Beanie had his autism assessment this week through the Tasmanian Autism Diagnostic Service. He had a 45 minute one-on-one assessment and then I did the parent interview, which lasted about 1.5 hours (the assessor also recently did a phone interview with Beanie's Early Intervention teacher). This morning I went back for the assessment findings.
Over the years I've wavered... is he or isn't he? When things are cruising along and we've got a good routine going he seems fairly typical (although, to be honest, with 2 others in the family on the spectrum and one with ADHD, half the time I'm not sure what typical or normal is!). I was a bit concerned that, with all early intervention, his issues wouldn't be so obvious to the assessor, that his learned behaviours would help him mask it. Of course, I probably should have known that these assessors are very experienced and trained to pick up on all the little things.
Apparently it was rather glaringly obvious that Beanie had issues across all criteria and was given a level 2 for the severity rating; but she said she could see how far he'd come thanks to all the early intervention (and she was quite taken with his 'sweet and endearing' nature). She had lots of good suggestions on which areas to focus further intervention on so I'm looking forward to receiving her full report.
