Hi there IM's, I'm in desperate need of some advice.
I will try my hardest to keep this short.
A few years ago we went to see our doctor in regards to our Son.
He had a difficult time reaching milestones and his behavior was very different to other children his age (5). It took all my strength to go to the doctor and ask his opinion as I actually felt sad and guilty that I could assume something wasnt quite right. In turn he basically told me that he was just a "boy" and to stop being so ridiculous. This fueled my guilt, I felt awful. So fast forward and he is now 8 going on 9 soon. Last year his teacher pulled me aside and confirmed my suspicion. I was so thankful she had approached me about this as i knew it wouldnt had been easy for her that I nearly broke down. So since then he has seen the school psychiatrist and his school is doing everything they can to support him. However we've come to a brick wall. We need a diagnoses but no one will see him. I was told today that our pediatrics won't see him and neither will our local mental health center. Why, I don't know. Apparently we need more information on his case but how on earth can we do this? His (new) doctor has referred him and so too has his psychiatrist. I feel let down. I can't go to a learning disabilities center for advice because we don't know if it is learning disabilities and I can't go to an autism support center because we don't know if its autism or similar. I don't know where to go or what to do or where to get support. I'm lost.
My Son is here, he is beautiful, kind and gentle.
He gets bullied at school because he may seem different at times, this has led to him having anxiety before school. His IQ is above superior intelligence and then below in other areas which has put him in a normal IQ range because of the scoring system which means his school gets no funding. Where can we go to get advice/support. It hasn't been easy, both my partner and I have had to learn new ways of parenting because he so often finds himself in the wrong, always unintentionally. how you can you discipline a child who forgets, can't retain information or to put simply has no common sense. Also they have ruled out ADD or ADHD.
He does get hyper but he lacks social skills amongst other things. He truly is the sweetest boy you'll ever meet.
He needs help and so do we. Please, please share your advice, experience, where to go places or even how you managed. Thank you
8 Replies
OK avoid the centers that diagnose specific conditions. Find a private pediatrician in a private medical centre. Look them up in the yellow pages. Developmental pediatricians are best, but any one would do in a pinch, you only need a referral from a GP.
I've never heard of not having enough information to get an appointment, I work in the disability industry, so I would think you have been referred to specific diagnostic unit.
I would also start the ball rolling on a speech therapist as they are awesome at nutting out issues around not retaining information etc.
What you are describing sounds a lot like high functioning autism so it might be worth going through the autism diagnosis if nothing else but to rule it out.
Thank you for this. He actually starts speech therapy in the next month. We have never heard of a developmental pediatrician so we will onto this tomorrow. Thank you again.
I had the same thing when trying to find out what learning difficulties my daughter had she was 3 at the time. I ended up resulting in getting my GP to refere us to a developmental peadtrician. She assessed everything from IQ, hand eye coordination to physical exam. They tested for things like add, ADHD, autism, and a number of other learning difficulties. The peadtrician narrowed it down to specific therapist we needed to take her to get further testing. Which we did and ended up with a diagnosis. But I would be still at square one if my GP didn't recommend sending her to the peadtrician in the first place, but be warned the public system wait list is HUGE and it is deff worth while spending the extra dollars and going private if you can afford it.
Thank you for your advice. We have only just heard of developmental pediatricians from your and another posters reply. We will be onto this first thing tomorrow. Thank you again, this really helped :)
Your son sounds identical to mine. We saw numerous different specialists who couldn't give us a specific diagnosis because he didn't fit exactly into any one condition. He has some traits of autism but it has been completely ruled out. They also thought he might have the other form of ADHD where they are off with the fairies and don't take things in, rather than the hyper-active form, but that was because the symptoms are similar to that of what he ended up having. Luckily his year 1 teacher spoke to us about it so we got onto it earlier, because it has been an extremely long process. Turns out his only problem is very poor working memory and processing speed, which makes following more than 1 instruction at a time and learning new things very difficult, while he is still very intelligent. Our school referred him to the effective reading centre in manly, Sydney and they were amazing. He was tested by 2 different learning specialists, a psychologist and a speech pathologist all at once who confer togther. They make recommendations and set up a year long program with their school where they receive a half hour session of one-on-one teaching 4 days a week, as well as there being constant video conferences with the centre. They do have a bit of a waiting list but, so I would talk to your son's school as soon as possible if you are in nsw and see if you can get a referral.
My son was diagnosed through his psychologist. You don't need a referral to a psychologist. However if you want to claim the rebate all you need is a mental health plan from your gp. Tell them he is experiencing anxiety and you want to see a psychologist. The health plan will give you 10 visits per calendar year for the Medicare rebate for a psychologist. This is how we first started our journey. My son was diagnosed with generalised anxiety at first and spent a year working with his psychologist. Once the anxiety was under control we noticed other behaviours and asked for an asd assessment. He was diagnosed with Aspergers which now comes under autism spectrum disorder. We saw a paediatrician once early on. Who told us our son only had anxiety, we attribute everything to our psychologist. Good luck. Keep fighting.
My son was diagnosed through his psychologist. You don't need a referral to a psychologist. However if you want to claim the rebate all you need is a mental health plan from your gp. Tell them he is experiencing anxiety and you want to see a psychologist. The health plan will give you 10 visits per calendar year for the Medicare rebate for a psychologist. This is how we first started our journey. My son was diagnosed with generalised anxiety at first and spent a year working with his psychologist. Once the anxiety was under control we noticed other behaviours and asked for an asd assessment. He was diagnosed with Aspergers which now comes under autism spectrum disorder. We saw a paediatrician once early on. Who told us our son only had anxiety, we attribute everything to our psychologist. Good luck. Keep fighting.
My son was diagnosed through his psychologist. You don't need a referral to a psychologist. However if you want to claim the rebate all you need is a mental health plan from your gp. Tell them he is experiencing anxiety and you want to see a psychologist. The health plan will give you 10 visits per calendar year for the Medicare rebate for a psychologist. This is how we first started our journey. My son was diagnosed with generalised anxiety at first and spent a year working with his psychologist. Once the anxiety was under control we noticed other behaviours and asked for an asd assessment. He was diagnosed with Aspergers which now comes under autism spectrum disorder. We saw a paediatrician once early on. Who told us our son only had anxiety, we attribute everything to our psychologist. Good luck. Keep fighting.