when did you know something was different?
my son is 3.5 and I am beginning to notice and feel that maybe just something is not right. He is a great outgoing social kid, but he just doesnt seem up to the par of his peers. I really am strting to notice this now since he has started preschool. Up until now he has stayed home with me and while we have playdates and stuff I hae never had a group of kids to compare him to.
He talks ALOT, but even I dont understand him alot of the time. He sometimes will just start to babble. it like he starts rattleing off every word he knows and there is now rhyme or reason for it.
He doesnt color, he will scribble on the page but it seems he doesnt get the concept of coloring a picture. I dont expect him to stay in the lines or anything but givce him a crayon and he just scribbles. doesnt try to make things the "right" color. like he will color grass blue and the sky purple, or everything just all the same color.
He doesnt tell me he loves me. I ask him if he loves me and he just doesnt seem to understand what I am asking. Alot of the time if you ask him a question instead of answering he will repeat the question.
I know I seem like I am rambleing but these are all things that I see ther children do that Eli just doesnt seem to get. I always hear and read things about autism and they usually point towards lack of social behaviors, arm flapping and things and thats not him.
But I just feel in my gut that something is not right. Where do I begin to look. I plan to make a appointment with his doctor in the next few weeks to discuss all this too, I guess I am just looking for some answers.
Re: when did you know something was different?
Well, my only advice would be to trust your gut. Mom's just 'know' if something is going on.
I would also try and get in with a developmental pedi now, because the wait lists are very long. They can give you an overall view of your son, rather than just focus on one particular piece of the puzzle.
((hugs))
I always had a fear that DD might have developmental problems because I had a difficult pregnancy with serious complications.
Right after her first birthday, I was reading in Toddler 411 about typical milestones that 1-year-olds achieve and DD wasn't hitting some of them yet. She wasn't babbling with consonants. She wasn't pointing. She wasn't gesturing. She wasn't responding to her name. She wasn't really imitating us.
From there I looked at info on the CDC website about important milestones to hit by the end of 1 year. DD didn't finger-feed herself. (Still doesn't.) She wasn't looking at the correct picture when the image was named. She wasn't beginning to use objects correctly, like drinking from a cup or pretending to talk on the phone. She wasn't responding to verbal requests. She wasn't saying dada or mama. She wasn't imitating scribbling.
I also looked at the videos on FirstSigns.org of typical kids vs. kids with autism or kids at risk of developing autism. DD was not responding if you asked her "Where's Mommy?"
I requested an EI eval. DD was diagnosed with severe expressive language impairment, mild receptive language impairment, moderate impairment in feeding skills, mild impairment in fine motor/perceptual skills, and a mild impairment in social/emotional skills. She was not evaluated for PT, but I suspect she may have a mild delay in her gross motor skills as well. We are meeting her EI therapist tomorrow.
These past several weeks we've taken DD to a ton of various appointments, and I've definitely lost sleep worrying about our LO. It's tough when you don't have other kids to compare your kid to and you don't know what your kid is supposed to be achieving at his/her age.
FYI, here's the link to the CDC milestones for 3-year-olds:
https://cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/milestones/milestones-3yr.html
Good luck.
First of all, trust your gut. I'd call to make the appointment now. No need to wait in my opinion.
To answer your question though, I noticed early on BUT I'm not dealing with the same issues as you. DS2 has cerebral palsy and has obvious delays. Ex. he doesn't sit independently yet and will be 1 next week.
Your concerns seem valid to me. You're describing echolalia...pretty clearly IMO. At 3.5 he should be way done with that. The babbling and repeating words out of context is concerning as well. My son was doing/still sometimes does these things. He's 5 now and is dx'ed with ASD through Regional Center (California) and his School District. His Developmental Ped and another specialists from UCLA disagree with the dx....which I guess it's common for high functioning kids. Dx-ing is unfortunately still somewhat subjective to the dr opinion, although there are guidelines and tests and such.
I think you should go beyond your regular pedi (ours didn't think anything was wrong with our son at first either and came on board only later on after the dx was done) and go straight to your school district and file a motion for a formal assessment. Wheels will start turning from there. Scheduling an appt with a develop pedi is probably a good idea as well, although in our case the specialist said the District was full of it and didn't believe the dx.
I personally starting having weird feelings when my son took a while to reach his motor milestones (they were still within the limit, but on the later end of the "normal" limit). He crawled at 11.5 months and walked at 17 months. He didn't point at 12 months. He didn't respond to his name being called at 12 months. He didn't hug me until well after the 1st year, although he was otherwise very affectionate towards me. All these little things were in my mind, but since everything else was great, he was babbling, saying mama dada, laughing and smiling at us and at strangers and was generally a content baby.....I was brushing it off for a while. He was also a non-tatrumer, really easy going, always happy....never got into "trouble" (as in, I never had to overly child-proof my home, the only thing I did was the door stop, toilet paper stopper and oven. We never needed the power outlets child-proofed as he never expressed the need to get near them). Other babies were very much into exploring at that age, he was happy surrounded by his toys and books (he would look at those books contently for ever and quitely turning the pages all happy just by himself).
I really knew things were not good, when at almost two he wasn't stringing words yet, he started opening and shutting doors for a long time at a time (an hour maybe?), started flapping his arms in excitement and started covering his ears when something moderately loud was happening (siren outside, vacuum..etc.). He also loved staring at wheels (car tires, fans...etc.)
He was dx-ed a little before 2.5 yo.
Trust your gut. Get an appointment with a developmental pediatrician and contact your local school district for an evaluation. Auntie is right, a lot of high functioning kiddos fly under the radar, because they don't "look" like autism. Every child with Autism is different. My ds loves to be social, he just doesn't know how very well. He flaps his hands, and his language is slightly delayed. That's pretty much it. Initially, around 2 1/2 is when we started to notice that he was different-language delays, didn't follow directions, couldn't hold any conversation, didn't respond to his name, eye contact issues and flapping. Much of that has been improved with therapy, so there is some hope.
Trust your gut. Get an evaluation with a dev pediatrician.
For us it was pretty obvious from the get go - no eye contact, no babling, no response to name, no hand gestures. Even with all that my concerns were brushed off for a very long time.