Speech delays and diagnosis
My son, now 5, had a lot of speech delay and went to ST for a while including early intervention and now has an IEP at school. He was diagnosed with autism at 2 but I am now a bit unsure whether it is accurate. The reason the doc gave at that time was diagnosing as autism helps with getting a wide variety of services and she'd rather have him get that and be misdiagnosed than not. Not particularly a red flag but as he progresses through the years, it is impacting our decisions about schooling etc.
His speech is still extremely limited and he only speaks a few sentences and has a vocab of about 200 or so words. He cannot seem to understand a lot of things spoken to him yet and struggles with multi step directions. His younger sibling at 2 probably speaks at the same level if not better than him. But...he is social, seems to be good with numbers, can get along well with siblings including turn taking and sharing, can communicate through non-verbal means (showing or bringing stuff), can write letters and read some and does well with cognitive activities such as matching or arranging. There are also no motor deficiencies that are observed...he can run, ride a bike, kick a ball, catch a ball, cut with scissors and so on.
I guess my question is whether it is worth any to go for a re-diagnosis if it doesn't change anything materially. And, whether autism is overdiagnosed? Or whether severe speech issues by itself can qualify as autism, which seems to be a very broad catch all term.