return I'm not little dude I'm Jeffrey.

He is also the king of embarassing moments in public with the things he says and does. It's funny right now and fortunately he looks as young as he appears. He's almost 4 but seems and looks 2 1/2.

We were at Payless Shoes getting some back to school shoes for my daughter and the woman who worked there was measuring my daughter's foot. She was down on her knees bending down a bit. She had on a V-neck shirt which came forward while she was bending down. She was very gifted if you know what I mean. My son spotted her tattoo on her breast and reached down her shirt and said are those Cherries?

I didn't see the tattoo and I almost died of embarassment but it was extremely funny.

He also pointed out to every one in a busy Walmart line that the cashier was missing her front tooth by saying hey your'e missing your tooth, did the tooth fairy come? Fortuneately she thought it was funny.

He also will say things to dark skinned people for example when we go to Occupational Therapy there are alot of different races but he will always say don't talk to me brown boy/girl. It's embarassing and we've talked about how people have differences of all kinds I'm just waiting for the understanding to kick in.

I never know what he's going to say.... He just says it like he thinks, it's cute and funny at times but as he gets older I'm sure it won't come across that way. We are now doing some social stories with him about various social setting.

He definately keeps me on my toes. I love him to death and everything he does for the first time is so appreciated and rewarding since we didn't know whether he would ever develop as much as he has. There is a lot to be said for Early Intervention.

Thanks for reading this.

My son didnt really begin speaking until he was close to 5. He had two and three word sentences but he did alot of pointing. once he was diagnosed the schools could better understand where he was coming from so with the information i received from the center that diagnosed him they started teaching him in ways that suited him.
At 14 alomost 15 he can read...i was told that was something he probably wouldnt ever do...he reads at the same level as his peers however he cannot say the alphabet. He has three reading classes at school this is is trouble area. He is a whiz in math, and science as long as its hands on. Only real problems in school is he is very slow to answer a question. His brain seems to have to process it before he can answer it. If you ask him whats his favorite food..he has to go thru the process of thinkng about all the foods he knows then saying what his favorite is. He has been known to answer a queston a day later lol. He is very quirky on time also. He has to state the exact time not rounded off at all.
He is senstitive and his feelngs can be hurt very easily. He takes ta kwan do an this has helped his self esteem alot!! He rarely gets into trouble. I was told he might regress during puberty but so far he is where he shold be for his age.
One thing to remember..you should not treat them any different then a normal child. I was babying him, answering is questions for him etc., well all i was doing was delaying his learning. It took an outsider to point it out to me and once i stopped my son started developing pretty quick. It also took a mistake at school for us to figure out he was also playing us lol He is in resource classes (special education), a couple years back they messed up his schedule and one of his classes was a normal class...he did great in it, I told his teachers we needed to start pushing him harder in school to see what he really could do so they did and he came really close to making honor roll last year. When he was in his early years of school he could not take the pressure of timed tests so they slowly worked hm up to now he is ok with them.
Jake is really smart in most ways but he still doesnt have attachments to people. I could probably disappear and he would just go on with his day. Thats the sad part but we are giving him the tools now to hopefully be able to live on his own eventually.
Each child is different and i really advise people to push them to learn with alot of patence of course not shelter them as i did.

My strong areas were reading, spelling, and languages. I was okay at math, but my real strength was in anything involving a lot of reading and study. I am also interested in a lot of different things. I regard my main strength to be in the areas of general knowledge and information gathering, and my main weakness to be in the social areas of life.