Brief report: childhood disintegrative disorder: a brief examination of eight case studies.

Eight children with childhood disintegrative disorder (CDD) were tracked. Doctors pulled medical charts and parent reports to map when each child lost skills.

All kids had talked, played, and toileted on time before the regression. The team noted age of loss, speed of loss, and which skills vanished.

Skill loss hit at about 3 years 2 months on average. Two kids crashed in days; the rest slid slowly over months.

Every child lost language, play, and self-care. None regained the skills during the study window.

Mount et al. (2011) saw regression in 1 of the kids with regular autism. Their group lost skills earlier, around 2 years, but many bounced back with therapy. CDD looks like a rarer, harsher cousin.

Warnes et al. (2005) found that regression history in autism does NOT predict later IQ. That seems to clash with our CDD cases, where loss is deeper. The difference is diagnosis: CDD has stricter, later, and more global loss, so the "no prediction" rule from autism may not apply here.

Lindsley (1992) first sketched the CDD label for DSM-IV. Ferreri et al. (2011) simply used those rules to pick their eight cases, showing the criteria still work two decades later.

If a preschooler loses language, social, and daily-living skills after age 3, think CDD, not late autism regression. Act fast: refer for full medical work-up and start intensive ABA while the brain is still plastic. Track every skill weekly; small plateaus can be your first treatment target.