It's a tricky thing to navigate. The current best research says getting kids into therapies as soon as possible results in the best outcomes. As such they're going for diagnosis at younger and younger ages and with many of those being kids who even 10 or 20 years ago would have just been seen as 'awkward' or 'quirky/nerdy' rather than having any sort of disability. From the doctor/school point of view and really most parents there isn't much of a downside to getting them the diagnosis and into therapy. Most of the 'therapy' has no real downside as it's basically just a therapist playing games with a toddler in a targeted way. If the kid didn't really need or benefit from it all you did was waste some time and money for someone to play with your kid. If they do turn out to have real issues though and you didn't go for the early intervention you've missed the best opportunity for improvement.
This puts the pilot parent who knows about the draconian FAA medical procedure in a tough spot. You obviously don't want to skip out on therapies your young kid needs just in case he might want to be a pilot some day. OTOH it's hard to know if they really need it and you really really don't want to have to tell your future teenager who may be in love with flying that they have this obstacle because you let them get diagnosed over a decade earlier.
I'm curious how these actually get handled. I had generally assumed ASD on it's own probably was less of an issue than a lot of the conditions that tend to get diagnosed alongside it(like ADHD). Would someone who got diagnosed with ASD as a young child but hadn't required therapy for years and had no other issues still require special issuance? What kinds of documentation or evaluations would one expect them to need? Might be helpful for parents here making these decisions to know what is and isn't likely to be a big problem.
*One other thing to add is it may be possible to get a pediatrician to refer a child to speech therapy and even occupational therapy without an actual autism diagnosis. It may also be possible to get those services in-school for free without a diagnosis but that's going to vary from school to shcool, state-state based on policy and availability. If you're able to pull that off for a few years and they're able to be in mainstream school/stop the therapies then it shouldn't even be something that needs mentioned on a medical. At least that's our current strategy.
Kids diagnosed in the late 90’s to late 00’s would likely have a DX of Asperger’s Syndrome. But prior to that, yah, awkward/weird or nerdy would be tagged.
My son was diagnosed in 2012 with ASD and ADHD at age 5. He did ABA therapy and others through the 6th grade, took meds until 7th or 8th grade. He’s now a HS senior, honor student, high GPA and in top 20% of his class, he a senior class rep, has a job where he is responsible for the safety of others, he’s good at his sport, and has a host of extra curricular activities.
Most who meet him have no idea he’s on the spectrum and we have the early intervention therapy to thank for that. Even knowing what I do now (that he’s about to embark down a tough road in attaining Class I cert), there’s no way I’d have forgone getting the DX which afforded us insurance coverage for therapy.
As for foregoing an official DX but getting services in the school setting, that would be tough. School systems need an IEP to be able to provide therapy. To get an IEP they need a DX. They typically don’t want their in-house psych’s doing testing as it’s a liability to the school system. So they have an outside source test and DX, then their psych does an add’l short test or two and base their assessment off the DX of the outside source.
Information on what tests a HIMS Psych would perform to evaluate isn’t available that I can find. My guess is this is to prevent people from “studying” or having someone coach the candidate. And really, that’s the way it should be.
As a parent, my approach on this has been as an “evaluator” versus an “advocate”, which has been awkward! Rather than trying to figure out HOW he can attain a Class I, it’s more like CAN he attain a Class I. The only thing worse than having to tell him his journey is not going to be attainable, would be knowing that we pushed and found a way, something happened, and he was responsible for the deaths of others. (I equate this to being the parent of a school shooter - I can’t even imagine.)
