Hi all,
Very anxious FTM (son is 9 months) and first time posting so please be gentle haha!
My son was the easiest baby - a bit on the serious side with others but always happy, smiley and giggly at home. For the last month or two he’s been very whingy for the first time and smiling back less, although I think it’s due to him getting frustrated he can’t crawl yet (he’s getting closer) and we’ve had a trickier bout of teething recently.
The thing making me so anxious is that he’s yet to babble or make any consonant sounds other than the odd ‘g’ and ‘w’. No ‘ba’, ‘ma’ etc and certainly no repeated sounds. He copied a sound I made once but that’s it, so not much back and forth. He does sit and roll a ball with us though.
Does anyone have experience of their LO babbling later and being NT? I’m so worried that it’s listed as an early indicator of autism as my partner’s half brother has it pretty severely. In my rational brain I know it wouldn’t be the end of the world and I wouldn’t love him any less (and that it’s so early to tell!), but it’s just a scary unknown and I can’t turn my brain off overthinking.
He sometimes answers his name, sometimes shakes things when I ask him to and has located his toys sometimes when I say ball etc but it’s very hit and miss - I think he just does it when he wants to so may just be strong willed 😂He does seem to follow my point if I point things out and did a kind of wave for a bit but never in response to people and that’s died down now. No clapping or pointing as yet. I know you shouldn’t compare but I’m finding it hard that so many of my friends kids can do a lot he can’t - if I knew he would do it eventually I wouldn’t worry but we all probably wish we had a crystal ball to know they’ll end up happy and okay.
We saw the HV and she said she wasn’t worried because his eye contact was good and he played ‘beautifully’ but she didn’t seem to answer my specific concerns about speech and then kept talking about diagnoses for him in the future. She also mentioned the fact he twirled his ankles when he was playing - from what I’ve read most kids do that as it’s their way of expressing themselves and just them learning their bodies? So not sure why she brought it up! Needless to say she didn’t ease my worries.
Sorry for the very long post but any reassurance and examples of kids just doing it abit later would be very much appreciated!!!
Thanks x