Brooklynn's Developmental Evaluation Results

2 weeks ago Brooklynn met with the Autism Spectrum Disorder Team (which included a psychologist, a speech pathologist, and an occupational therapist - the developmental psychologist was not available at our appointment). Yesterday, I went in to meet with the team to see our results for the developmental and their evaluation on whether Brooklynn fit into the Autism Spectrum. It was a good meeting, lasted about 1 hour. We have been through a lot of this before (between the school district and other evaluations) so I was pretty confident that I knew what to expect.

First things first - I was very excited to see that they did not feel like she fit into the autism spectrum disorder category. They felt like on paper, she could have behaviors that look like she might fit, but when you meet her and she warms up to you, she does not display the characteristics of autism. She does too much eye contact, responds to your voice, attempts to get your attention, etc. They did state, however, that they feel like a big problem of hers is anxiety. She does not feel comfortable in new situations or with new people (as most kids don't), but hers is to the a higher extent since it is affecting her ability to interact with kids her age, and makes her shut down. On the Autism Coding system they use, which she showed no evidence of autism spectrum.

A big barrier to her is her speech. They evaluated multiple levels of speech, including her receptive (what she understands) and her expressive (what she says) language. Standard scores between 85-115 are normal. Brooklynn's score was 69 (ranking in 2%). Subset scores (they are combined to equal the standard score) range between 7-13 for normal. Her sentence structure was 8 (25%), word structure 2 (0.4%), and expressive vocabulary was 4 (2%) She had trouble answer questions and responding to things, which is below her age level. Her articulation score was also low at 68, ranking in 8%, making her raw score 54%. So all these numbers mean that she has a moderate to severe articulation disorder as well as a moderate receptive and expressive disorder. This is much different than when we tested her at Children's the first time, where it was only a mild. They felt it was due to the fact that at this age kids are learning at such a fast pace for language, and she was already slightly behind, so she is still working on her other skills, and therefore has just fallen behind her peers due to her inability to catch up at this time. Again, with speech therapy, hopefully she will get up to her peers.

Her "IQ" score was on the lower side of normal. She had things that she was variant on, ranging from impaired/intellectual disability to average. Her adaptive behavior scale was used to assess her functional skills. Her scores were on the borderline range. She was found to generally be functioning on a young 2 year old level. They told me that sometimes, they see these types of test results on children can potentially have more learning disabilities.

Occupational Therapy looked at her, and felt that she definitely shows some impairments in her skills. Her gross motor skills are at 87 score (30 month developmental age); fine motor is 57 score (24 month developmental age), and her self-help skills are 22 (18 months of age. She felt like she demonstrated deficits mostly in skills that required accuracy (she would start to tremble when she needed to use her fine motor skills), as well as visual motor skills, and they would recommend possibly getting occupational therapy involved at some point in her school, or even at Children's Mercy during the summer.

So overall, we have some new diagnosis-
1. Adjustment Disorder with Anxious mood - this could be the start of her symptoms for an underlying anxiety disorder, which will have to monitor her for, or she might outgrow as her language skills improve.
2. Receptive and Expressive Language disorder
3. Articulation Disorder
4. Functioning in the Delayed Range

So overall, it definitely makes me feel better that she is not autistic. I do struggle with the fact, though, that now we have this new diagnosis that there is not this huge support system for. I don't hear about anxiety disorders in young children very often. I hear about parents who have autistic kids, and there is a huge network of parents and resources out there for them. I feel some days that I am swimming alone in this large see of a child with special needs. I don't feel like we fit into any one category. I know that most kids don't, and I don't want to group her in, but it would be nice if I could find a network of parents who had similar situations. And I feel like I am alone in this adventure. I know there are lots of people out there who are dealing with different struggles with their children. Right now, Brooklynn is getting all the help she needs for her struggles that she is facing. But I feel like sometimes I am not getting help to get over my own personal hurdle of fear of the unknown. I will clear it one day, I just am not sure when.