Little Prince's Latest Assessment

Me and Mr Messy took Little Prince to a specialist Speech and Language Therapy assessment today. This was to assess how he uses and understands speech, rather than how he pronounces words. The assessment was over two hours long and very indepth. Little Prince has a very good vocabulary, she assessed this as being at about an 8 year old level, not bad for a little lad that isn't even 6 until the end of the month :-) However, when doing the assessment activities, if Little Prince found them hard he refused to co-operate, at different points in the session he lay on the chair sucking his thumb, he was distracted by objects in the office, he kicked out and had to be restrained (by me). This and the fact that he didn't seem to care or notice that this was inappropriate behaviour led the therapist to say that he has social and communication difficulties, another word for Autistic Spectrum Disorders. This feels like a kick in the stomach, I don't know why but Autism has always scared me and is something I have never felt I could cope with. Now it seems my precious boy could have this. The therapist said quite bluntly there is no cure, the only thing we can do is to teach him the skills that most children learn instinctively - making eye contact in conversations, taking turns in speaking, listening and responding to others and more stuff that I can't remember. The therapist wants to talk to Little Prince's teacher and will then put all her findings and observations in letters to both his Paediatrician and to us. I've got a meeting with his teacher first thing tomorrow morning, and I'll see what she has to say.