i would never let my school district make that determination. EVER.. I got through cincinnati childrens hospital developemental disabilities and behavioural pediatrics and let them determine the primary issue at hand. they provide me with academic evals and testing slp, ot, pt, psychology, nutition, just to name a few services, i even have access to a lady familiar with our "excellent" blue ribbon school district who can assist with his iep.

It depends on the school, but it appears that most schools have more services for Autism than ED. I think you should get an independent evaluation done by a private specialists or team of specialists. School districts have a hard time a resisting a professional diagnosis.

My son is categorized under Emotional Disturbance on his IEP but he has never had an official Autism diagnosis (we are currently in the process of having him assessed for a 2nd time). His actual diagnosis at the time the IEP was written was ADHD and the school psychologist concluded based off of the multi-factored assessment she performed that he had Autism. However, she classified him as Emotional Disturbance on the IEP. The school psychologist never actually bothered to explain to me why she chose to do that when she could just as easily have categorized him Autism and that is what she told me her personal opinion was to boot. It made no sense to me at the time but went along with it just to get him the services I knew he needed.

Well, 6 months down the road we are at a new school and the IEP Coordinator there pointed out to me that Liam was categorized Emotional DisturbanceD on his IEP (I think he was surprised by it and wanted to make sure I was aware) and was kind enough to clue me in that his former school probably did that in order to get him some additional service(s) they felt he needed that he could not get with the Autism categorization. He was having a lot of behavioral issues at the time so the school provided him with a full-time 1:1 aide and he was seen by a social worker periodically. Maybe your son's school is doing this for similar reasons?

Perhaps there are ramifications that I just have yet to see but in my experience the IEP Categorization hasn't added up to a hill of beans either way. I do have to admit that it bothers me a bit on a personal level just because I know it paints a false picture of who my son is and why he behaves the way he does. Since he now attends a school where he will be able to get the services he needs with an Autism categorization, I do plan to have it changed when his official diagnosis changes.

Yes, the school did a FBA. I admit their assessments were quite comprehensive, and yet... they find very little "wrong" with him in all areas. Most things he is average to high average, and yet he can't do well at school. So they think it must be emotional issues. We've agreed to an Educationally Related Mental Health Eval.

We DID sign an IEP!!! After 10 months of campaigning! ED as primary, Autism as secondary. We needed to get something started, and can fight the designation later if it is necessary. We have 3 things in our IEP; it's pretty lame lol. Goals for Attendance, Behavior, and Performance.

Attendance: Reduced schedule, since he is only attending 2 periods/day right now anyway. We're adding 1 period of History and 1 period of Resource Lab to help him with his homework and stuff. So, out of 8 periods, he is attending 3rd thru 7th.

Behavior: Working with the Behaviorist at school 1 hour/week to improve classroom participation.

Performance: Do 50% of classwork/homework and turn in 100% of that.

We're definitely going to be adding to this! But it is a start.

zippybari: anxiety, depression, aggression... I don't remember the clinical terms, but a loose association with reality and basically warped sense of self. He does have all these; I don't dispute the evals, but I think it stems from autistic traits.

Update: spoke to one of our medical therapists, and he said it might actually be best to let our health care team deal with autism (we have a Behaviorist 5 hrs/wk) and let the school handle the ED, so treatment doesn't overlap or compete. As long as the accommodations and services reflect his true needs and don't ignore the autism.