Development frustration

[cloudxo]

I've recently been spending quite a lot of time researching and trying to understand my daughter she's coming close to 2 years old and is quite clearly autistic. She is like a baby still, non responsive, non verbal, the only communication she has is the change in pitch when she hums when she's happy, exited, frustrated. She doesn't even babble, she has many repetitive behaviours including rocking, flapping, pacing. Regardless I have been trying to understand her and get an idea of what the future may look like for us and along the way I've came across so many post about parents that are concerned because there 18 month old only speaks 3 words or because they can clap, point, understand but cannot wave. It makes me feel like shit. Makes me feel like I've failed my daughter, I shouldn't be frustrated with strangers that are just concerned about their child, I know they have every right to be concerned it's part of parenthood but i do get frustrated and It does bother be I think to myself count yourself lucky you child isn't as 'severe' as mine. It hurts so bad that I don't understand my daughter and I worry massively if she'll ever be able to do anything for herself. I'm rambling now.. just needed to get that off my chest.

I understand how you feel - my ds1 was the same and I also read about other autistic children or developmentally 'delayed' children who were actually much more advanced than ds1. Failing even in the special needs category is extremely hard to cope with emotionally and few understand as many assume your child is also in the 'slow but basically ok' category. ds1 is nearly 21 now though and I also now see the adult versions of higher level autistic children and they have struggles of their own. Higher level children can often go through childhood and school without the wide range of profound difficulties that our children have but when they age out of school, it gets a lot tougher for them and they are more aware of their differences. Try to build a friendship group around parents who have children similar to yours and try to look away from the catch up/success stories as they are very emotionally draining at your stage.