To ask you your experiences of autism signs in your toddler?

[FindingDory11]

Long time lurker of MN and posting here for traffic as I'm worried.
The nursery my son goes to recently mentioned that my son walks on his tip toes a lot, I didn't think anything of it but I just googled and this can be a sign of Autism, he has a few other symptoms as well but I thought these were just behaviours a toddler displayed anyway.
So as not to drip feed I'll try and give as much detail as possible, my son is 20 months old and has been saying a few words and seems to have a really good relationship with everyone he comes to close contact with regularly, he's a bit unsure of other children to start with but soon gets on with things.
The nursery also mentioned that he gets upset when his key worker leaves the room as he is closer to her than the others.
DS also spins around in circles and laughs and is quite clumsy and he doesn't seem to have any concept of danger or body limitations (I.e just keeps knocking into things and climbing on things) (apparently these are more signs of autistic behaviour)
I just thought he was being a little boy and was just a late starter speech wise but now I'm worried about a possible autism diagnosis about how I'd cope, I've spoken to a few mums who have autistic children and they are physically and mentally exhausted and I'm not sure how I could cope.
I'm sorry if this comes across like I wouldn't want an autistic child because I love him to the moon and back and I would never love him less because of a diagnosis but I just worry about how well I could cope.
Does anyone else have any experiences with this kind of behaviour?

Thank you

when my son was 1 nursery pointed out he seemed to not hear them. I took him to the doctors and he was referred to the hospital and turned out he had fluid in his ears, 6 months later all was fine and he was discharged.

2 years old he didn't speak at all and health visitor refered him to speech therapy.

By 3 years old a lot of people mentioned autism and some people would even self diagnose him autistic because of his behaviours. He had always been obsessed with clothing tags, he didn't like change and couldn't cope with new shoes,clothes etc. He liked to play alone rather than with other kids.

By 4 his speech came along and by 4.5 his speech was all there.

He turns 5 next week and I have absolutely no concerns. He just learnt about the world in a different way to the majority. The gap between him and his classmates has reduced massively and he is just like any normal 5 year old. As his teacher said to me, 'kids just learn at different paces and 4 is still a very young age, some children just are not ready to learn at that age so see things completely different to others'

Back when my son was 3/4 I was really annoyed how they won't diagnose autism go get you extra help until your child is 6/7 years old but now I am glad they don't label children so young as it's clear my son has nothing wrong he was simply unique. X

Mine was exactly like yours was and now (as far as we know) is not autistic. To be honest it never came up, but maybe if nursery had mentioned something I would have worried. Incidentally I thought all small children like spinning round because the fluid in their inner ear is much more fluid than adults, so the sensation of being dizzy is less unpleasant than it is for us...