A Great Definition of PDD-NOS
PDD-NOS stands for Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified and is a real grey area for me as someone who is new to the world of autism spectrum disorders. I don’t read the newspaper in the morning, instead I read blogs. One of the blogs that I regularly read is Ballastexistenz over on the autistics.org website. Yesterday morning she published a great post entitled “What PDD-NOS officially means.” It is an informative post and I wanted to share it with the readers of my blog.
Ava has a diagnosis of autism (also known as autistic disorder) but during one of the meetings with the psychologist who just did Alexander’s testings she told me that she could diagnose Alexander with PDD-NOS. Evidently he fit the criteria for PDD-NOS but she felt that an anxiety diagnosis was more accurate. We are to come back in six months if the issues don’t resolve after we do play therapy and then at that point she may make a PDD-NOS diagnosis. Do I want to hear that? No, not really. However a diagnostic label doesn’t change who my son is. Now that I have a better idea of why a PDD-NOS diagnosis is usually made I am more comfortable with one, should it come to that point.
