Jake was evaluated by a psychologist yesterday, and she says for sure that he is nowhere on the autism spectrum -- not Aspberger's, not PDD (pervasive developmental disorder), nothing of the kind.
She says she suspects his behaviors are rooted in anxiety disorders -- social anxiety, and possibly OCD, but that he's too young to really give a diagnosis for those, and that he doesn't really need to see her for it at this point. Oh, and she says that some of the way he acts is just attention-seeking toward me -- she bases this on the fact that he acted differently alone with her than the 10 minutes when I was trying to talk to her afterward. (Umm, yeah, whatever. I'm not going to touch that, other than to state that I don't think it's true.)
So. It's nice to know for sure that he's not on the spectrum. I don't know that I completely agreed with all of her diagnosis, because she was trying to attribute things like him not wanting his hands messy (which I know is because of his tactile defensiveness -- SENSORY ISSUE) to being OCD. I still don't have a good reason why his speech isn't clear, but at this point if no one else is concerned about it, I'm not going to push it. (I AM reading two books about how I might be able to help him with this, though.)
I found a few books at Amazon about anxiety stuff in kids, and once I'm closer to finishing the books from the shipment I just got, I'll order those. I'll let you know how that goes.