Expert: James Michael Roan - 12/2/2007

Question
Dear James

I am at a loss and would value hearing your opinion on what I should do next.  Our lovely son Jordan Munro is 4 years and 10 months, he attends a private school Kindergarten.. They have refused him entry into their prep program, saying he requires specialist help.
At 3 years we took him to a specialist as he was suffering bad breath, he picked up that his speech was delayed and found he had glue ear and his hearing was down to about 40%, he made the assumption that he had the hearing loss most of his life, because of continuos ear infections.
The private school kindy insisted there were more problems. We had two evaluations done on Jordan, his Paediatrician said he was developing normally she had seen him for a few hours and the school wanted a psychologist to come in and do an onsite evaluation. The Paediatrician didn’t want the woman the school suggested to come in as she said she has a habit of labelling children with PDD. The paediatrician said he didn’t have signs of this.
The Phycologists said he had mild PDD.
Jordan plays with peers – when at home or at friends homes, they laugh and giggle together (the school screamed at my husband and said he doesn’t play with other kids)
He always plays with other kids, sometimes he can be domineering.
He will go up to all people and is the friendliest confident child.
He does suffer anxiety in terms of impatience etc, both my husband and I suffer from terrible anxiety.
I used to bite my hand as a child.
He will use imagination in play such as pretend to be a police officer etc, its slightly limited – doesn’t make up big stories etc
He gets excited about events such as Christmas and cannot wait for them.
He has never rocked or flapped his hands, but he does have a bit of trouble maintaining eye contact.
He can repeat things sometimes, like Mummy can we do this mummy can we do this, Mummy can we do this. But he gets louder and seems frustrated if he doesn’t get the answer he wants.
He has never lined toys up – but will pretend to fly planes etc, never seems to get overly focused on wheels or anything like that.
He does however get bored by toys easily.
He will come up to me and instigate a conversation, and will ask mummy what happened when your mummy etc etc and then he will ask more questions relevant to the conversation.
He does ask a lot of questions and never has a tantrum.
His naughty behaviour can also be controlled by the naughty room/time out.
He does sometimes stare off into space and ignore me calling him when watching TV and has a short attention span.
We took your test http://en.allexperts.com/q/Autism-1010/son-need-dr.htm
I scored 34, my husband scored 36 and my mum who lives with us 25.
The Phycologist used (Achenbach CBCL’s) the teachers did this and so did we. Our answers were all in the borderline clinical range and the teachers for PDD were in the clinical range above the 97th percentile.
The reports have come back that Jordan is high function low needs and doesn’t require any specialist help, the private school wont take him though.
However as a mother I still have feelings and hope that my child doesn’t have this condition. Not everything adds up to me.
My thoughts are he was deaf for a long time – hence delayed speech which is improving with speech therapy and that he suffers anxiety and can be time consuming and demanding. Your opinion would be greatly appreciated, maybe I am in denial.
 
Cheers
Rachael  

Answer
Hi Rachel;

I will need more information to help. I would need to see the answers to the test(s) you took. Please keep in mind that children with PDD-NOS really stand out when surrounded by peers and so the qualitative part of the assessment should include a detailed observation by a psychologist skilled in this area.

Kind regards,
James