PDD-NOS the Un-Diagnosis

To me, the PDD-NOS is a perfect example of what is wrong with the medical and educational communities, particularly, when it comes to Autistic Spectrum and Developmental Spectrum disorders. You just have to read the name to get it...
Pervasive
Developmental
Disorder...
NOT OTHERWISE SPECIFIED.

PDD-NOS is not a DIAGNOSIS. It's a NON-diagnosis--an Un-Diagnosis. It simply states that if you are kind of like these guys over here and these people over there, but you don't actually fit into any of the artificial boxes that we've created to fit these and those people into, then here's a catch-all box to put all the left-over people into.

It's like the odd-sizes bin at Walmart. Well, these pants don't match any of the REAL sizes so we'll invent this new 'size' called, "Not Otherwise Specified" and any pants that we can't fit into the real boxes will all get put into the Not Otherwise Specified box. It really is my favorite so-called disorder in the DSM.

And this comment is not about the children or the parents or even the doctors. It is about a system which passed itself off as science when it is little more than an attempt to overlay a system of arbitrary divisions to something which effectively has no divisions--it is a continuous spectrum, be it the Autistic Spectrum or PDD Spectrum. We're talking about a spectrum of behaviors that IMHO does not lend itself to these divisions.

No where in the DSM does it indicate what the source of those behaviors might be. A diagnosis tells you nothing about the source of the child's struggles, nor does it tell you what a child's strength are. No where in the entire DSM does it talk about the gifts an Autistic child or PDD child might have--no where.

I can't speak to other interventions, but I have NEVER, EVER found any help for a child by looking at what was WRONG with the child. Whether ADHD, Autistic, SPD, APD, or PDD-NOS, virtually all the progress I have ever made with a child is focusing on their natural strengths and abilities. That is just my take on it. http://www.swish4fish.com