What was your child like as an infant?

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Hi all,

I've been a member of Wrongplanet for a while, since I've always thought of myself as having some Aspie traits. I've recently had my first child -- she's currently nine months old. Since I know that Aspergers is genetic, I've been extremely worried about autism (especially since my husband also has some traits -- we're both nerds!)

I'd love to hear what your kids were like at nine months old. My main concern with my baby is she totally ignores me when I call her name. Right now, she maybe responds one out of every ten times, if that. She had a couple of weeks where she seemed to be responding much better, but now -- nothing.

She doesn't wave or point yet, but I think she's too young. She's doing great with all the motor milestones -- she rolls over, crawls, pulls up on furniture, and is attempting to stand up by herself. (She's always been very motivated to move around!) She babbles with baba, mama, nana, and dada. So I'm really not worried about anything except the name thing -- but from what I've read, that's a huge red flag!

Anyway, please let me know what symptoms you noticed at that age, and whether you think I have anything to worry about! I'm quite worried, so I'm going to be very grateful for any responses!

here are some social-emotional expectations at 9 months and those developed from 9-12 months.

Is not responding to her name the only concern?

Social & Emotional infant development

Did you mean to post a link?

EDIT: Oh, I see it! Although you're missing the : in the http://, I figured it out .

I see that site is rather conservative about when babies are supposed to respond to their names. According to this site, she's doing everything just fine -- no red flags in the 9 month category. But I've definitely seen websites that claim that it's an issue at her age...

Anyway, the name thing would be my main concern. I suppose a related concern is that it's generally hard to get her attention sometimes -- she can get pretty fixated on what she's doing.

If there are no other red flags, no behavioral/eating/sleeping/speech/developmental delay concerns, then I would say just enjoy this time. Being Aspie doesn't mean she will have to have services, so if she is feel lucky you know what it is like and she will have someone who gets her. If she shows more red flags as she gets older and develops other issues, then you can get services with or without a diagnosis. Keep an eye on her, but enjoy this time together.

My son had a speech delay and speech until age three, then nothing, and was generally just seen as smart and quirky until around age 10. We got a diagnosis at age 11. I don't think he would have qualified before although he had many characteristics of being Aspie. The social, academic, organizational demands became too high, so we had to seek help.

I would definitely say it is too early to worry too much. Unless there are other red-flags, like stimming, most people would wait until 18 months to see how language came in.

Having said that, I did put my younger son in early intervention at 9 months for that exact reason. At 9 months, a baby should respond to their name. It is considered a 20% delay if they do not, so in my state that qualifies for early intervention services. I have an older son who has autism which is why I was watching at such a young age and I am sure that it helped in convincing them to give me services so early (that there was a close relative with autism).

I do think the early intervention services helped keeping an eye on him and moving him forward. At 2 years old, he tested out of early intervention and at 3.5 years old he seems to be progressing normally - although I would say he is a bit quirky If you are nervous, you can always contact early intervention. If you are in the US, you can self refer - you don't need a doctor to recommend services. They will come and evaluate and its all free. If they say everything is fine, you can breathe a sigh of relief and if problems crop up later you can always re-evaluate.

Does she have frequent ear infections? If the only thing is not responding at times, there could be a physical reason. Possibly intermittent fluid build up even without it being infected fluid? Is there typically more background noise when she is not responding than when she is? She is babbling other sounds, so that is a good sign, but an intermittent fluid build-up or a low level of hearing loss could allow her to hear well enough or often enough to learn some things, but still be inconsistent.

I would think that there would be more than one sign

My oldest (HFA) only said "Da!" at 9 months. He did smile and laugh. I can't remember if he responded to his name or not. Somewhere before age 1 he would use objects like a phone, and sometimes stir like a spoon. He didn't point until 15 months and it was somewhere closer to one that he added M's and P's and T's to the "ah" sound. He never babbled or cooed as an infant. He was 18 months before he started babbling. We had to teach him how to wave. Like take his arm and move it back and forth while we said "Bye bye!" over and over for 2-3 months before he really got it and would do it when someone said bye bye to him. He was doing it by 15 months, but we had worked on it a lot. He never liked to be held or cuddled. He never did that thing where babies just sort of melt into the person holding them. He really didn't take comfort from people. He never wanted to be cuddled to go to sleep, but he did love to be swaddled even at 9 months. He never stared at the face or into the eyes while being fed. He never had a problem with being passed person to person or even spending a week away from me or going to a complete stranger. He didn't do anything that I remember as stimming until he was older, when he would run in circles and hand flap. He might have been doing subtle things. Now a days his biggest method of stimming is with his feet, so it is more subtle than hand flapping. I would not have paid attention to things like waving things in front of his face or any number of other less obvious ones at the time.

He had an extremely odd pattern of gross motor development. He couldn't sit without being propped up with pillows or held in place with straps until he was almost 7 months. He never even tried to hold the bottle. He had to have thickened liquids because they would go down the wrong way and give him chest infections and they'd come back up as projectile vomiting (seriously he had a 5 feet range at 6 weeks old. He had to sleep nearly upright until he was close to 1.) He couldn't hold his head up steadily until he was 6 months old. However once he finally got that head under control, his motor skills jumped like a vertical slope. By 9 months he was pulling up and cruising, and by 10 months he was walking (which was adorable, because he was tiny, only about 17-18 pounds at the time).

I remember when he started babbling because my middle child is 15 months younger. The oldest was always following me around, just a step behind where I couldn't see him when I was in the kitchen, and I was forever turning around and knocking him over. He never fussed about it. He'd just get up and go right back to it, but I felt awful, so I was always trying to keep an ear out for where he was. One day just after the middle child turned 3 months, I heard babbling in the bedroom, and thought, "Okay, I am safe to not knock over Eldest." Turned around and Wham! knocked him over. It was the the three month old in the bedroom babbling. It sounded exactly like what the oldest had been just started doing. I had been concerned before about the delay in pointing, extremely odd pattern of gross motor skills acquisition and and limited speech sounds, but that incident really cemented for me that something was not right with his development no matter what the doctor kept telling me.

Don't forget to check the fine motor skills. I knew nothing about this when he was a baby. I was concerned about speech and social things, and never knew to check sensory or fine motor. (I knew he was sensitive to some things, but I didn't know how outside the norm it was). When I finally managed to bypass his obstructionist pediatrician and get him tested at age 2 yrs 9 months, his fine motor skills were in the 6-9 month old range. He didn't even have a pincer grasp. He actually qualified for much more OT than he did Speech (by that point his language was at only mildly delayed range, but his his articulation was severely delayed due to him being severely tongue tied--another thing his stupid pediatrician didn't want fixed, his articulation improved dramatically once that was fixed) He is still in OT at age 13, although much more focus on life skills now.

He's in homeschool. If he was in public school right now, I think he'd be mostly mainstreamed. The school bus would probably the thing that would cause the most trouble due to this district not having a second adult on the bus and the kids being little beasts that find it fun to come up with new games that revolve around hitting each other and kicking each other in the balls and insulting each other and their mothers and who knows the worst curse words. (The middle kid went to public one semester a couple of years ago)

Most of the life skills things revolve around breaking tasks down to parts and then carrying out those parts in a timely manner. Also, making lists of things he needs to do and lists of things he needs to not forget. He is extremely prompt dependent and tends to get lost in his head or to freeze when faced with a situation not exactly like he expected it to be or when asked to make a decision. He is also very slow in getting things done due to the losing focus and freezing, so they've worked on that. A lot of the fine motor tasks they've worked on this year have involved him having to come up with how to go about accomplishing the activity and then remember to bring in the needed materials. Such as he likes to make things with duct tape and got a duct tape activity book for Christmas. So they are making a wallet at therapy, and he had to make a list of the things he needs to do it and has to remember to bring those things with him each week.

They've done some specific things like using a phone book to find numbers, choosing items to pick from a "store" based on how much money he has, and how to pay without handing over his entire wallet and hoping the cashier is honest. Safety plans for things like being in public, things along those lines. I think a lot of his issues right now with the needing to be prompted, etc. are related to him being a very passive type ever since he was a baby. He did wonderful in therapy even as a toddler, because he was always willing to be prompted, but that is causing problems now that we are looking at how is he going to live without someone standing over him to make him take care of himself and accomplish anything.

Unusual things I noticed about my two when they were babies:

eldest: very sensitive baby, very easily scared, scared of loud noises, highly clingy, hyper-interested in surroundings from birth, needed me there to go to sleep, woke five times a night for feeding (although that in itself doesn't mean anything it's just awful!), very miserable and unsmiling baby, had gastric reflux with projectile vomiting and was on Gaviscon until age one. Slow to learn to feed self with weaning cutlery. Unusual phobias from very early on. As a three year old head banging on floor when having rages. On soft baby food for a long time, couldn't handle lumpy food.

youngest: initially very quiet baby, then changed into being clingy like her sister, a lot of crying and needing me in her sight, gastric reflux but only lasted a few weeks, no signs of interest in solids whatsoever until I decided to give it a try and she vomited as soon as the food touched her lip, complete sensory issue after starting solids when BMs became solid with screaming and panic, had to call ambulance as she couldn't pass her BM and she was terrified, unusual phobias from very early on, cried from things like the music on her baby walker. Looked terrified by her sister's tantrums and was very subdued. On soft baby food for a long time, couldn't handle lumpy food.

Basically anything that's not smooth. They start with runny don't they, then go to thicker but still smooth, then small bits in it, then chunks in it then normal food. Anything that had bits of any description in it, no matter the consistency of the 'sauce' element counts as lumpy in my book.

We had big issues with food. Both babies were very late feeding themselves and very late with lumps. I didn't know how late until I'd see tiny little things feeding themselves things like pots of yoghourt and realised mine were nowhere near that stage. The lumps problem is an early sign of the sensory issues. My 11yo still picks bits out of her food and lines them up around her plate. My 8yo gags at so many food items.

The phobias was a really strong one too. My eldest would be terrified of piles of Autumn leaves on the ground and I'd have to wheel her pushchair around them or she'd freak. She was also terrified of feathery textures and as a baby picked up a little plastic tree from a farm set and dropped it as if it had burned her. She's scared of feathers to this day. My youngest was scared of innocuous theme tune music from a children's programme and logos on box games and at the end of programmes. There are still phobias (some very odd ones for youngest) going on with both of them.

Both of mine needed propping up with cushions to sit up until about 7 months too. My youngest started baby words and could say Mamma at 6 months and then regressed and lost all speech until 2 years old, then started speaking really quickly after that. When she lost speech she would just say "mmm" when you spoke to her, she wouldn't ever speak back.

Both my children were dx'd with PDD-NOS.

My eldest son (almost 5yo now) was difficult as a baby. He never stopped crying and could hardly be soothed. He got dx'd with reflux at 3 mos old. I had to constantly carry him, walk him up and down the stairs, or walk him outside in the stroller over the cobblestone streets. I'm not sure if the reflux medication worked. As soon as the medication finished, he started teething so he was constantly crying over that. This was not normal crying. He drove me mad with the crying. I barely slept. The swing helped somewhat, but he constantly ran through the batteries. Although he needed to be held, he didn't care if I was around or not. He didn't care if I left as long as someone else was around to bounce him. He didn't notice if I entered the room. He would respond to his name maybe one time for every half dozen attempts to get his attention. He was very cranky. He could zero in immediately on the sound of a distant airplane but totally ignore my calls to him. His eye contact was fleeting at best.

My second son (20 mos old now) has a much calmer and sunnier disposition. But he also has fleeting eye contact, sporadic responsiveness to his name and doesn't really care if I leave him with the nanny or if she leaves to go home. He has started to acknowledge my arrival home lately though, which is a really positive development.

Both kids have/have had speech delays. Although this was one of the differentiating criteria from AS (vs. PDD-NOS) in the DSM-IV, I did read that AS children do sometimes have speech delays, as indicated in books describing some of Gillberg's patients who had AS. My psychiatrist did think that my older PDD-NOS son may in fact get dx'd with AS later on given his current symptoms.

I have been trying to think at what was going on at 9 months with us. The main thing was the behavioral type things. He had a fear of enclosed spaces. He had behavioral issues galore: he cried a lot, could not self soothe at all, was very clingy, and was afraid even if I went to the bathroom. He awoke frequently at night, and I would try to keep him upright 30 minutes after eating (We thought silent reflux) and then he would go to sleep 30 minutes before waking and crying. He ate all the foods I gave him. The picky eating came later... He met all his major milestones on time at that point, except the smiling and looking at mommy at 3 months or whenever it was. I think it took him until closer to 6. He was an early roller.... I would not have even known what a stim was at that point, or known how to id one, but I do believe he was looking at his hands A LOT, which I am not sure qualified at a stim at that age, though it did later. I also think he liked the ceiling fans, but again, I don't think they label those as stims that young.