Signs of AS in babies

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Just wondering what sorts of behavioural differences/oddities parents noticed about their spectrum children and how early did you notice these things?

I have a three and a half month old and my mother mentioned the other day that she thinks that he is a bit of a different baby. The first thing she mentioned was his obsession with the ceiling fan, on or off he loves it. My husband was walking him to sleep the other day and he had to not walk him under the fan (even though it was off) because his eyes would just open and he would stare up at it. He loves looking up at it and giggling away. I did a google search for babies loving ceiling fans and it does seem like a fairly common thing and not at all a sign of autism... though maybe the fascination with spinning objects later on is a sign of autism.

Mum also mentioned the fact that he hates new places that are loud and bright. We took him to the shopping centre and he just cried... He was also really unsettled when we went to the restaurant for the Christmas do. She also thinks he is much more curious about his environment than normal babies. I tend to think that babies have really different personalities so it would be hard to say just on those things. I just thought I'd ask about other parents experiences anyway... or maybe even your parents experiences if they have told you anything about yourself as a child/baby.

I should point out that I'm not really looking to diagnose him this early. It wasn't even something I was thinking about until mum brought it up. My husband and I are both on the spectrum though, so there is a possibility that our son will be too and I was curious about things that we might be able to look for as he grows up.

all babies are alittle odd to grown-up eyes in their behavoirs relax. Give him lots of love and lots of intresting things to look at and handle as he grows. If he has AS not much you guys can do about it at this point anyway so just enjoy your baby and if he does you'll be on top of it fast because you are aware that it can happen.

Oh, I do know that all babies are different and have odd little quirks. As I said, I don't actually want to diagnose him, it's really just a curiousity thing to find out about other parents experiences. AS or NT, it doesn't make any difference to us. We don't want to change him... just curious to hear about things that parents might have noticed early on in their children who were later diagnosed.

One of the signs is dislike of being held.

I have read in several place about the Tilt Test for babies.

The idea is to sit them on your knee facing away from you and tilt them to each side at a 45 degree angle and the child with suspected autism will keep their head in line with their body but the child who is not will move their head back.

I recall my mom saying that she thought my hands and feet seemed abnormally small and underdeveloped (I was supposedly born late, but underweight)...and that my motor skills were extra clumsy, so she would work with me on those issues...I mean..I was her first child, and I'd imagine that most babies have bad motor skills....I don't know whether I talked early or late, but I was told that I skipped babbling and went straight to sentences...probably as a toddler..I think I started reading shortly after I started talking, for whatever that might be worth...

Skipping babbling can be a sign. Also skipping crawling, going right to walking. Something matters about the planful nature of putting each hand forward. My son didn't have these signs and really wasn't diagnosed with anything until age 8 or 9 (and even now it's wishy-washy), but transitions from naps to wake up, when leaving the playground, etc. were just awful for him. I also remember he was soooo frustrated when he couldn't figure out how to crawl right away (couldn't make his body do what his mind wanted).

I don't know for sure how young you can tell but I think AS starts to become obvious because a lot of us are quite late walking. I never liked being touched by anyone other than my Mum, Dad or Grandparents. I never crawled either, I used to shuffle along the floor on my ass instead! For some reason I don't think crawling was logical to me because it means that your head is facing downwards rather than straight-ahead! The repetitive behaviour is really obvious once it starts and on top of that I've never met anyone able-bodied who was worse at sports than me. It definitely won't be rocket-science to find out but there's no point worrying about it because it will be obvious and once it's obvious you can just take your little one to the doctors and get him diagnosed so he can have the best chance in life.

I think that 3 and a half months old is just too early to detect anything, maybe you will have to wait longer. I read that only at 6 months the signs appear and those are: tendency to fixate on objects, reduced social interaction, and lack of facial expression, infrequent eye contact, not smiling in response to smiles from others. By six months babies will likely turn their heads toward sounds and familiar voices but babies with autism may fail to respond to such noise stimulus. Also a sign that happens later is not pointing or using other gestures or babbling by 12 months. Follow if your baby is reaching the developmental milestones proper of his age if not talk to a pediatrician.

Well, if they start talking to obsessively about trains or state capitals it may be a sign they have aspergers.

Two things really stand out about my daughter's infancy above the other quirky things. #1 she swayed her head back and forth rhythmically very often. #2 she hated being in the car, even from a very tiny infant (still hates the car now). She was very difficult to soothe (and still is). My daughter did not speak any words until around 2.5 years old. Before that age, she only grunted.

Everyone's different so everyone will present differently but those are my distinct memories. And unlike most stories of autistic youth my dd did not stiffen always when held. She constantly wanted to be held by me or carried in the sling (think pressure) but she shied from others (still does at almost 7 yo). My brother was the typical, stiffened when held, but he was very quiet with not a lot of meltdowns. He was almost introspective from birth. Today he is a 38 yo industrial designer, still undiagnosed, pretty antisocial but absolutely brilliant.

They say you can not detect autism in very young infants but I bet if you asked most parents there will be things that were off from the very start.

I work and communicate with a lot of "I get it" parents and it is very clear that the sensory differentials are there from birth. My child had are hard time with brest feeding and is still "food defensive" to a significant extent.

bookwormde

I had a lot of signs from the day I was born. My mother said holding me was like holding a sack of potatoes, that she couldn't get me to smile when she would tickle me, that I cried a lot and didn't know how to nurse or suckle. By eight months I had to be taken to the hospital with symptoms of failure to thrive after I became severely malnourished and finally stopped crying and would only lay on my back staring straight ahead. Then afterward I was force fed as my mother put it until I finally stopped vomitting the food back up. My mother wasn't a very bright or sensitive person but she did notice throughout my life that there was something very odd, different and rather strange and peculiar about me and that I was very different from her other children.

My daughter didn't cry like other babies. She cried for a few seconds the moment she was born then promptly fell asleep for 20 hours.

She started screaming for food, not just milk, at 6-8 weeks. All the professionals told me not to give her any as she was too young but she would scream and scream and scream. One teaspoon of mashed banana later and she was quiet as a mouse again for the rest of the day.

She also never crawled. She went straight from not going anywhere to walking at 8 months.

Most of her development milestones were reached way before normal. I remember the health visitor rolling a ball in front of her at one point when she was a few months old. She was checking to see if she followed it's progress with her eyes. She did it a few times because she says she couldn't believe what she was seeing. My daughter's eyes followed the ball until it rolled under the tv, then she lent back to see if it came out the other side. The health visitor said that in 35 years she had never seen a baby of that age make the connection between it disappearing at one side and it reappearing at the other. They usually stopped following it as soon as it disappeared from view.

Also, I don't know if this has anything to do with AS or not, my daughter's teeth came through funny. Normally babies get the bottom two middle ones, then the top two middle ones and then the fill out sideways from there. My daughter got her top 2 canines first, then her bottom 2 canines and then no more for about a year. She was like a little vampire.

Or the total opposite. My son never wanted to be put down.

As for early signs ... I think you see them looking back, but not at the time. Too many could mean something else. What you see looking backwards is generally a child of extremes, who was "different" in some way no one could define. Either incredibly difficult, or incredibly easy, with a muddle of individual traits for everything else, but rarely just "average."

I think all the rest is wives tales, personally.

This is a very interesting discussion. I think we can all look back and see signs, like a previous poster commented, but at the time they could mean any number of things.

My daughter hardly ever cried. She didn't show much emotion at all. She didn't smile much either. She was obsessed with her hands. My mom said "I've never seen a child so young study her hands so much." She just seemed all around content to observe her surroundings. She arched her back a lot...so much so that we had her evaluated by EI when she was about 6 months old. She wasn't quite behind far enough then to get services, but she was behind. She had low muscle tone and still does. She also didn't eat much at all (and still doesn't). They diagnosed her with reflux, but the medication never stopped her back arching. Again, she was a VERY content baby...didn't need to be held much, just wanted to observe. When she was 18 months old, we found out that she was profoundly deaf, so we figured that these strange behaviors were due to that. As a toddler, she would lay on the floor and rock. I knew something was wrong, but it wasn't all the time. She also banged her head on her crib pretty often. Again, we attributed it to her deafness and her vestibular system because messed up. When we found out she was deaf, we started signing with her and she took off with it. She learned SO many signs so quickly, but they were all academic signs. Of course, I thought my baby was a genius. At 2 yrs 3 months, she got her first cochlear implant (a device that allows deaf people to hear). Her therapists were all amazed at how quickly she caught on. It was less than a year and her spoken language skills were caught up to her peers. They, of course, were thrilled. Her articulation is still difficult to get down, but her language is amazing. Now looking back, we know why she caught up so quickly. Her pragmatic language, of course, is still quite far behind.

So, again, looking back, I can see the signs....but at the time, I had no idea what I was looking for. I just went along with what everyone said. She was a late bloomer. Crawled at 10 or 11 months, walked at 16 months. It was just who she was. I sure wish I would have known, but can't change the past, right? Her deafness really masked a lot of the symptoms because everyone thought her social deficits were due to no hearing for the first 2 years of her life. It wasn't until she was in a class with a wonderful teacher who had tons of experience with deaf kids that we realized that she wasn't like other deaf kids. Even her ENT (who implanted her with 2nd ear when she was 4), rolled his eyes when I told him she was diagnosed with AS. Apparently, it's somewhat common. But there is definitely something else there...it's quite apparent now that she's 7 and still can't function socially on a level above a 3 year old.