When did you first pick up the signs in your child?

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Nothing when he was neborn aside from rocking on knees and humming--later--intense, tuned mahem out, easy to entertain, enjoyed objects, a bit older he loved cameras and fixated on certain unusual objects such as fuse boxes and basements. Preschool--inability to make transitions (ok--they accomodated him--fixated on certain things and would dress-up the entire day so they took out the dress up clothes). Appeared very bright to others. Other than that, nothing. Not until Kindergarten did his atypical behavior become glaring.

He is extremely verbal, precocious, perseverates, but he has an excellent sense of humor is definitely not flat toned and very expressive and loud, eye-contact is not so big a deal (when he's talking he looks away--so do many kids). He will say inappropriate things and is very one-sided in conversations--turn off for other kids.

It's hard for me to believe he has some sort of autism, especially after reading so many horror stories and issues with meds and comorbid conditions these kids have--it's mind boggling to say the least.

But then we have a moment in the library where he spends over an hour photo copying phonebook and magazines and then stapling, taping pages to make flyers to pass out. And I look around and see other kids selecting books, reading, doing homework. When I try to hurry him along because they're closing, he bites down hard on his bottom lip and shakes. He hums and mutters to himself as he works. Moments like these remind me that he is unusual and has, perhaps, a dash of autism.



equinn

For us... Baby J did everything early- creeped, sat up, talked and walked early. He started talking at 5 months! He had 24 words that he used consistently by 7 months, but when I put him in daycare he abruptly stopped talking. He seemed happy overall, but he wasn't talking. The staff said it was all a period of adjustment for him. I would make surprise visits at the daycare and I'd find him spinning wheels of cars or trucks and not paying attention to when the teachers called to him. It was around that time that I noticed him lining up toys at home.

He started banging his head, he lost weight because he stopped eating regularly too... He needed everything VERY spicy and the daycare only offered bland foods. He was constantly getting colds from the other kids and so the doctors felt that this was responsible for his lack of interest in eating or talking. After about 5 months of daycare I pulled him out and he started saying single words again. "Cookie" was his word for "food" and that was the only word he said until we went to the zoo one day. We looked at tonnes of animals and then when we went home and looked at the pictures we took he named almost every animal we had seen (about 60 different animals).

I was so happy that he started talking again, but I took him to the doctor because I knew it wasn't normal behaviour. He agreed that Baby J's ability to say "elephant" but not being interested in saying "water" or "milk" or anything else was a bit on the eccentric side. Eventually he got his diagnosis of autism. We started getting help from that point on and we've been able to address many of his sensory needs and his speech has greatly improved. He's now able to form short sentences. (He's 3 1/2 now).

When they first brought my son from the nursery just after he was born, the nurse said: "He is a very cranky baby". As a baby he wouldn't sleep for more than 45min. And when he woke he would cry instantly. He was my first child, but I knew something was wrong right away. Everybody said I was being dramatic, that it was the post partum depression and that I was the problem and not the baby. After a few moths things got a little better, but it was very hard to put him down and I had to stay with him sometimes for hours for him to go to sleep. He never crawled, but he walked very early and started running very soon. He liked to run close to the walls, with his head turned in the direction of the wall, kind of like watching his own shadow move. His speech was Ok and he started talking at the right time and learning things very fast, by then I had convinced myself that everybody was right, that he was just an eccentric child. But at around 2 1/2 years old it was again very obvious to me that something was wrong, because even if he loved going out to playgroups and gatherings, he always kept by himself, never interacted with the other children and had meltdowns for strange reasons, like not wanting to go through the door once we got to the place we were going to. He started spinning and staring for hours at things like fans and bicycle wheels and playing with toys in weird ways. He was able to speak and had good vocabulary but he would never volunteer information, you had to ask him and he would never elaborate. He was extraordinarily afraid of very particular things like the noise the toilette bowl made when flushed, the vacuum cleaner and the little red light of the fire detector. After that, especially the spinning and the social disadvantages, I started suspecting autism and took him to a neurologist that finally diagnosed him as Asperger's.

My first was an NT girl.
She loved to cuddle with daddy from birth on...

My second was an Aspy Boy.
He could not stand to cuddle up from birth until age 8.

That was bothered me, but it didn't really click until the diagnosis.

In the first week or so. He would never "connect" with my wife when he nursed. Most babies tend to look at their mom's face and kind of "link in" with them.

He did hand/arm flapping as soon as he could move, he always was obsessed with different textures.

Of course I am an aspie, so we pretty much expected it. He is just like his dad

My son bonded with me from the beginning like any typical child. He always liked to be held and he was the biggest flirt when he was a baby/toddler. There were no physical delays.

He was an extremely fussy baby though. You had to hold him a certain way. He liked the blanket to be arranged a certain way. I had to do sleep training on him to get him to sleep through the night. He became fixated on certain toys or patterns on clothes. Seriously, I has to stop wearing some shirts because he would stare at the pattern for long stretches of time .

He got one word at age 6 months ("mama") and he made up 2 more words. Other than that, he had no language until speech therapy at age 24 months. His language was near normal after 1 year of speech.

He got kicked out of kindergarten on his 6th day of school. They said, "Please keep your son at home until he can evaluate him for an IEP." That's when I realized something was different. But, I feel like I'm lucky to have him just the way he is. He teaches me something new all the time.

Now that you mention the staring at patterns, Tortuga, my son did that too! He used to stare at the little cats on my pjs, and I would change my clothes, too. I always felt like he could see from the minute he was born, even though they supposedly cannot until they are a few months old. But he used to get really freaked out by the murals in his ped's office, from the time he was a few days old.

Lainie - what do you mean by "flat effect?"

My son did babble very early...but it seemed that around 1 he was saying words and then lost them...Not sure if it was due to the constant ear infections (he lost hearing for a while), if it was due to dual language (we moved) or what...

I do remember when he was crawling that we would laugh because he wouldn't "listen" when called...if we told him not to do something, he continued to do it...Also, he would stare at the ceiling fan forever and he always seemed in his own world...although he did hug/kiss and didn't have a problem with that at all.

I don't remember him waving, I don't remember him pointing, and he never missed us...he didn't like it necessarily if we left right in front of him (but it seemed that was not until he was around 2 that it started happening)...before that, he'd go with anyone and not miss mommy or daddy...

Also, I do remember on a couple of occassions that while laying down with him, he would stare at the wall and just start laughing...like he was seeing someone but he was just staring at the wall...

And looking back, I now understand the whole "stim" thing because when I carried him or anyone else for that matter, he would play with my hair forever...he would not let go...Every person that carried him, that's what he did...and when he sat in the carseat, all he did was twirl his hair between his fingers...We cut his hair shorter at one point and he went nuts...but eventually, he got used to not doing that. I think he grew older and then just began picking up leaves/sticks and just walking around with them instead...

And water never bothered him...as many other babies seem to cry when they are first given baths, he could be in the water forever and never complain.

We thought our son was different at about 9 months. He walked early, and when he first spoke it was in sentences rather than words! When he first crawled he would head straight for the wires, and plugs in our house - nightmare! He was obsessed with them, but other kids weren't interested in them so we thought that was strange. He loves wires and electrical things to this day! He is 6 yrs old now. Obviously we don't let him play with the real thing but he has got some kids safe electrical kits. He also made funny noises from about 1yr.

18 months when I noticed something odd . I called the pediatrician and I asked about ADD or ADHD she said it was to early to tell if she had this. I left it like that. At 22 months she began day care and 3 months after that I was told by the director that my daughter did not act like the rest of the 2 yr. olds. From that day I have been on all the waiting list to see specialist and finally got a diagnose at 28 months old. Which is pretty good I think. An early intervention

In hindsight, I should have picked up signs MUCH earlier. As a newborn, she hated to be swaddled like other babies, she didn't like being held and cuddled a lot- we desensitized her to that by wearing her in a Snuggli all the time and she slept in our bed with us. She was a very precocious baby though and very advanced in walking, talking(not much talking, but she had the ability to) and her motor coordination was advanced until she was about 2-3. She even was climbing out of her crib at 11 months old. By 18 months, we knew something was "off" and we briefly questioned whether she was autistic, but we dismissed it because her behaviors were so much like mine or my husband's as babies(we're both on the spectrum- unknown to us then). She would ritualistically line things up, would have severe meltdown if her lines of cars, Little People, shoes, etc got messed up. She would have such severe meltdowns that we had to hold her down for fear of her injuring herself. After a tantrum/meltdown, she was like a completely different child- it's like the meltdown "reset" her somehow and she was back to herself again.

She would not interact with family members she was not familiar with- we visited my dad out of state for a week- and my brother and sister too- and after an entire week, she still would not let Grandpa pick her up without screaming. She wasn't clingy to me though either- she just wanted to be left alone to play by herself or with pets. She also was easily overstimulated and would seek out her own sensory deprivation by crawling under piles of pillows and blankets where she would fall asleep(she still sleeps in a pile of blankets and still does this when she's on the verge of a meltdown). At about 3, we noticed how bad her motor coordination was. She could not ride a tricycle until she was 6- she couldn't steer and peddle at the same time. She did play with other kids and take an interest in them- briefly, then she'd be off to do her own thing.

I knew all along, but was in denial. We knew from 18 months old for sure that she was autistic, but we didn't know the ins and outs of Autism and it being a spectrum disorder until a few years ago when our daughter was 6. She was diagnosed officially at age 8 and is almost 10 now.