Hi everyone,
I have a 19mo girl (20months on 2nd Nov). She is amazing and has a huge list of positives. She’s a great talker and is using 2 word sentences, beginning to use 3 sometimes. She seems to learn new words everyday at the moment! Developmentally she’s done everything that she “should have” on time, and she passes the MCHAT and asq screeners.
I’m ashamed to admit I’ve spiralled a bit about autism and am stuck down the rabbit hole. I’ve spent ages scrolling on (what I think is) a predominantly US forum which hasn’t helped at all. It seems a huge emphasis is based on toddlers pointing and then looking back/making eye contact when pointing to share interest, which my LG isn’t really doing. She has maybe done it a few times but it’s certainly not frequent. She definitely points to share interest (e.g points to a plane and says “plane”), but just doesn’t look back at me. This has then caused me to worry about other things, for example this morning she was sitting in front of me doing a jigsaw book thing and she spoke while doing it (e.g said “apple” when putting the apple piece into the jigsaw), but didn’t look at me at all while doing it. She’s generally a very independent toddler, and while she enjoys playing with us she’s also happy to play alone.
She does make eye contact at other times and will do it sometimes when pointing to request, but definitely not as much as other toddlers her age I’ve seen who look at their caregivers so much.
Do I have valid concerns or am I just a bit stuck on something that’s probably nothing to worry about really?