At what age is the M-CHAT administered please?

[Frightattendent]

Just wondering, as ds has just failed his at 16mo. He failed on two critical questions and several non critical.

I'm wondering if he is too little though? And what happens next? Would he just be observed for another few months?

TIA

Well to be honest at 16 months severe and mild autism look identical (not to alarm you, just to say that it's not worth getting hung up on position on spectrum etc and what age it can be diagnosed- a specialist can diagnose before 2).

I'd certainly give it a few months and it's good she's watching, but if he's still 'failing' CHAT at 18/19 months then I would push for a referral to a specialist. Non-specialists have very odd ideas about what autism is (I think they assume it means a child rocking in the corner staring at a wall). And depending on your area waiting lists can be very long. We were lucky and moved from London, but to give you our timeline:

20 months I raised concerns with HV. She agreed to refer to specialist (autism) SALT
26 moths he was seen by specialist SALT who said he 'definitely wasn't' autistic and if he had any problems at all they were very mild. She decided not to send us on a Hanen course but to review 'in 3 months'
3 month reviews didn't exist - so we waited 9 months to see a community (non-specialist ) SALT who didn't have a clue what to do with him but said he needed a referral to the complex communication disorder team and that the waiting list was at least 2 YEARS!
We moved from London to Devon, where they were horrified that he hadn't been seen so leapfrogged the waiting list to a multi disciplinary assessment and he was dxed with 'somewhere on the autistic spectrum' aged 3.
That dx has since changed to severe autism.

All that just to say trust your gut. I did have concerns about ds3 aged 16 months but I was fairly certain he was fine by 18 months. With ds1 when I was told he was fine I was happy for about 2 days then I just though 'hmmm maybe not' and I wish I'd pushed more.

But tbh whether he has problems or not (and he may well not of course) Floortime is good to do anyway. And if he does have problems doing something is more important than worrying about a diagnosis. Floortime uses a functional assessment so it doesn't worry about a condition's name, just what a child can do.

I'd also recommend BabyTalk by Sally Ward. A very useable book with lots of ideas. I used it a lot during that ridiculous wait we had. It's written to encourage typical development but is all good for children with communication difficulties too.

A very quick hijack if I may.. jimjams, I wanted to ask you why you switched from cows to goat's milk? Thinking of possibly switching the ds' but was under the impression that both contained casein - can you clarify for me?

Hi kt14 yes they do both contain casein. ds3's sunderland results came back with the casein peak in his urine. I wasn't keen on soya as ds1 had gone a bit loopy on it and I didn't think rice milk was suitable for such a young child. Paul Shattock suggested trying goats. He said that the casein is a different form and that there was some entirely unsubstantiated suggestion that milk high in A2 proteins (such as goats or guernsey cows) was less of a problem than milk high in A1 proteins (high in fresian cows milk- ie 99% of the UK milk). something about a1 or a2 milk here. He also said that goats milk is broken down more easily and of course more efficiant digestion would reduce the number of peptoids passing though the gut wall.

It seemed worth a try and unlikely to do any harm. As it was the response in ds3 was so dramatic that we just stuck with it.

that's great jimjams, thanks, ds1 didn't have the casein peak in the Sunderland test but I've been told he's sometimes drinking gallons of milk at pre-school and have noticed mild differences in him when this happens which makes me wonder. Will give it a go with goat's milk next week.
Sorry again for hijack!