Agreed. I have to say I did not go into that denial phase, and we got the diagnosis at 16 months. I had the ball rolling almost immediately and she has been receiving intervention for almost 4 months now (she is 22 months). I have a good friend however, who is the mom of a 3 y/o autistic boy, and she continues to deny this term. She will accept PDD as his diagnosis, but not autism and insists that the two "are entirely different". She even gets annoyed with me when I refer to my daughter as autistic because my child is functioning at a higher level then hers. You really can't get caught up in worrying what label the doctors apply to the child, kwim? Just get the kid the help he needs.
Isn't PDD just the dumbest diagnosis? (Pervasive Developmental Disorder.) Essentially, it says "We know there is a problem but we don't know what it is."
Useless, IMHO.