Testing for Autism in Home-Schooling

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Dr. David Hill. Today we're going to be talking about testing for autism in home schooling. Now many parents home school throughout the country for a variety of reasons, but one important thing to remember is just because your child isn't required to fill out a form to go to school doesn't mean that your child shouldn't be evaluated regularly by his or her physician. There are a lot of things we do that don't involve simply filling out forms and giving shots and one of the most important of those is screening children for developmental problems like autism. Currently, physicians should be using some sort of formal screening at the twelve month, and the eighteen month, and twenty-four month exams. Some of us do them even more often than that and a pediatrician will always do an informal developmental screening every time he or see she she's, he or she sees your child. We take note at how the child is walking, talking, interacting with the parent, interacting with us, and we can see clues to autism. In fact, now, at age eighteen months and twenty-four months, we do a special screening and there are several of them. The most popular is probably called the M-check, but if these tests suggest signs of autism, then we send children on for more formal testing. Remember we're going to be looking at children every year, not just when they're infants. So be sure if you don't have the reminder of a school calendar or a form to fill out to get your child into the doctor that you don't skip that regular visit. That is when we find things that we're looking for, including autism. Obviously as well, any time you have a developmental concern about your child, you don't feel he or she is relating appropriately to you or other children, you have difficulty with communication, difficulty with discipline, it's time to bring that to a professionals attention. There are lots of good screening exams and confirmatory exams out there for autism spectrum disorders, but unless you bring your child to someone's attention, it's going to be pretty hard to figure out. Talking about screening home schooled children for autism, I am Dr. David Hill."