If you have a child with add, adhd or a spectrum disorder....or other disorders....

[vintagegyrl]

We called the Behavioral Health at Children's Hosp. it is like 4 mos. for an appt. but worth it. We got most services covered so check for that through your county.

DS (now 8) was diagnosed with some SID/ODD at age 5, then more ADD at age 7 which is what I have as well.

Diagnosis was by a child psychologist trained to recognize/diagnose childhood behavior disorders, including autism which is what they screened for first (even though we knew it was not that).

Testing took 3 hours, then another hour to come in for the diagnosis. I loved reading the report because my DS is extremely advanced in some areas, and they also identified trouble areas to work on or where he might need help.

We were never recommended medication but behavior modification. this is working, along with some tough parenting and diet modification. It's not easy mama!

[mcpforever]

neuropsychologist-a few months from start to finish

[ccepp20]

My oldest son (8 yo) was diagnosed with PDD-NOS when he was 5 when we had him tested for an independent school for gifted kids. We knew something was up long before that but needed an official diagnosis to get services when he eventually went to public school. He sees a child psychologist who specializes in spectrum disorders.

[mommyfrog]

Oldest dd has ADD and was diagnosed by her pediatrician at 7. Oldest ds also has ADD, but with his other issues we didn't really see it until he was diagnosed at 12 by a psychiatrist. Then it was like a "oh, duh" moment. He had/has so many other mental and/or behavioral things going on we weren't even seeing it.

[Suzi]

Developmental pediatrician at age 3 years. Before that we saw a pediatrician and a pediatric neurologist.

My son is classically autistic. He is now 6

[jac1976]

My DS (dx PDD-NOS) was diagnosed by a team of doctors and therapists after an evaluation that lasted half a day. I believe the team consisted of a developmental ped, a NP, a ST, an OT, a PT and a few others. The hospital had a wait list of 18-24 months to get evaluated. We were seen after only waiting 7 months because I asked to be notified of any cancellations and I have an awesome peds office and insurance who managed to get all of the referrals in place with less than 24 hours notice.

[MrsCrafty]

DS was DX by his Developmental Pediatrician, it was about a 2 year process. He didn't want to DX until he was 5 y/o, and then it was a rush to get a plan in order before hestarted school.

[CherryPie]

My son has the inattentive-only subtype of ADHD. I'm a master's level social worker so I was able to unofficially "dx" it so I just went to the regular ped when we decided to give meds a try. He was 7.5.

[mom1mg]

Um nearly 8 years.

My son has complex health issues though so they treated those before "finding" the pdd-nos. The actual pdd-nos diagnosis took about 1 year on the waitlist and then one day at the autism department of our local Children's hospital. It would have been sooner (maybe) but they had to sort out his health stuff first because they didn't know if the pdd-nos symptoms were from being sick or from something else - namely the autism.

[Sigrid]

We waited 6 months to get referred to the specialists at the Children's hospital for assessment when I asked our family dr. for the referral. The wait could have been up to a year, but we also were lucky with a cancellation. From there he attended a 2 weeks nursery school which is where the Dr., OT, SLP, and behaviour specialists assessed the children. We waited another 6 months to attend the nursery school. It was a great set up because he rocked the individual testing with the dr., but was totally normal in the nursery school setting. He still has not received an official diagnosis as we were told they do not like to diagnose before school age unless they have too, so we will have to go through testing again as needed once he hits school. But for now it has given us access to SLP and OT, so we can work on the behavioral side of things which has been a big improvement for us.