If autism is obvious at 2, is it severe?

I'm afraid I can't remember when he did start speaking. I know nursery and a Health Visitor raised concerns. I feel like maybe he got to the top of the waiting list during covid, which would have made him 2 to 3 years old? He was talking by then. I had to look up what a gestalt language processor is, but no, he wasn't.

I'm fine with using terms like mild etc, and I agree with you. He does get high rate DLA, but I would actually say his autism is fairly 'mild'. As in, most other parents we hang out with don't realise he is autistic unless we tell them (they view him as a little quirky, or a character I think). He has ADHD as well, and can be quite exuberant, which I actually thinks masks his autism a bit. He will likely struggle with life more as he gets older but he is currently a happy little guy.

Great to hear your little one is responding to questions. I'm afraid I don't have enough experiece in speech delays to reassure you, as although my son was delayed it wasn't severely long.

Yes he did have a speech delay. He was in a waiting list for SALT (advised by NHS) but by the time he finally got to the top of the list he was speaking so they never gave him SALT. In hindsight I should have pushed for it! He was less delayed with speech than your son. He has SALT and OT sessions these days (after a long battle I got him an EHCP). He's achieving amazingly well - exceeding expectations in almost everything. He's in Year 2 now and is a happy chap. He loves school, he has friends, and he does clubs. I realise now I'm probably autistic as well and that gives me hope for him! Hope your son is doing well.

How is your child now OP?

My son is autistic. It was obvious to me well before he was 1, though everyone dismissed me. He finally got his diagnosis at 5 (this year).

He is a delight. He is in a mainstream school, is working at expected levels in everything (except social emotional stuff) and is brilliant at maths. He has friends and hobbies. He has just finished Reception and loves school.

So honestly, you just can't tell. Best of luck to you and your child.

@Flop2023 we had - still have - that same issue of needing to cross the road at specific places, or not being able to cross the road at all in some places! It is so frustrating trying to find workarounds to get to places you need to get to (i.e. how the hell do I get him to the eye doctor across the road without having to leave an hour early and take a round trip bus journey just to get to the other side of the road?? 😅)

It does seem to come with a very developed sense of direction and geography though, even from a really young age. Before DS was three I took him for a walk and let him decide the directions we took at each junction of the road and he led us all the way to the biscuit aisle of the shop a half mile away from our house 😂the rigid routines are clearly developed through strong motivation and determination!

Hi OP, I was exactly where you were just under a year ago (and to some extent am still here). Our DC sound alike. Last summer I began to realise my then 2.5 year old, whilst verbal, was very repetitive in his speech and wasn't able to ask and answer questions in the same way that his older brother had at that age. Googling quickly led me to echolalia of course. But he had always been engaged in family life, relatively placid, and affectionate, so I waited - and had some trouble convincing my husband of my concerns anyway.

He turned moved into the 3+ room at nursery, where they immediately clocked a whole raft of issues that had flown under the radar in the toddler room - repetitive behaviour, inability to complete multi-step instructions, short attention span, and indifference to the other children. Nursery were fab and never said 'autistic', saying they were not qualified to diagnose (true), but we all know that's what it is. Husband, to his credit, did a total 180 and is fully on board.

Like you I have taken comfort from DC's positive relationships with us, his brother, his grandparents and some of his keyworkers - important 'building blocks' to socialisation. His autism is now blindingly obvious to those of us in the know - at home we see classic flapping and jumping. We can however still access our community without too many challenges. He's just cracked riding his balance bike and responds to 'stop' and 'wait'. His speech has developed, he talks a lot and some of it is functional, lots of echolalia still, he is not conversational and still can't answer questions. He sleeps better, but eating is more rigid. He now has more obvious routines and rituals which do cause meltdowns if not followed - things like crossing the road in certain places or touching a particular tree - but they are easy to accomodate for now. He is nearly 4 but is more like a young 2. Strangers (and even some family members we do not care to share such personal info with) mostly do not clock his differences but, to use a PP's phrase, it's clear to us he is profoundly affected by his autism and I suspect the gap will widen between him and other children in time.

Like you I find looking ahead to his future scary. Our current challenge is toilet training, which isn't going brilliantly, and looking ahead to reception in 2025. He has taught me so much, is an absolute delight, and is more straightforward in many ways than my fiery (but awesome) NT 6yo.

I've been on a huge learning journey the past 9 months and I just hope I can always do what is best for him. Feel free to PM if you ever wish x

"At 11 I still have no clear picture of what his adulthood will be like and I find this very hard."

I can relate so much to this!

I think if you know what you are looking for, which you do, you will probably notice earlier. Families where the first child is autistic often say that they didn’t realise how different they were as infants and toddlers until they had a subsequent neurotypical child.

I have a child who I noticed was a bit different before he turned 1. I considered and dismissed autism because of one aspect of his behaviour when he was maybe 2-3yrs. I assumed he couldn’t be autistic because he did something, and did it well, that the stereotypical autistic child is supposed to be bad at. He got a diagnosis at 4.

At 11 he can sometimes pass for neurotypical, is intelligent, but is in specialist provision because of his autism. I think many people would classify his autism as mild, yet it has a very profound effect on him. At 11 I still have no clear picture of what his adulthood will be like and I find this very hard.

Such a fabulous post, @Ellie56. Lovely to hear DS is doing amazing.

When our son with autism was 3, he had virtually no language, no social skills, the concentration span of a gnat, exhibited bizarre behaviour and regularly had meltdowns.

When he went to school at 5, he still had poor language skills, no social skills and had no idea how to behave. He regularly lay down in assembly, refused to co operate in class and used to hit the staff and other children, and growl aggressively.

He was not diagnosed with autism until he was nearly 8. By this time the hitting and lying down in assembly had stopped, and he was conforming more at school, but we noticed his behaviour at home was much worse. It was as though he was only just managing to hold it together for the time he was at school and then all hell let loose when he got home - meltdowns, throwing things, climbing out of windows, threatening us with knives etc. and at times I really feared for the future.

I now realise a lot of this was down to his school not giving him the right provision and the right level of support . The gap between him and his peers was widening all the time and he was really struggling. At the end of year 2 he had been functioning at age appropriate levels but by year 6 he was well behind the others in his class as lessons became harder and more abstract.

Despite this, by the time he was 11, our son bore no resemblance to the little boy he had been when he first started school, although he still struggled with language, was emotionally immature and still needed a lot of support at school.

He went to a fabulous secondary school where they put in virtually 1:1 support all the time and he settled really well in a very short space of time. They also put him in small groups for English and maths and worked on his social skills. Although he still found things difficult at school he made progress and all the behaviour problems we had up to then stopped. I believe this was because he was given the right support at school, by people who understood autism, and were experienced in this field.

He has continued to improve all the time. He has developed a sense of humour and is very caring. When he was 16 I couldn't envisage him ever living away from us or doing anything on his own. I thought then that eventually, we would end up later in life, a doddery old couple with a 40 year old man trailing round after us wherever we went. The idea of our son even catching a bus by himself was unthinkable.

Four years later, after training , he was able catch the bus back home from college. He is now 29 and regularly goes out on his own in the local area which he is familiar with, and often catches a bus into town or some other local place. He can use a mobile phone and always takes it with him and keeps it switched on, so we can keep in contact with him. At first he had a cheap phone that he could just take calls and text on. Then he learned you could do loads of other things on phones and he asked for a smartphone of his own, so he could do all those things too.

As the years have gone by, we have met many challenges, but our son has continued to develop in his own pace. Mainstream FE was a disaster as the staff had no clue about autism and just expected him to fit in with everyone else. Not surprisingly the placement fell down and our son was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder after nearly having a nervous breakdown.

When he was 21 he went to a specialist residential college for students with autism, 160 miles away from home, where the staff were absolutely fabulous. He spent 3 years there and achieved far more than I ever thought possible.
He learnt independent living skills, improved his communication skills, did work experience dealing with the public at several tourist attractions, and acquired GCSE and NVQ level 3 qualifications.

He learnt to cook, to do his washing and ironing, and to manage money. He learnt to travel independently and regularly travelled home on the train from Somerset to Staffordshire by himself, which involved changing trains. His confidence improved and his self assurance became more and more apparent as time went on. He now has a part time job and is living in his own place (with some support) when I once thought he'd be living with us for ever.

I had no idea my daughter was autistic until she was 3 and her nursery said they wanted to refer her for assessment. She had a few words at 2 but it was generally naming objects and at 3 she was using echolalia and scripts to communicate. It was during COVID orid probably have noticed more differences between her and other kids. She didn't point or follow pointing but did make eye contact with us and smiled so I never really considered ASD. I just thought she was a really difficult toddler.

Her autism was actually more obvious once her speech progressed I think. She is very bright but has a lot of social and emotional delays. I'm hoping one day she will be independent with minimal support but she's only 7 so who knows.

Sorry, I didn't respond to some of your questions.

• DS didn't point until we manually taught him, at around 2.5yo
• He started using functional single words around that time (mainly "biscuit" haha)
• By around 3yo he was reciting whole sections of the Gruffalo and before 3.5yo he was using scripts from Julia Donaldson books to communicate in a classic GLP way - i.e. he would say "I am Stickman" to tell us he was upset, because there was a scene in the movie where the character is upset and he attached that emotion to the phrase
• At some point between 4-5yo he started breaking down those scripts and now at 5.5yo he uses a mix of original, functional language, and scripts which I think he mainly uses as stims

At 2.5 we used the book A Better Start for your Child with Autism - it outlines the Early Start Denver Model approach to building communication and shared attention/interests. Newer books and approaches may be even better, but I think the underlying principle of building connection and communication through your child's interests and preferred activities is the foundation for all these approaches.

Now that his speech has progressed, and his sensory differences are easier to see and try to understand, we use:

• the Meaningful Speech resources for GLPs
• sensory activities recommended in the Out of Sync books (though we're still trying to wrap our head around this)

We're still very early in the journey too, but I guess it's just important to say that you should absolutely have hope and be optimistic. And that you can play a really important role in shaping your DC's future, that it's not all set in stone because of a potential diagnosis. But it sounds like you're already on board with this idea and getting stuck in! Honestly, well done and just keep learning and supporting your DC xx

You can request an EHCNA yourself. IPSEA and SOSSEN are charities who support parents of DC with with SEN. They both have lots of helpful information on their websites, including model letters you can use to request an EHCNA.

Has an EHCNA been requested? If an EHCP is issued, SALT in excess of what is typically available can be included in there without you having to pay for it.

That's so great - well done! Yes, in our area, the speech therapy support from the NHS is really just recommended reading for parents/teachers as well, not providing actual speech therapy sessions. So it's good to just cut to the chase and get on with things, rather than wait for support that's never going to arrive!

When our son was 2.5 we did something quite similar (though you may be working with more up to date info) and it did get us to the point of him enthusiastically using language, but it was mainly delayed echolalia. Once we realised that, we started following approaches for Gestalt Language Processors (there's tons on social media about this that can lead you to more robust info). If you find when your DS starts speaking that he can recite whole pages or even whole books, but doesn't construct his own simple sentences, this might be relevant for you.

Good for you following your instincts. If you're wrong, at worst, you may be doing some extra parenting, but it's not going to hurt anything. But if you're right, then you'll have acted early and put in place some early intervention that will have long term benefits, which you'll never regret. My only regret is not trusting my instincts sooner.

My DS sounded almost word for word like yours at 2yo, and he is now 5.5yo and does have a diagnosis of ASD. I was in the same boat as you, seeing the red flags but also the things like eye contact and cuddles that "surely" meant he wasn't autistic but he is indeed!

In equal measure, your DC is only 2 and a lot can change month by month, so don't in any way consider this as a diagnosis! It's good you are trusting your gut instinct though, despite people telling you otherwise (EVERYONE told me to calm down and stop imagining things - his nursery, HV, family, etc). Learning about autism now, in case you are correct, isn't a bad thing.

For what it's worth, our DS does speak (though still has a significant speech delay), attends mainstream (though struggles), and is getting additional support for things like speech and sensory integration. He's only 5, and although he does need help on these things it's also clear how intelligent he is - he's learning phonics at a similar pace to his peers, has a startlingly good memory, really cheeky sense of humour, and surprised me lately with how much his awareness and understanding of other people's emotions has come on in the last few months. It's a lot of work to help him in the areas where he needs it, but it's also so worth it because I'm optimistic about what the future holds for him.

Because autism is a difference in neurotype, its really really difficult to declare how "severe" or not their symptoms will be when they're older (agree it's not a simple sliding scale of mild to severe, but I understand why you're asking). Each individual develops differently based on their unique nature/nurture, genetic/environmental factors. Rather than worrying about what may or may not be set in place due to genetics, I would look at what you can do now in terms of early intervention to help steer that trajectory because, luckily, you are thinking about this early. There's a lot that parents can do at home to help support DC to develop joint attention, communication and language skills at such a young age, which can make a real difference to future outcomes.

how nursery applied and received SEN inclusion funding for your son?