You’re concerned your young child may be on the autism spectrum.
Yet the earliest appointment you can make with a specialist may take as long as a year and a half.
This is why pediatricians like Dr. Andrew Swiderski, who works at the Open Door Care Network in Ossining, offer preliminary diagnostic testing that can begin to answer worried parents’ questions.
For example, Dr. Swiderski may hand his young patient a toy cell phone, encouraging the child to push the buttons that produce various sounds. Then he covers the keyboard with his fingers.
“Usually, a child will look up at me or his parent and say, ‘Why are you doing this?’ He’s made the connection that I interrupted his play,” said Dr Swiderski. “A child with autism will instead get mad at my hand. He won’t look at me and doesn’t make the connection that a person is involved.”
This is one of Dr. Swiderski’s “bag of tricks” that he offers when a diagnosis is suspected. Additionally, he encourages the parents of his patients to use an app (available in English and Spanish) produced by the CDC that provides a “milestone tracker” for monitoring their child’s development.
“Autism is a devastating diagnosis, and many providers are afraid to make it, fearing it labels the patient with a permanent condition that requires the involvement of many specialists and therapists,” said Dr. Swiderski. “Parents go into a panic. But the pediatrician should be the first to see this, as well as other delays in normal development. The big window is between six months and four years, a critical time to identify and look at this before school starts.”
An ever-increasing number of children are diagnosed with autism not because there is more autism than before, but because of increased awareness and more frequent testing, experts say.
Pediatricians, said Dr. Swiderski, represent the “front line” in diagnosing these conditions. At Open Door, they work hand-in-hand with the health care center’s Behavioral Health providers so that these children can be referred to specialists so they don’t fall through the cracks.
Parents, he said, often ask for help if they notice their young child suffers from any one or more of a number of different symptoms: such as an inability to respond to social interactions or pick up on non-verbal cues, poor eye contact, lack of interest in others, little imaginative play, repetitive movements, or ritualized behaviors. Contrary to some conspiracy theorists, he added, there is no evidence to indicate links to any environmental or lifestyle issues, such as vaccines, foods or toxins. It does, however, run in families, where it is not uncommon to find two children with autism in the same family.
“I tell parents what features resemble autism and what don’t and through my testing come up with a preliminary conclusion and, if necessary, refer them to a specialist,” he said. “Parents are scared stiff and want to know.”
