PDDNOS

Last week Monday we had Jaylen's appointment with Dr Zinner (the pediatric developement specialist who is an expert on autism and works at the University and Seattle Children's I believe). How did it go? I have mixed feelings. Dr Zinner himself was not an overly friendly person, he seemed to just want to get through the appointment, and didn't really interact with Jaylen a whole lot (although sometimes you have to push Jaylen to get him to interact with you). The appointment itself was not really what I expected. I was expecting questions about Jaylen's behavior, the odd things he says or does, his interaction with others... but it was mostly family history and Jaylen's medical history. Maybe that's because he had enough info from reports from the school and Jaylen's visit with Dr Harle last month, I'm not sure. Dr Zinner explained that in 2012 the diagnostic standards will be changed so that any child with symptoms that fall under the autism/PDD umbrella will be labeled with PDD (Pervasive Developement Disorder) and then the symptoms will be specified. I guess this kind of makes sense, like he said, you can have 10 children with Aspergers in a room, and every one of them will be different with different symptoms. He (and Dr Harle also mentioned this in his report) feels that Jaylen would clearly not have Aspergers, because Jaylen had a speech delay and that automatically disqualifies that diagnosis. Dr Zinner gave Jaylen a "provisional" (meaning it will help him qualify for services for now, although it is not specific) diagnosis of PDD NOS (Pervasive Developement Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified).
So, while we were going to this appointment hoping to get a more definite diagnosis of what it is Jaylen has, we were given a much more general diagnosis. I think the idea behind this is, work on the symptoms since that's all you can do with autism anyhow. Instead of a specific label, give a general label, and zero in on the specific symptoms. I guess this really doesn't change much, after all Jaylen is who Jaylen is, and no label (correct or incorrect) will change him. It just wasn't really what we were expecting!