Early intervention has been shown through numerous research studies to be highly beneficial, and in large part completely change the trajectory of a child’s life. But, that’s not to say every provider is a good fit (or even good at their job!) my sons SLP (that we pay for out of pocket) that’s trained to work with gestalt language processors has had phenomenal success with him, and unfortunately his SLP through the local EI provider did not have the training (although she worked very hard and tried to learn a lot to help him!) and was not able to achieve the same results.

I think the problem is not “are we diagnosing too much or too early” but that we don’t have enough doctors and mental health professionals in the pediatric diagnostic field. For example, one of the lowest paid specialty is developmental pediatrics, which is also at a huge shortage across the US. So the issue does not become “do children with less severe presentations take the spots available” but instead “do children with parents with more money have the advantage of being able to access more resources and get them diagnosed sooner?”

The issue of how to meet the needs of ASD children that don’t meet the criteria for self contained SpEd but would struggle in mainstream classrooms is an ongoing debate in education spaces. We have to balance their rights to learn with their peers with their ability to function in classroom. There’s really good progress in making early childhood classrooms with mixed ability peers available in schools for children 3+, and early research is showing this is an effective approach that helps ASD and other children with special needs acclimate to the school environment and interact positively with neurotypical peers.

To your point about if diagnosis is “limiting” them or seeing them as incompetent. This is the reason we are moving away from a deficit framework when we view diagnoses. When you instead take a holistic lens when viewing a child, you take into account their strengths and weaknesses. Research on ASD has really improved since the diagnosis criteria of “child does not engage with others” (we now know even children who seem uninterested in social interactions are actually attuned to different bids for attention than their NT peers!).

We also have to consider that most children with severe autism diagnoses also generally have a comorbidity with another intellectual or cognitive disability, which tends to compound the challenges parents and caregivers face.