This Page Is For Anyone Living With
Or Trying To Understand, A Child With PDD-NOS
PDD-NOS is a diagnosis given to a child who exhibits impairment in the development of reciprocal social interaction, verbal and non-verbal communication, or when stereotyped behavior or activities are present.
The limited available evidence suggest that children with PDD-NOS probably come to professional attention rather later than is the case with autistic children, and that intellectual deficits are less common.
General information site.
General information site featuring the Dear Jim advice page
A PDD/NOS child may be a little bit Autistic or a little bit Asperger's. Therefore learning about the condition which your child most closely resembles may help parents in their search for knowledge.
It is important that PDD, NOS be viewed as a spectrum disorder in order to understand its nature and complexity. With understanding and identification, appropriate treatment strategies can be tailored to the specific needs of the child.
Rita Cascio, Carol Kilmon
This publication is designed to answer some of the most commonly asked questions regarding PDD and to provide concerned individuals with other resources for information and support.
Autism is one of five developmental disorders classified as Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD). All of the disorders are referred to as syndromes.
A group of disorders characterized by delays in the development of multiple basic functions including socialization and communication.
National Institute of Neurological Disorders
PDD is not one disorder but a category that encompasses a wide range of delays of different magnitude in different domains. Autism is the most severe of the pervasive developmental disorders.
The label PDD (Pervasive Developmental Disorder) is a poorly understood, uninformative, confusing, disliked, and should be abandoned. The sooner the better. In fact, it should never have been adopted in the first place.
Generally, children are 3 to 4 years old before they exhibit enough symptoms for parents to seek a diagnosis. There is no set pattern of symptoms and signs in children with PDDNOS.
Pervasive developmental disorder is the umbrella term for all autistic and autistic like conditions. Someone with autism will have PDD but someone with PDD will not necessarily have autism.
Clients ultimately receiving a diagnosis of PDD-NOS tend to be higher functioning and with better language skills than one typically sees in the average child with autism.