What clued you/them in?

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My thesis is that children must be diagnosed at a young age and in order to do this there must be people educated on the topic, such as parents, primary school children and medical workers.

I am willing for any constructive criticism, if you have any thoughts on the matter.

You can use what I have written.

You may use anything I've written if it proves helpful to you. My son has already been discussed in two graduate school thesis's already (one before diagnosis, one after), so why not one more? Lol, I don't why they keep picking him, actually - I'm assuming it's a compliment of sorts, so please don't anyone point out to me all the other possibilities.

We were clued in when my son was just past 2 years old.
Zero speech.
Severe tantrums.
Poop smearing.
Head banging.
Lining up toys.
Fixation with cars and wheels.
Did not gesture as other toddlers do.
Nearly nonexistent eye contact.
Little interaction with similarly aged children though they were present at a babysitter's house.
Very limited diet.
Hyper-sensitive to light and sound.
Did I mention severe tantrums? I will never forget them.
When he did begin to speak, we had extreme echolalia that persisted for about 2 years and finally faded. *Still will crop up when he is stressed, though.
Late walker--17 months old for his first steps.
Played with toys inappropriately or not at all.

The big one for us was total lack of social development. Our child was always a bit slower than average with milestones (except for talking, he spoke early and had a large and somewhat technical vocabulary), but as he got older it became more and more obvious that he wasn't taking the first steps towards learning how to converse, socialise and make friends. He doesn't "get" the most basic rules of social interaction. For example, he won't say hello, goodbye, or any social niceties that don't actually have information content. He won't look at the person he is meant to be speaking to. If someone asks him a question he will just look through the person and pretend he hasn't heard. (It's definitely pretending, though, because he can repeat what the person said word for word, even weeks later). He has great difficulty conceptualising or reading others' feelings and non verbal communication, for example at almost five he still can't distinguish between a "happy face" and a "sad face", and he will ask me whether I am angry when I'm clearly not. He is selectively mute, but when he does decide to talk to somebody he will go on and on about whatever he's interested in regardless of the fact that the other person is sick of it. He will ignore any change of topic and keep going back to his topic again and again.

We didn't notice anything! My son's Sunday school teacher commented to me that she found that he coped with instructions better if she broke them down into small steps. At the time I was a bit offended! He was 4. reading ( self- taught) and ALWAYS talking. We just thought he was a bit quirky, but very bright. I mentioned it to his preschool teacher who said "now that you mention it, I have noticed similar things." We took him to a psychologist who immediately suspected AS. She formally tested him as has a speech pathologist and a paediatrician who all agree. Now that we have a diagnosis, it all makes sense!! We now have so many answers to the reasons for his behaviour. As our eldest child, we didn't notice how he really was quite different from other kids. From a very young age he was only interested in engaging with adults, and still has to ask adults to "interpret" what the other children are doing in their play. I have always called him an "attention junkie!" and my friends now comment that they noticed he was really hard work as an infant compared to their kids ( but no - one mentioned it to me).

It was prescool that brought the issue to us parents after a ADHD and ADD diagnose. I could hardly spend my life in the same room of my yongest son. We simply got under the skin of eachother and argued ourselves to death.... And nobody of us would change standing point. According to my ex we're so darn similar that it can't be anything but genetics that gives him the darn stubborness.

For a 10 year old he's having an IQ of 139, and he's 7. And he's got the most logical and akward questions like can diamonds melt and how does a electron look like?

1. covering his ears
2. not answering questions, just repeated them
3. constant repeating of entire movies, etc.
4. did I say, covering his ears??? I think that was the big one...

PS - we are in the process of moving and it has taken a toll on me as I start to see how many pictures we have with his ears closed...we raised concerns, and nobody listened...for years...

My youngest is obsessed with fireworks. My mid son is yellow cars. I cook. My daughter is into fishing so this summer she's going to learn fly fishing....