ADOS Assessment

Today's play based assessment at Wilpshire CDC went great. Better than i expected when he saw the amount of people in the room!!

Before i tell you the details, I'll explain what ADOS is.:

The Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) is a widely used, standardised diagnostic assessment tool. The schedule uses semi-structured activities to assess the communication, reciprocal social interaction, play or imagination, stereotyped behaviours and restricted interests of individuals with possible Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD). The ADOS consists of four modules which are designed to match individuals’ expressive language ability and age. Each module presents a set of tasks allowing observation of behaviours relevant to the diagnosis of PDD and takes about 30-45 minutes to administer.

Taylor was encouraged to play with a variety of toys with different people, in different ways. He was co-operative up to a point then the "IT'S MINE" tantrums started!! Fortunately they were quickly resolved and the assessment carried on. He was asked to name different toys through play, example, he was playing with a fire engine and a man asked him "what's that" he replied "fire engine, fireman Sam" and so on for an Aeroplane, Ball, Bubbles etc. He was encouraged to ask for things with his "i want" method and to make eye contact which he didn't like very much. He does make eye contact but he tends to flutter his eyelids when looking directly at people he doesn't know too well or people he has never met before. He played with a balloon and completely exhausted himself trying to blow it up by himself!! Shortly after he was slowly draining of energy and started getting a little mischievous but the assessment ended not too long after that. It lasted around an hour and was fun to watch how he handled himself and how others handled him and his tantrums, they were very good with him but they are professionals and probably deal with those things day in and day out with their jobs!!! We will get the results from his assessment and feedback on Wednesday when we go to the Early Bird course as Ailsa and Sheila that run the course were part of the assessment, in fact it was Ailsa that rang me to ask if we'd do it.

They were all so nice and when we were getting ready to go Ailsa came to us with a bag. It had 2 bunches of flowers in it, one for me and one for mum. Dana got a bag of Revels and a Tracy Beaker lucky bag. Taylor got a bubble gun and a water game too. i thought it was really sweet of them to do that and it was very unexpected. Although, after reading the above explanation of the ADOS Assessment we attended this afternoon has puzzled me somewhat. Taylor up to now has only been diagnosed with Mild Autism, but the assessment we attended was for PDD which is a completely different diagnosis, although still Autism. I'm confused and wondering now as to why they chose Taylor!! Was it because he's very active and verbal and usually co-operative which makes him a good case study or are they now going to tell us he has PDD which will mean he's on a slightly different level of the Spectrum to what he is now. I will definitely have to ask about that on Wednesday as i am very puzzled and very curious!!! Still it was good fun lol. xXx