Nonverbal autistic girl finds her voice and expresses profound intelligence.

[1monster]

11. My stepson is autistic and wasn't officially diagnosed until he was thrity-five, although

I was certain fifteen years before that he had some sort of autism.

I believe one of the main reasons he remained undiagnosed for so long was that he is also hearing impaired. His delayed language abilities were blamed on this.

But he had hearing aids. When the noise got too much for him, rather than having a melt down as many autistic children do, he would simply turn off his hearing aids. In fact, he spent most of the time with his hearing aids off.

The problem isn't only lack of government help (even just in the referral sense) but the lack of knowledge and understanding of autism by mental health professionals. In my experience, 95% of them are incompetent at best.