Worried about my little one ...

[Tommy2015]

Good Afternoon All

I am new here and after some advice please.

My little boy is 2 years and 9 months.
I have never once thought for a second that he may shows signs of autism, i have trailed through the internet there are so many signs its hard to know if he has it or not. The reason i am questioning now as someone who i have spoken to who's child has autism keeps saying oh so and so does this or that whatever my little boy is doing, so i am assuming she thinks my child has the same.

My boy plays with other children in the parks. loves his cars, fire engines. Talks alot and has a wide Vocab and strings lots of sentences together. Loves a tantrum or 2. Fussy eater, but aren't most kids?

He is obsessed and likes to press the bell in the mornings at pre-school and has a moan if he doesn't get to do it.

Can anyone advise how their child is with autism who is around the same age? so i can compare

Any help please

thank you ladies x

Sounds like this Mum is trying to be helpful but is actually making you very worried. I’m no good at Maths so he may be too old for the M-Chat test which would help to put your mind at rest

It is very difficult diagnosing high functioning autism at this age precisely because so many of the behaviours that might be signs in an older child are also normal toddler behaviour. I'd definitely place insistence on pressing the bell in that category: it's just what 2yos do.

Sounds to me like the other mum might just be feeling a bit isolated and seeking common ground. I would ignore for the time being (and stop trawling the internet!).

Have experience of similar behaviour for other parent at a later stage in my life: kept insisting that I must do for my dd whatever had worked well for her autistic ds. The thing was, my dd did have quite genuine SN, but it was a different kind of SN, and I could never get my friend to understand that what worked well for her would be disastrous for my child. I think the truth was, she just needed to feel there was common ground. I learnt to nod and smile.

I think that if you have one child, you don't know if a trait is individual to your child or everyone does it. Is it possible that the other mum means " I didn't know that NT kids did this too" rather than "Your child has autism"

It's impossible for anyone to say whether your child is or not but NT children get obsessed with stuff (the number of times my kids argued about who presses the buttons in lifts and road crossings!) , tantrum (Words like Terrible Twos and Threenager mean that they are super common) and can be fussy eaters too.

My son has autism and he did so much that other ‘typical’ children did. Sometimes a friend will be talking about their children and I’ll tell them DS did the same. Then I panic that I’ve offended them as my DS has autism. But in some ways he was just a typical tot!! Us parents are always comparing our kids with other parents aren’t we!

So I wouldn’t worry too much! Your son sounds fab! I really wouldn’t worry as I highly doubt you have anything to worry about.

At his age my high functioning son didn’t say a word, never babbled, he wouldn’t sit still (like ever), had absolutely no sense of danger, ran off a lot (yes many typical toddlers run off), he had some major obsessions, struggled with loud noises and didn’t really understand how to communicate or play with children and sharing was a complete no no. All 2 year olds can struggle to share but my son is 7 now and struggles. You could always tell he was a little different about him. He is 7 and doing fab now btw! 😊