Earliest signs of autism spectrum condition, in a child?

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What are the earliest signs that a parent can reasonably detect, if a child is autistic, asperger's or inbetween? I guess this is a rather hard question to answer, as only parents who had both NT and autistic spectrum children, could answer from personal experience.... but I'm hoping there will be some respondents. Thanks in advance.

There was something mentioned in an article in Scientific American about mirror neurons that I thought was interesting. They say if someone sticks out their tongue at a newborn, the newborn (who has no conception of tongue) is hardwired to mimic the movement and stick out it's tongue too. Apparently autistic babies don't respond in the same way.

link ^
http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... -of-autism

Thanks a lot - really nice of you to help in this way! I'm forwarding the article to wife...

I bet it'd probably be pretty different according to where on the spectrum the child is, too. Assuming my child is diagnosed as AS (I say she is anyway), I can say she was pretty different as a toddler more than anyting else. When you have more than one child, they're all different from each other anyway, so I really couldn't speak for the baby years.

My NT daughter was always pretty social, even with strangers. Her "stranger anxiety" was mild for the most part.

My AS daughter really just never wanted anything to do with almost anyone outside of her immediate family. I have an old photo of her from when her older sister spent the day with her grandmother w/o her. If you thought a toddler couldn't show signs of depression, think again. We took her to the park to cheer her up, and she absolutely refused to go to the jungle gym or to interact with any of the children. Check it out:



OK, also had to show how cute she was back then, too

Last edited by MsLeeLoo on 05 Mar 2010, 9:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

In fact, the cuteness is the first thing I noticed. I would have not seen the depression on her face, if you didn't mention it. I still find it hard, but can somewhat make it out. But that's perhaps because I'm an aspie myself, which means, really crap at judging emotions from facial expressions.
Though I think I can figure out when my wife is angry at me, pretty well...

There is something called the childhood autism checklist that a pyschologist may use. It has about five questions.

Generally, it has to do with basic verbal communication and non-verbal communication along these lines: Does the child respond to his/her name? Does the child point his index finger to get something? Does the child respond to someone pointing their index finger as an instruction? Does the child engage in pretend play? Does the child engage in pretend play with others?

What you are going to find, is that psychologist stuff is kind of negative and doesn't describe exactly what you see, so read a lot, especially on the internet.

hth

http://www.bbbautism.com/diagnostics_psychobabble.htm

http://www.autismcanada.org/pdfs/PhysicianHandbook.pdf

Both of these are direct in their explanation, giving concrete examples of behavior

My son was late with all of his developmental milestones. I noticed that at 6 mos. he did not seem to be attempting to sit up. I asked the doctor, and she said some babies just take a bit longer. He did not attempt to crawl until 11 mos. when he started belly crawling. At 1 yr of age, he seemed very content to lay flat on his back and stare at the ceiling fan and flap his hands. He was not very interested in toys. He was not pointing. He did pull himself up at 13mos. He started crawling at 14 mos. Keep in mind, the average baby walks anywhere between 12-14 mos. Some earlier than that. He finally walked after much physical therapy at 21.5 mos.

He did babble and have words on target, and he had eye contact. He smiled and was loveable. He did not throw an unusual amount of tantrums. He was a horrible sleeper though.

I thought that once he started walking, he would be fine. Then right before his 2nd b-day, we realized he was memorizing all of his little books. and repeating phrases from tv. He had no interest in playing with other kids, and really did not play much by himself. He was not really using his words to communicate with us. He was just saying all of the words he knew in a non purposeful way.

We finally took him to a developmental pediatrician at 2.5 who diagnosed him with PDD_NOS which is on the autism spectrum. Shortly after that he started developing obsessive interests in car makes and models. Now he is into churches and all of the names of the different churches.

Overall, he is pleasant to be around. He just doesn't seem to "get" things like other kids. He has been in therapy since he was 1 yr old, and he is almost 5. He is speaking in full sentences now and his back and forth communication is improving. He still does not play with other children, but he will greet them and is not mean to them.

I guess even though he was not diagnosed until 2.5, I knew in my heart as early as 6 mos. that something was going on. I guess mothers have that instinct.

Keep in mind every case of autism is different. Several therapists that saw my son early on did not think that he was autistic. I kept going back and forth in my mind too. But I have read so much on the subject, I know that he is somewhere on the spectrum.

Good luck with your journey!

Aww, how cute! Poor girl.


To me, the obvious tipoff is that she seems to be sitting down more than just momentarily. Toddlers hardly ever do that on a playground!

mild tangent here-- with young children, does *where* one is in the spectrum have anything to do with when it really becomes apparent? It seems to me that high functioning folk tend to be diagnosed later than lower functioning autistic kids.

I am not an expert, just from my own experience. My son was definitely showing autistic traits (hand-flapping) by age one. He seems to be on the higher functioning end, but I am not sure if he has Asperger's or not. He was actually diagnosed as PDD_NOS.

As I wouldnt have known anything at the time about autism/AS I wouldnt have known the signs, although we knew he was showing signs of mild development delay. But here are the early ones in my son.

Delay in pointing (should be about 9mths),
Delay in putting arms up to be picked up.
Appeared deaf sometimes (but had no hearing problems)
Answering to his name inconsistantly
Giggled / laughed for no apparant reason
Lack of 'normal' interest in other children / siblings
Delay in talking



But he had no sensory issues, no problems with change, was happy to be in the company of others, had no repetitive behaviours, and was placid. He did catch up with all of the above in his own time. He started out with a diagnosis of mild developmental delay, then language disorder, then PDD-NOS, and now AS. He is now 5yrs xx

Just wanted to add..........MsLeeLoo - what a beautiful little girl. This picture doesnt look like a little girl who is depressed to me. She looks as if she is deep in 'observation'.

Her head might be bowed slightly, but her eyes are right up there having a good look at whats going on, and taking it all in by the looks of it.

Funny how the same picture can portray different emotions to different people

As a matter of fact, I wouldn't really mind if my son turned out to be an aspie. At least he would have someone (his daddy) to help him deal with his special condition, and he could be a great resource for humankind. However, having an autistic child would prove to be a challenge, I guess. But from what I have read so far, diagnosing autism earlier rather than later, may prove crucial for treating the condition.


Thanks everybody, for your extremely precious input. I am still in the process of digesting and processing the new information. My wife says she is sure he's not autistic, because "he communicates with me". Hm... I find that hard to believe, since he is barely 4 weeks old, but ok...

I wonder about that myself. I'm somewhat skeptical about the "genetic" theory for Asperger's; while it certainly does seem to be rather heritable, lots of things are inherited that are not genetic.

In my own case, while I had one parent who was a native English speaker, I spent almost all of my first two years in Mandarin and Cantonese speaking parts of the world. Then I became nearsighted soon after coming back to the U.S. after age 2. Given that background, it would have been pretty amazing if I had actually learned neurotypical style processing of English with facial expressions, given the limited overlap between exposure to English and ability to see facial expressions.

Then again, I evidently did exhibit some examples of aspie style focus early on. Evidently when I was finally exposed to lots of English in an American nursery school, I didn't actually start speaking it for a long while - but when I did start, it was in complete sentences. I guess I didn't want to start using this new language until I really knew how!

Last edited by psychohist on 06 Mar 2010, 11:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.