Early signs of ASD??

eide0079

I have a question for all you mommy's with children with ASD. When did you start noticing signs of ASD in your child? When did you feel like something seemed "off"? And what were your warning signs? TIA!!

asc679

For us, the biggest and earliest sign was that DS was not responding to his name. We thought that a speech delay could be fairly "normal" esp since we were raising him bilingual but not responding to his name at all was really weird we thought. Our pedi blew us off when we mentionned it early on. So it's only between 20-24 months when other symptoms appeared like toe walking, some hand flapping, staring at wheels, etc. that we really got concerned.

browneyes_326

We may be out of the norm but I was asking questions and worrying VERY early ... 5 months, 6 months. Be then my DS was already staring (like he was hypotized) at things that moved ... wheels, ceiling fans, certain TV programs (like when my husband had football on). Other things too.

 Anyway, I was blown off by our pedi & by other ASD moms. If your gut tells you something, push for it. My DS began early intervention at 16 months. He's now 19 months and I am SO grateful we began early!  We (and his EI specialist) expect a dx in October when he will finally see a dev. pedi.

PLEASE let me know if you have any specific questions! I was so upset, worried & confused when he was so little ... 

W&J'sMommy

I suspected there was something up by his 1st b-day.  His babbling had decreased and was starting to turn into grunts, he would stare off sometimes, but the big thing to me was his birthday party.  It was like he totally shut off, he couldn't handle all the people being there but instead of getting crabby he just went inside himself.  His pedi brushed off my concerns until he was 18 months, that is when I called EI and he started private speech therapy (he's since been diagnosed as Apraxic as well).

lite-bright

With DD1: highly repetitive speech. She chatters like crazy, but it's mostly formulaic; or phrases from books or TV, or the last few words that someone says, or phrases that she overhears other people saying as they pass (echolalia). Around 2.5, if I asked her a yes-or-no question, she would repeat back, "yes or no, yes or no." Even though she used to give big nods before she was verbal. She also has very odd, repetitive, and robotic inflection in her voice -- she didn't sound conversational when she started talking, although it's better now. 

Never went through a "no" stage when younger (we're just hitting it now). Never asked questions, although she would point at things or indicate interest. 

As a baby/young toddler, she was very self-absorbed in play, although she did some imitation. It was hard to engage her and keep her attention. She preferred electronic toys or toys with buttons she could "play" with by herself and wold do things like always press the same buttons in the same order. She would ritualize almost everything -- at the playground, she would come up with an "order" to do things in (climb up these stairs, walk to this slide, walk to other slide, go down, run to tree, climb back up stairs, etc.), and while she would deviate from that occasionally to explore, she was very predictable and would always come back to it.

Before age 1, she would crawl to her room and look at books for 30 minutes at a time, by herself. She knew all her letters by 21 months and would "read" the letters off the shopping cart handle (even though from her perspective they were upside down and backwards), and off railroad signs when we turned her FFing in her car seat. One of the earliest things was that she would take two objects/toys, put them on the floor to one side of her, then and move them to the other and back again, over and over; this was whenever she found or was given one thing in each hand. 

She would watch other kids and seemed interested, but never really attempted to engage with them -- was very reserved and took a long time to warm up and participate in group situations like a music class or storytime. We thought it was shyness for a long time, because she has always been very affectionate and more animated with us at home. 

 

Sobachka

So, as you can see, all of our kids were pretty different.

I knew DS had ASD when he was about 3 months old because there were just no lights on and nobody was home. When I brought this up with pedi, he told me I was nuts and my child was not a house.

DS was officially diagnosed at almost 14 months.

Here is a good website: https://www.firstsigns.org/

God luck!