"Pervasive Developmental Delays"

"Pervasive Developmental Delays."  The term alone is enough to strike terror into the heart of any sane parent.  Autism spectrum disorders fall under this category of disorders.  Scary stuff.


My son was not diagnosed with Asperger's until he was eight and a half years old. Eight and a half years old?  How can a child with pervasive developmental delays go unnoticed for that long?  I admit, I tend to ... perseverate.  We, who are NOT new to the spectrum, are old hands at perseveration - our own, or someone else's.  But I can't help it (isn't that the key to perseveration, anyway?) - what do they mean when they say pervasive developmental delays.


I'm a good mother.  I feel guilt in the appropriately large amounts.  How did I not see pervasive developmental delays in my beautiful, wonderful child?  I go over my mental list, again:  he walked at 9 1/2 months - that couldn't be it; he talked before a year of age, and was speaking in 3-4 word sentences at a year and a half - also not it; he mastered the sorting toy (for 18 mo. - 3 y.o.) at 10 mo. - no, not a "sign;" he played competently with legos (yes, legos, not duplos) at age 3 - fine motor skills, check; he taught himself to read before entering kindergarten ... Where were the pervasiveness of these delays that I had so negligently overlooked?


Don't get me wrong.  I know my son has Asperger's, and he definitely has the deficits that go with it.  He also has some amazing strengths.  I just look at people who say "don't you wish you knew earlier" with some measure of confusion.  What, exactly, was I supposed to "know?"  That my boy had difficulty with transitions?  I knew that.  That my son was not terribly interested in his peers?  I knew that, too.  Happily, he had a built-in playmate with his brother, and his brother's friends were very tolerant of the little brother tag-along in many play situations.  It was working.  It was probably better than any "therapeutic" intervention or "inclusion" placement would have been.  He was in a regular education pre-school and elementary school, because he wasn't diagnosed.  Most teachers recognized that he was a bit "quirky," and accommodated him accordingly.  It worked.  Right up until the time that it didn't.


And then he was diagnosed.


And it all made sense.


Except for the name ...


I'm still stuck on the pervasiveness of the developmental delays.  I hate that name.  It sounds so awful.  I look at my now almost-adult boy.  I still adore him (of course).  I know he struggles with some things, but "pervasive developmental delays" sounds like someone who can barely walk and chew gum.  He's gifted and funny and loves to read and loves math and is learning Japanese, and is one of the smartest people I know.  He's not great at social conversation (LOL). 


When people come up with these terms, I wonder whether they ever consider that they will be applying them to actual, other people.  People with feelings, people with families who love them, people who can read the DSM!  Clearly, some of the people who are diagnosed under this category are very severely impaired, and have developmental delays in many areas of their lives, but for those who, like most people with Asperger's, have "delays" in only one or two areas, and areas that may not manifest in the first few years because they don't affect "milestones," the term is misleading - and for folks who tend to be literal, that can be ... problematic.