Wondering if 22 month old could have autism

[JenAM]

Hi,

I just wanted some advice from anyone who may have been through a similar situation. My daughter is 22 months and while she says a good number of words and continues to say new ones, she doesn’t point at things or respond to her name. I can’t really remember if she did this before lockdown. Her nursery never raised this as a concern with me back in February and I never thought it was a problem, but I am becoming increasingly worried that she’s not doing these things now. She also doesn’t do much creative play with me or follow commands apart from sometimes when I ask her to sit down.
She is able to use words like ‘more’ ‘no’ ‘all gone’ in the right context. And sometimes says please and thank you.
The HV and GP have put it down to the lockdown and a lack of stimulation for so long but they haven’t seen her in person and it was only done on telephone conversation - so I’m not sure I should be satisfied with just this assessment.
Any advice on this would be much appreciated. Thanks

A child not pointing to request and to share interests by 18M old is always concerning - back in February she would have been 17M old so not concerning. No distal pointing by 18M doesn't automatically mean autism but it does increases it's likelihood, specially if she is not pretend playing or following simple commands. How does she request things? if she does not point to request is she using the words she knows to request? it would be atypical language development if she is acquiring large numbers of words but is unable to use a large part of them to meet her needs. How does she share her interests with you? like a plane in the sky, or a squirrel running up a tree, etc. How does she score on the MCHAT or ASQ 22M? she is still young and skills develop very rapidly at this age but I would certainly keep a close eye on her development and bring these concerns up on her two year health check.

Thanks for your reply @AladdinMum, that’s a good point that she wouldn’t have been expected to do those things in February.
She requests things by either saying the word if she knows it or like if she wants to go to bed she will pick up her teddy and go into the kitchen where we keep the dummies and wait for me.
If she shares something with us while we are out she’ll say something like tree or flower or cloud - if she can’t say it I don’t think she wants to bother with it. Scored medium risk on the M Chat. It’s really hard to know, I’m just feeling quite helpless at the moment.