I am not sure what you mean by "it falls along the lines of Autism as well." My neighbor has a 3-year-old that they say is autistic. Actually it is ASD which is MUCH milder than than the austism I have seen. However, I think the child is just neglected and momma is an idiot. She doesn't believe in restricting her child. For example, she says that fenced yards are cages for dogs and she won't cage her child like that. So the little girl roams the barnyard area totally unsupervised. When I have been outside, she girl will follow me around chattering, though her speach is unclear. I cannot leave things outside because she has free reign to do whatever she wants. Momma thinks that just because she tells a 3-year-old what to do, the child will obey. She has gotten a concussion, but no one is sure how because no one was watching her. She has fallen off my porch several times, I was the only one to comfort her when I saw it, but others times she was left to herself, No one there.
RAD makes more sense. I summed it up by saying, "If your child knows you care about his feelings, he will care about how you feel. If he knows that no one cares about how he feels, he won't care what your feelings or opinion is either."
Alot of Dr’s and therapist will determine a child to have autism - but actually it’s RAD...they fall along the same lines per behavior...
However, there are children with autism - and do not have RAD...but there’s a huge number of “professionals” that do not know or understand RAD - only becuase Autism is thrown out there often...
...and one cannot treat RAD with drugs - where autism is - and usually why Dr’s will do scripts instead of long term parenting...